The Downtown Pop Underground

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Agosto Machado was a Chinese-Spanish Christopher Street queen and Zelig-like figure who witnessed the rise of the underground theater and film movements, the 1960s counterculture, gay liberation, and punk rock. [more]

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Al Carmines served as the associate minister for the arts at Judson Memorial Church, where he wrote songs for plays that Judson produced in addition to giving sermons and other ministerial duties. [more]

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Father of Bibbe Hansen, Fluxus artist Al Hansen was an early Happenings innovator who was the first to publish a book about the subject, A Primer of Happenings and Time/Space Art, in 1965. [more]

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Suicide frontman Alan Vega began as a visual artist and sculptor before his career trajectory was forever altered after witnessing Iggy Pop onstage in 1969, which led him to form Suicide with keyboardist Martin Rev. [more]

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Like many artists who became part of 1960s avant-garde art movements, Allan Kaprow developed an expanded approach to painting, composition, poetry, and, eventually, performance—when he coined the term “Happenings.” [more]

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Best known for his Pop Art silkscreened work, Andy Warhol was a key connector figure who circulated not only through uptown art circles, but also within the underground film, poetry, theater, and music scenes. [more]

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Ann Harris began collaborating with her six children in the early 1960s after her oldest son—an eleven-year-old soon-to-be Hibiscus—hatched the idea to start a family theater troupe after learning that his mother had written two plays in college that had moldered in a trunk for years; by the early 1970s, she was writing songs for Hibiscus and his sisters in the Angels of Light. [more]

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Bette Midler was cast in the 1965 La MaMa production of Tom Eyen’s Miss Nefertiti Regrets at the age of 18, and later performed a cabaret act at gay bathhouses with with pianist Barry Manilow (who also sometimes performed at Caffe Cino). [more]

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Bill Graham grew up in New York as a German Holocaust survivor and an aspiring actor, and after moving to San Francisco he found success as a live music promoter by opening the Fillmore Auditorium to capitalize on the city’s thriving psychedelic music scene before opening the Fillmore East in 1968. [more]

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After moving to Downtown New York, Bruce Eyster became fast friends with the likes of Harry Koutoukas, Jackie Curtis, Candy Darling and others; he also appeared in a few of Koutoukas' shows until they had a falling out after the playwright demanded that Eyster bleach his hair white and shave off all his body hair for his play Too Late for Yogurt. [more]

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Born James Slattery, Candy Darling grew up in Massapequa Park, Long Island and moved to New York in the mid-1960s, where she became part of the street scene—eventually befriending Jackie Curtis, with whom she appeared in Warhol films. [more]

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Carolee Schneemann is well-known for many significant pieces, including her 1964 performance piece Meat Joy, which featured nude performers who played with paint, sausage, and raw chickens, and was presented at Judson Gallery. [more]

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Playwright and performer Charles Ludlam briefly worked with John Vaccaro’s Play-House of the Ridiculous before forming his own Ridiculous Theatrical Company and mounting his breakthrough play, Bluebeard, at La MaMa. [more]

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A shape-shifting rock ‘n’ roll oddity who helped spearhead the glam rock movement in the early 1970s, David Bowie could be seen haunting various downtown locations such as Mercer Arts Center and Club 82. [more]

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Before becoming the New York Dolls’ frontman, David Johansen worked at a variety of downtown establishments—including a St. Mark’s clothing store that provided costumes for Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company and Max’s Kansas City. [more]

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Diane di Prima was first associated with the Beat poetry movement before becoming involved with LeRoi Jones, with whom she coedited the mimeo poetry zine The Floating Bear and started the New York Poets Theatre. [more]

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Best known as the star of several John Waters films, Divine also appeared in several Cockettes shows, as well as Tom Eyen’s Women Behind Bars (along with Lisa Jane Persky, who also performed in the 1976 production at the Truck and Warehouse Theater). [more]

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DIY theater impresario Ellen Stewart cultivated an extended family of theater folks after she founded La MaMa in the basement of an East Ninth Street building, which then moved to various East Village location before settling in its permanent home on East Fourth Street. [more]

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An early member of the Cockettes in San Francisco, Fayette Hauser relocated to New York City and performed with fellow Cockettes Pam Tent, John Flowers, and Tomata du Plenty in the drag group Savage Voodoo Nuns, which opened for Blondie and the Ramones. [more]

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Dancer Freddie Herko was part of the Judson Dance Theater and was a friend of Diane di Prima before committing suicide by pirouetting from a four-story window on Cornelia Street, a few doors down from Caffe Cino. [more]

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George Harris, Jr. was married to Ann Harris, and together they raised six children who were all involved in theater at Caffe Cino, La MaMa, and Judson Church. [more]

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Poet Gerard Malanga became part of the Factory scene after being hired as Andy Warhol’s screen-printing assistant; he could also be seen wielding a whip while dancing to the Velvet Underground in the Exploding Plastic Inevitable multimedia series, and costarring with Mary Woronov in Vinyl at Caffe Cino. [more]

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Haralambos Monroe “Harry” Koutoukas was an outré playwright with a kaleidoscopic way with words, whose plays were presented at many of the key Off-Off-Broadway venues: Caffe Cino, La MaMa, Theatre Genesis, and Judson Poets’ Theatre. [more]

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Hibiscus was a gender-fluid performer and founder of the psychedelic drag troupes the Cockettes and Angels of Light who was among the very first who succumbed to the AIDS epidemic, in 1982. [more]

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Holly Woodlawn appeared with Candy Darling and Jackie Curtis in many Warhol films, on cabaret stages, and in underground theater productions, and was name-checked in the opening lines of Lou Reed’s classic song “Walk On the Wild Side” and appeared briefly in An American Family. [more]

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Jack Smith’s underground film Flaming Creatures (1963) was hugely influential, erupting with sexually ambiguous images of gay and trans performers and shot DIY-style on shoplifted black-and-white film stock that was often overexposed to create a hazy white sheen. [more]

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The playwright and performer Jackie Curtis was a working class Lower East Side native who was raised by his grandmother, “Slugger Ann,” the proprietor of a rough East Village bar named Slugger Ann’s. [more]

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Jacque Lynn Colton often performed at Caffe Cino, Judson Memorial Church, and La MaMa; she was also among the first to tour Europe as part of the emerging La MaMa Repertory Company, expanding the downtown diaspora’s reach. [more]

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Wayne County—who transitioned to Jayne County by the end of the 1970s—fronted several glam and punk groups throughout that decade: Queen Elizabeth, The Electric Chairs, and The Backstreet Boys (whose name was unwittingly ripped off by a 1990s boy band). [more]

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Experimental composer and theorist John Cage shared a studio at the Living Theatre with dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham, with whom he collaborated for performances at Judson Memorial Church and elsewhere. [more]

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John Vaccaro was the mercurial director who orchestrated the Play-House of the Ridiculous, whose shows were unrelenting explosions of color, glitter, and noise underscored by social satire. [more]

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Judith Malina was the cofounder of the Living Theatre, along with her husband Julian Beck, and they played key roles in the development of Off-Broadway during the 1950s and Off-Off-Broadway in the 1960s. [more]

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Lendon Sadler grew up in Atlanta and visited New York City as a teenager before moving to San Francisco, where he met Hibiscus and joined the Cockettes; he then settled in downtown New York after the Cockettes' debut in the city. [more]

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Beat-era comedian Lenny Bruce was arrested for obscenity in 1964 when the he performed his material at Café Au Go Go in Greenwich Village; he was also an early subscriber to Paul Krassner’s magazine The Realist. [more]

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During the early 1970s, Laugh-In star Lily Tomlin met and fell in love with Jane Wagner, who first introduced her to the likes of Candy Darling and Jackie Curtis, whose Vain Victory show was then playing at La MaMa. [more]

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Before starring in several Warhol films and Off-Off-Broadway plays, Mario Montez first appeared in Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures and was named after Smith’s favorite 1940s starlet, Maria Montez. [more]

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Marsha P. Johnson was a street queen and early gay liberation activist who performed with Hibiscus’s Angels of Light; Miss Marsha’s impromptu banter with the audience always brought down the house, and she became a second mom to Hibiscus’s sisters. [more]

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The youngest of the Harris family siblings, Mary Lou Harris appeared in several Off-Off-Broadway productions in the 1960s before teaming up with her sisters and brother Hibiscus to form the Angels of Light. [more]

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Choreographer and dancer Merce Cunningham and his partner John Cage were closely involved in the overlapping downtown arts scenes, collaborating with their friend Robert Rauschenberg and others at Judson Memorial Church and the Living Theatre. [more]

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Born Robert Olivo, Ondine acted in Play-House of the Ridiculous plays and appeared in more Warhol footage than anyone (because of his acid tongue and ability to talk for hours, days even, while taking speed), landing memorable roles in The Chelsea Girls and other Warhol films. [more]

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Before moving to San Francisco, meeting Hibiscus, and joining the Cockettes, Pam Tent lived in downtown New York—where she met future New York Dolls frontman David Johansen, and eventually resettled with a new boyfriend, Dee Dee Ramone. [more]

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Cabaret performer and Off-Off-Broadway music composer Paul Serrato managed the Paperbook Gallery in Greenwich Village, where he met Jackie Curtis and began writing music for Curtis's Lucky Wonderful and the underground hit La MaMa show, Vain Victory. [more]

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Peter Crowley worked at the Living Theatre well over a decade before he began booking the Ramones, Blondie, and other punk bands at Max’s Kansas City; in both venues, he witnessed the dissolution of barriers that separated audiences from performers. [more]

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Tom O’Horgan was a multitalented director, musician, and choreographer who worked on dozens of shows at La MaMa before hitting the bigtime as the director of the Broadway musicals Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar, though he continued to return to La MaMa after his mainstream success. [more]

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Tomata du Plenty was a former Cockette who formed the punk band the Screamers in Los Angeles after settling in downtown New York during the mid 1970s. [more]

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Before she lived at 87 Christopher Street, multimedia artist Yoko Ono organized downtown Manhattan’s first loft events, the Chambers Street Loft Series, in what is now called TriBeCa (the triangle below Canal Street). [more]