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Caffe Cino

Caffe Cino

31 Cornelia St, New York, NY 10014


Arguably the first Off-Off-Broadway theater venue, Caffe Cino was located on Cornelia—a quiet one-block-long street that terminates to the north at West Fourth Street that hosted many an experimental theater production and performance.

Stories

A Bad Seed Named Andy Milligan

People

On Cornelia and Fourth Street was a dress shop with a fancy mannequin in front where movie stars sometimes shopped. It was run by Andy Milligan, a designer who also directed some of the earliest shows at Caffe Cino. He later went on to make trashy low-budget movies such as The Ghastly Ones, Vapors, Seeds of Sin, The Body Beneath, The Man with Two Heads, and Torture Dungeon. “Andy was an S&M motorcycle freak, but a good director,” said playwright Paul Foster, who was connected to another Off-Off-Broadway theater, Café La MaMa. “He was outrageous. He would say anything and do anything, which was exciting because it was new. Andy was quite a character.” Robert Patrick added, “Andy Milligan was a dress designer and into S&M, as pretty boys learned when they first hit the Cino.” He staged a homoerotic dance during his production of Jean Genet’s Deathwatch at the Cino, and Milligan’s version of Genet’s The Maids had a lesbian sex scene that was sizzling for its time.

From Chapter 1 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore


Agosto Machado Discovers Caffe Cino

People

Joe Cino’s appetite for a good time was equaled by his warmth and generosity. If one of his starving young artists was actually starving, he would offer them bread or pastries, even when he couldn’t pay rent himself. His café offered a warm refuge for the poor, tired, huddled gay masses who increasingly congregated in the Village—like a young Agosto Machado, who met Joe in 1959. “I was on Cornelia Street, around Bleecker,” he recalled, “and it was still heavily an Italian neighborhood, and there were these young men who were so attractive, carrying things like panels of wood. I thought I was being discreet, but I just got overwhelmed by their handsomeness and I followed them as they went up Cornelia Street.” When this group of men walked through Caffe Cino’s doorway, Agosto peered in. “May I help you?” Joe asked. “Oh no,” he replied, “I was just wandering about the neighborhood.” The friendly coffee shop owner ushered him in. “This is a café, and you’re welcome here. We don’t sell alcohol. We sometimes have poetry readings and little presentations. There’s hot cider, or espresso, or some cookies.”

From Chapter 1 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore


Enter Joe Cino

People

Joe Cino opened it after giving up on his dream of being a dancer, for he was too heavyset to make it in the dance world. “Joe wore sweatshirts on the street, like dancers did,” recalled Robert Patrick, another Cino regular-turned-playwright who entered the fold in 1961. “He wore them backwards for the high neck. He was an affected faggot before it was fashionable.” He could be found behind the espresso machine—which served some of the best coffee in town—surrounded by photos of James Dean, Jean Harlow, Marilyn Monroe, and other movie stars. Joe didn’t bother reading scripts; he read people’s faces instead, or asked them their astrological sign. “The Cino was one of a number of little coffeehouses and alternative spaces,” said Michael Smith, “and I liked that it was so intimate. There was no proscenium. You were not separated from the play by some kind of frame. It was happening in the room with you. It was a very free atmosphere. Joe Cino was very supportive and just encouraged people to be themselves and be free. It’s quite unique that way, and I’ve never really been in another theater that was quite as supportive.” Cino sometimes spoke in a very high-cultured purr, though he also employed a pseudo-Italian language that was kind of campy—like, “Mamma mia! Here’s another group of lost boys!” He liked eccentric people with wild personas and wanted to create an open atmosphere that was like an ongoing party, blasting Maria Callas and other opera divas at top volume on the phonograph. Joe loved the 1940s pop singer Kate Smith, and sometimes wrapped himself in the American flag—occasionally completely naked—while playing the famed contralto’s rendition of “God Bless America” at top volume, just standing there.

From Chapter 1 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore


It’s Magic Time!

People

“We were raised in an America that hated art, sex, and intellect,” Robert Patrick recalled, “and sex was not the worst offense.” He was beaten up in grade school, junior high school, and high school not for being gay—which he was—but for carrying too many books. “Once we all left the small town to hit the big city, we were ready to explode. There were people at the Cino who were versed in every aspect of history, arts, science. Nobody beat you up for it there.” Patrick surrounded himself with creative, forward-looking people who were smart, friendly, and supportive. “Most of us had never been part of a group where we came from, so it was rather intoxicating to be in one.” Sitting around having coffee, they shared their frustrations and aspirations with each other, so it wasn’t much of a stretch for them to say, “Hey, let’s act this out—let’s put on a show!” Every night at Caffe Cino, Joe Cino walked from the espresso machine to his makeshift stage, rang chimes, and announced, “Welcome ladies and gentlemen, it’s magic time!” When the lights went down, a different reality materialized: “It was the magic and ingenuity of Off-Off-Broadway,” Agosto Machado said. “You had to suspend belief, because you wanted to, and you’re enjoying it. If you didn’t have money, you used your ingenuity. It was so magical, so special. It was a playhouse for yourself and the selective group of people who were seeing this.”

From Chapter 1 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore


Joe Cino’s Little Theater That Could

People

Soon after arriving, Harry Koutoukas befriended a gay coffeehouse proprietor named Joe Cino, who helped spark the underground theater revolution known as Off-Off-Broadway. “Caffe Cino encouraged creativity and no barriers,” Agosto Machado said. “You’d just say you’re a playwright, and then you would put on a play.” This storefront theater was located on Cornelia Street, a block-long side street that connects Bleecker with West Fourth Street and got little foot traffic. Cornelia was one of those charming little Village roads near Washington Square Park that could have easily appeared on Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (that iconic album cover was shot on Jones Street, just one block to the north). Coffeehouses proliferated in Greenwich Village because the area had plenty of empty commercial spaces; these establishments were much cheaper to run than bars, which required the proper city licenses and Mafia protection rackets. Caffe Cino had six or eight little tables with wire-back chairs that were com­plemented by a hodgepodge of other furniture found in the street. Its stage was usually set in the center, among the tables, though this arrangement often changed from show to show. In the back of the Cino, to the left, was a counter with an espresso machine and a hallway that led to a tiny dressing room and a toilet. During its early days, the place was lit by Chinese lanterns and other little lights, though Caffe Cino grew more cluttered as time went on.

From Chapter 1 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore


Performing Gay Identities at Caffe Cino

People

“Do what you have to do,” said Joe Cino, who gave this small group of outsiders a literal stage to act out new ways of presenting themselves in public. Together, they transformed social life by performing openly gay identities in ways that had been suppressed elsewhere in the country. “All the gay guys bought muscle magazines like Young Physique,” Robert Patrick recalled. “At one point, I dared bring in a photo of one of the most popular models, a blond in just the tiniest white bikini. I tacked it on the wall, which is like saying, ‘Yes! We’re gay.’ But we were actually worried if I could legally put a picture of a young man in a bathing suit on a wall.” Over time, this motley crew grew more confident and confrontational, such as when Patrick and his fellow Cino playwright William Hoffman were attacked in the neighborhood by a group of teenage boys. Patrick and Hoffman turned the tables on the homophobes by breaking off a car antenna and chased them through the streets with it. “I would have killed them,” Hoffman said, vividly recalling this pre-Stonewall memory a half century later. “It was very empowering.” F. Story Talbot, who had an apartment on Cornelia Street, was one of the token straight guys who hung around the Cino in its early days. “All the guys down there who worked there were making semi-passes at me,” he said, “and we would laugh about it.”

From Chapter 1 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore


Robert Patrick Follows the Other Brick Road

People

Robert Patrick was another bohemian immigrant who was drawn to Caffe Cino. After working a dishwashing job at a summer stock theater in Maine in 1961, he made a stopover in Greenwich Village on his way back home to Santa Fe, New Mexico, on a Greyhound bus. As he walked down West Fourth Street, Patrick saw a young long-haired man with jewelry around his neck who was clearly not wearing underwear. “His name was Johnny Dodd,” he said of Caffe Cino’s genius lighting technician. “So I followed what I call the ‘other brick road’ down to Sheridan Square. I followed him a couple of blocks and he looked over his shoulder at me and turned the corner.” Patrick continued down Cornelia Street, which had a little art gallery and bookstore, then followed Dodd into the Cino—which was dark and smelly. Actor Neil Flanagan and director Andy Milligan were in the midst of rehearsing a show, so the newcomer sat down, watched, and basically never left Caffe Cino until it shut down in 1968.

From Chapter 1 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore


Caffe Cino’s Comic Book Plays

People

Eventually, Caffe Cino became known for staging plays based on comic books. This tradition began when someone suggested that they perform scenes from a Wonder Woman comic that was lying around the Cino. Great idea, Robert Patrick thought, so he sent someone out to buy extra copies of the comic at the corner store. “You’re Steve Trevor,” Patrick said, grabbing anyone who was available. “You’re Woozy Winks. You’re Etta Candy.” Diana Prince—aka Wonder Woman—was played by Harry Koutoukas (he eventually put the name “Diana Prince” on his mailbox at 87 Christopher Street). “Within the hour,” Patrick said, “we had The Secret of Taboo Mountain, the Cino’s first comic book play. There were four comic book shows: Wonder Woman, Snow White, Archie and His Friends, and a ‘Classic Comics’ version of Faust.” Koutoukas also appeared in Snow White, where friends and audience members were sometimes recruited minutes before a performance. Robert Shields, the actor who played Grumpy, recalled that the number of dwarves fluctuated from evening to evening. “One night we had something like eighteen to twenty dwarves running back and forth,” he said. “Fred Willard did it one night. Whoever was there, they’d just say ‘Okay, yeah, I’ll do that.’ So occasionally we had more dwarves than we had audience.”

From Chapter 9 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore


Gay Plays at Caffe Cino

People

The Cino and other Off-Off-Broadway venues carved out a place for gay men to explore ways of acting out openly queer identities, which eventually reshaped mainstream American culture. “Homosexuality,” Michael Smith noted, “was unmentionable at the time.” Robert Heide learned this lesson in 1961 when he wrote a play, West of the Moon, in which two men stood in a Christopher Street doorway seeking shelter from the rain. As the play unfolds, an older hustler takes advantage of a naive preacher’s son who had just arrived in town. Establishment critics were repulsed, and a Theatre Arts Magazine reviewer said Heide “should break his typewriter over his hands.” But Joe Cino liked it, and told Heide in his own eccentric way, “I want you to write a play just like West of the Moon, for two blond Nazi men.” The Bed featured two very attractive men in an existential time warp, drinking and drugging for three days. Joe Cino had no second thoughts about staging a show about two men in a bed, unlike Broadway producers of the time. “The Cino was very relaxed about people being gay,” Smith said. “So it was no big deal there and no one judged you that way. It was an outsider place because these people had no other place to show their work. There were a lot of gay plays there early on, like Lanford Wilson’s The Madness of Lady Bright.” That show was a heartbreaking little masterpiece, a Valentine to loneliness featuring an openly gay main character—the first of many written by Wilson, who developed into a major American playwright and eventually won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama, among many other honors.

From Chapter 9 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore


Harry Koutoukas’s “Camps”

People

“I stepped into the new century my first day in New York when I stepped into Caffe Cino,” playwright Robert Patrick said. “There was no question that I was in the most important place in the world. I know Harry Koutoukas felt like that. Whenever nothing else was booked, Joe Cino would say, ‘Harry, you’ve got something?’ and Harry would give him a title. Then Joe would put the title in the Voice.” Though Koutoukas had been hanging around the Cino for a few years, his career as a playwright began in December 1964 with Only a Countess May Dance When She’s Crazy (an Historical Camp), which he wrote and directed at Caffe Cino. The script has the Countess shouting, “Bring me MY TIERRA—The one with the fewest jewels. . . . Oh there is no one to bring it—NO ONE TO BRING IT! NO ONE SHALL BRING IT OR CAN—I shall bring it unto myself! Even if I have to get it myself.” When the Countess returns with her “tierra,” she is interrupted by the ringing of a telephone, followed by the lowering of the paper cup on a string, which she answers. (When Koutoukas was asked why he couldn’t just use a prop telephone, the playwright snapped, “In a Koutoukas production, it’s paper cups.”) This provocateur, poet, and playwright had a knack for wordplay that spilled over into the titles of his “camps” (Koutoukas’s preferred term for plays), such as Tidy Passions, or Kill, Kaleidoscope, Kill (an Epic Camp) and Awful People Are Coming Over So We Must Be Pretending to Be Hard at Work and Hope They Will Go Away.

From Chapter 9 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore


Koutoukas Causes More Trouble at Caffe Cino

People

During the Caffe Cino production of The Death of Tintagiles, Harry Koutoukas stirred up trouble as he sat by the stage wearing his cape with the fake parrot on his shoulder. “It was supposed to be a serious play,” said cast member Jayne Anne Harris, “but, well, Harry was kind of a force of nature, even from the audience.” The trouble began when the lead actress pushed open a set door with her pinky, even though it was supposed to be heavy, which Koutoukas found endlessly amusing. “She was a Method actress, and she was a pain in the ass,” Harris recalled. “If you laugh one more time, I will cut you,” she declared, which only made Koutoukas laugh harder. “If you laugh one more time, I WILL CUT YOU!” she said again in a very dramatic Shakespearean voice, while holding a sword over her head. Koutoukas laughed again. Robdert Patrick, who was managing Caffe Cino that night, recalled that “she buried her sword in Harry’s table and stormed out.” The Death of Tintagiles’s run abruptly ended, so the café crowd quickly threw together a new show—a common occurrence at Caffe Cino.

From Chapter 9 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore


Robert Patrick Becomes a Playwright

People

When Robert Patrick began hanging out at Caffe Cino in 1961, he had no grand design to become a playwright. It was his friend Wilson who helped inspire him to begin writing The Haunted Host, a play that was set on Christopher Street and also featured an openly gay character. “We went around to a diner called Joe’s for lunch, and I reached for a napkin,” he recalled. “I started writing The Haunted Host, but I would never have thought of writing the play if I hadn’t already been part of the Cino.” When Patrick asked Joe Cino to put on the show, he just threw the script over his shoulder and into the garbage. “You don’t want to be a playwright. Playwrights are terrible people,” Cino said, motioning to his star scribes—Lanford Wilson, David Starkweather, and Tom Eyen. “Oh, all right,” Patrick replied, dropping the issue. “Joe, you should do Bob’s play,” Wilson interjected. “He pulls his weight around here and you should do his little play.” Cino said, “No. He’ll thank me someday.” Wilson then insisted, “If you don’t do Bob’s play, none of us will do plays here anymore.” The other two playwrights looked at Wilson with raised eyebrows until Joe said, “Oh, all right, if it’s going to be a palace revolution.” The Haunted Host was a hit, kicking off Patrick’s wildly prolific career.

From Chapter 9 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore


A Grim Christmas Carol

People

Soren Agenoux’s adaptation of A Christmas Carol took the audience deep into the soul of Ebenezer Scrooge, with absolutely no sentimentality. Michael Smith, who directed it, recalled that it was based more on the Scrooge McDuck comic than the Charles Dickens story. “There was also kind of an anti-Vietnam streak to it,” Smith said. “It was very obscure, because it was written in this kind of raving amphetamine haze that Soren Agenoux did so well.” Actress Jacque Lynn Colton, who played the Ghost of Christmas Past, recalled the show’s wild run. “I was kind of on the fringes of it all,” she said, “because I was not a gay boy, and I wasn’t into drugs or anything.” In one of her scenes, Colton was given a prop birthday cake with candles to wear on her head while she recited a two-page monologue, which was mostly poetic gibberish. Cino lighting genius Johnny Dodd slowly dimmed the lights so that when Ondine blew out the candles at the end of Colton’s long speech, the Cino went pitch black. This sort of technique is common today, but it was shockingly new at the time. The play was packed with allusions to pop culture and Factory scene inside jokes, with Ondine’s character spouting free-associating lines such as, “I help support certain establishments, certain recognized charities—the Girls of Chelsea Amphetamindell—THE VELVET UNDERGRINDLE.” Andy Warhol saw A Christmas Carol several times and sent his lieutenant Paul Morrissey to film it for the compilation film Four Stars.

From Chapter 12 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore


Caffe Cino Burns Down, Reopens

People

Caffe Cino burned down on Ash Wednesday in 1965, an omen of trouble on the horizon. Edward Albee, who was the most famous person in theater at the time, threw benefits for the Cino, and Ellen Stewart also used Café La MaMa to stage benefits organized by Harry Koutoukas. People urged Joe Cino to use the fire as an opportunity to expand his theater and move into a bigger space, but he wanted it to retain its original atmosphere. Just two months later, Caffe Cino reopened in its original location on Cornelia with Koutoukas’s With Creatures Make My Way. The show revolved around a transsexual, transhuman figure who lived among “baby alligators that are flushed down toilets every day,” as well as other strange critters. With Creatures Make My Way was an homage to Caffe Cino—a refuge for outsiders, artists, and oddballs who didn’t fit in anywhere else. As Koutoukas wrote in his stage notes, the setting was an underground inversion of “the churches of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, known as WASPS, that exist everywhere.” Exiled from that normal world, the Creature spent his days playing Mozart on a huge pipe organ, pining for a lobster he loved many centuries ago. At the end of the show, the Creature discovered that his newest friend—a pearly piece of ectoplasm—was actually his long-lost love, the lobster. Koutoukas’s “camp” concluded with the two joining together in a song and dance, as the Creature observed, “music Scotch-tapes the whole world together, doesn’t it?”

From Chapter 12 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore


Speed-Fueled Hijinks at Caffe Cino

People

It was certainly true that Ondine and other Factory folks ramped up the amphetamine use at Caffe Cino, though it wasn’t as if they brought the forbidden fruit of drugs into an innocent Garden of Eden. After all, marijuana and speed had already been around the Cino from the beginning, but as Harry Koutoukas put it, “The Warhol people brought in drugs we never even smelled before.” The little hallway in the back was littered with syringes, and there were always pots of amphetamine cooking in the dressing room, with people shooting up. “Cino, it was speed-infested,” Caffe Cino regular Jim Fouratt said. “And of course, there was glitter everywhere. There was a lot of amphetamine use at the Caffe Cino, but I don’t want to talk too darkly about it, because it was very innocent.” Fouratt recalled how Ondine suggested one night that they go to the bathroom together, which turned out to be a kind of prank. “I thought I was going to get a blow job,” he said, “and he pulls out the biggest dick I’d ever seen in my life, and then shoots up in it, with speed. I had never seen anything like this in my life. I was completely, AHHH! I must have been ashen.” When Fouratt walked out, three people sitting on the other side of the room burst out laughing because they knew what just happened.

From Chapter 12 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore