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Of Joe Cino and the Caffe Cino
Returning to work at Theater for the New City for a couple of months earlier this year gave me a shot in the arm in more ways than one. We’ve been living in a sort of frustrating exile since early 2018; it was nice to be back in the city on a regular basis, to bump into lots of old friends, and revisit old haunts. One day, while killing time before an evening performance, I stumbled across a historic site I’d long known about, but the location of which I’d either forgotten about, or possibly never knew, the Caffe Cino.
I’d known the name of the place before I’d even moved to New York, from published paperbacks of Sam Shepard’s early plays which had premiered there. It is widely acknowledged to have been the birthplace of Off-Off-Broadway Theatre, now often referred to as Indie Theatre. Theatre for the New City’s Cino Theatre is named after the historic venue, which was at 31 Cornelia Street in Greenwich Village, right near the site of the recently closed Cornelia Street Cafe. I took these crappy snaps of the plaques outside the storefront it used to occupy.
Caffe Cino operated for one crucial decade, from 1958 to 1968. Its founder Joe Cino (1931-1967) had been an aspiring dancer from Buffalo. The spelling of his “Caffe” is Italian. His parents were from Sicily; the idea is not unlike that of the caffe concerti I wrote about here. It was, to use a term more widely known, a coffeehouse, in that great age of Bohemian coffeehouses. Cino sold espresso and pastry to keep the lights on (and the cops paid off), and hung paintings by contemporary artists on the walls, booked folk musicians and held poetry readings. The poetry readings led to play readings, which led to full productions of experimental plays. And this was groundbreaking, because theatre had lagged well behind all other art forms by at least a century in this country in having NO venues devoted to non-commercial theatre. That’s the point of a coffeehouse. The coffee is what people pay for, allowing the art to be risky.
In addition to Shepard, other playwrights who presented early work there included Lanford Wilson, Doric Wilson (no relation),Jean-Claude Van Itallie, Leonard Melfi,Irene Fornes,Michael Smith, and H.M. Koutoukas, and there were also experimental productions of works by Jean Giraudoux,Jean Genet,Tennessee Williams, and others. Tom O’Horgan (Hair) directed there. Al Pacino acted there. And hundreds of others.
In addition to caffeine, LSD and amphetamines were freely used in the art scene in those days, and they may have played a role in some of the more dramatic events that form part of this account, and I’ll leave it as vague as that, for there are numerous conflicting testimonies and reflections across the internet, and many who were there are still living, whereas I was a toddler 150 miles away when the place ceased to exist. The first of the catastrophes was a fire in early 1965, forcing the temporary shut down of the cafe. Seek out others for the cause and circumstances. All I know for certain is that there was a fire. During these months, Ellen Stewart generously gave over time at her then new (and then similar) space La MaMa a couple of nights a week to Cino folks.
By the time of its reopening, Cino’s space had become popular and fashionable, successful enough to have a kind of rift open between two factions. Two major developments brought it about. One was an influx of people from Andy Warhol’s Factory. Warhol shot his 1965 film of Bob Heide’s play The Bed there. The play ran 150 performances. In 1966 the theatre had an even greater hit, the camp musical Dames at Sea starring Bernadette Peters. This production ran a long time and eventually moved to legit theatres and even enjoyed a TV production with stars in it a few years later. Developments like this basically drove a kind of wedge into the Off-Off Broadway movement that has never been adequately resolved. One wing favors pure experimentalism, freedom to explore and take risks that may or may not attract huge audiences. The other wing, which arrived out of the camp movement, is more commercial, and puts butts in seats. Both wings have gay artists associated with them. The Ridiculous movement split along these very lines, with John Vaccaro heading the former faction, Charles Ludlam leading the latter. The split continues to the present day. There were debates about it in the context of the New York International Fringe Festival, the New York Independent Theatre Awards and the website NewYorkTheatre.com (all of them now sadly defunct, which is yet another conversation). “What IS indie theatre?” ran the debate. Can it just be, for example, a low budget production of a commercially successful musical? Or must it be experimental in some way? I hew in the latter direction, but I’ve realized that one of the ills that beset the Indie Theatre community in recent decades was an outcome of the professionalization of Off-Off. I think selling tickets to experimental theatre proved a big mistake, and created unreasonable (and frankly irrelevant) expectations on the parts of critics and audiences. Work like that should be supported entirely by means other than ticket sales. And, sure, sell tickets to musicals. There’s an end to your confusion. (I have presented mountains of both kinds of work over the decades, and believe me, it has confused me plenty. I’m interested in both kinds of work).
Anyway, both factions pray to the same God, and that is Dionysus. And drugs almost certainly played a part in the tragedy that ended Caffe Cino.
In January 1967, Cino’s lover was electrocuted in mysterious circumstances. Grief stricken, a couple of months later, Cino worked himself into a frenzied state and stabbed himself repeatedly with a knife. He was taken to St Vincent’s hospital and expected to survive, but three days later succumbed to peritonitis. The venue he founded only outlived him for a year.
Cino, and many of the artists he fostered at his space were gay. It may interest non-New Yorkers to know that his space was located a literal stone’s throw from the Stonewall Inn, where the historic riots and the birth of the modern gay rights movement occurred in the summer of 1969. If Cino and his space had hung on just a few months longer, they surely would have been a part of that.
Want to learn more? I know you do. I found some amazing websites that take you much deeper into this story.
And lots, lots, more across the Internet, just google it.
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