Joe Cino

Joseph Cino (1931-April 4, 1967), was an Italian-American theatrical producer and café-owner. The beginning of the Off-Off-Broadway theatre movement is generally credited to have begun at Cino’s Caffé Cino.

Caffe Cino

Pioneer of the off-off Broadway movement

In 1958, Joe Cino rented a storefront at 31 Cornelia Street in New York City's Greenwich Village in order to open a coffeehouse in which his friends could socialize. So intimate was his clientele that he and those customers in his inner circle actually created their own patois, a mixture of Italian and English. Not originally intending that Caffe Cino would become a theatrical venue, Cino instead visualized a café where he could host folk music concerts, poetry readings, and art exhibits. Actor/director Bill Mitchell says it was he who suggested that Cino add plays to the performance mix. Dated photographs show that plays were staged on his coffeehouse’s floor from at least December 1958, usually directed by actor/director Bob Dahdah. Cino saw the opportunity merely as another kind of event to host.

Caffe Cino’s first theatrical offerings were plays from established playwrights such as Tennessee Williams and Jean Giraudoux. The first original play Cino produced is thought to be James Howard’s "Flyspray" (summer of 1960). Cino became so excited by the audience’s and his own response to the plays that he quickly established a weekly schedule for theatrical performances. He would introduce the acts with the phrase, "It's magic time!" [ [http://www.siu.edu/~siupress/titles/s05_titles/stone_caffe.html Caffe Cino | Stone ] ]

The first performances at Caffe Cino were performed on the café floor. Eventually, Cino constructed a makeshift 8’ x 8’ stage from milk cartons and carpet remnants which was used for some productions. The limited space dictated a need for small casts and for minimal sets, usually built from scraps Cino found in the streets. Cino relied heavily on lighting designer John P. Dodd, who lit the stage using electricity stolen from the city grid by Joe Cino’s lover, electrician Jon Torrey. The space made for intimacy between the performers and audience with little room for typical fourth-wall illusionary theatre. Cino decorated the café with fairy lights, mobiles, glitter dust, and Chinese lanterns, and he covered the walls with memorabilia and personal effects.

election of plays

Cino seldom read the plays submitted for his consideration; rather, he was more likely to ask a novice playwright what his astrological sign was. If he liked the answer, he staged the play. But many of the young playwrights who premiered their works at Caffe Cino, including Doric Wilson, William Hoffman, Robert Patrick, John Guare, Tom Eyen, Sam Shepard, Oliver Hailey, Diane DiPrima, Paul Foster, Jean-Claude Van Itallie, and Lanford Wilson, would go on to great commercial and critical success, winning Tonys and Pulitzers, among other honors. Lanford Wilson’s "The Madness of Lady Bright" (May 1964), a devastating actor’s tour-de-force about a lonely, aging drag queen, became Caffé Cino’s biggest “hit,” and Cino extended its run and revived it more often than any other play. Shortly after Joe Cino's death, the cafe's principal actor, Neil Flanagan, did his 200th performance as Lady Bright. Although playwrights Jerry Caruana, Doric Wilson, Claris Nelson, and David Starkweather had already each presented multiple successful plays at the Cino, it was the success of "The Madness of Lady Bright" which convinced Cino to concentrate on staging works by new playwrights. However, plays by masters such as William Butler Yeats and William Inge continued to be done as well.

Pioneer in gay theatre

Although in 1961 Doric Wilson's militant gay-rights play, "Now She Dances!" was performed at the Cino, and although soon Alan Lysander James produced several rather romantic evenings of Oscar Wilde material, and director Andy Milligan did an adaptation of Tennessee William's short story, "One Arm," as well as heavily homoerotic productions of Genet's "The Maids" and "Deathwatch," the real breakthrough in gay playwriting came in May 1964. Lanford Wilson's "The Madness of Lady Bright" was the first conspicuous American drama placing a gay character front and center rather than hiding him in the guise of a female character, as Tennessee Williams had often, perhaps unfairly, been accused of doing. An explosion of gay-themed plays in which gay characters were portrayed as humans and not villains, depressives or deviants [ [http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050904/news_1a04gaybar.html It began with 'The Madness of Lady Bright' | The San Diego Union-Tribune ] ] began to appear at Caffe Cino and other venues, much to the consternation of some of New York’s more conservative theatre critics.

Conflicts between avant-garde and commercial plays

Not all of the plays staged at Caffe Cino were as successful, however. Amateurs and professionals worked together, sometimes with sketchy results. This sense of experiment and throwing caution to the wind, though, set the tone for the Off-Off-Broadway movement.

The musical "Dames at Sea" opened in May 1966, for an unprecedented twelve-week run. That, other long runs, and revivals of past hits (especially those by Lanford Wilson, Tom Eyen and Bob Heide), plus the availability of better facilities in some of the new theatres which the Cino had inspired, drove some writers away. Some regulars, accustomed to cutting-edge avant-garde works such as H.M. Koutoukas', disliked the slickly commercial "Dames", while a new kind of audience attracted by "Dames" didn’t necessarily like the experimental works that were offered, such as a string of shows using comic-books as scripts, so audiences wandered away as well.

Police raids

Throughout Caffe Cino’s existence, Cino was plagued by police harassment as he continually took heat for licensing violations. Cino paid a great deal of money in payoffs during the 1960s. Rumors abounded that Cino received protection from the Mafia, due to his alleged family affiliations. However, these rumors have never been proven and any connections Cino may have had did not make keeping the cafe open easier. He was nothing if not industrious and he acted as café host while simultaneously serving as its maintenance man, a server, and a barista. Through it all, he generally kept other jobs in order to support himself and the café. His motto, “Do what you have to do,” was one he lived by and encouraged his writers to live by as well. At the Caffe Cino’s peak, plays were performed twice nightly, with three shows per night on weekends. The goal was not just to get as many paying customers in the café as possible. Even if audiences failed to turn up, Cino insisted on a show. “Do it for the room,” he would tell the performers, and they did.

Posthumous Awards

In honor of Joe Cino's courage and innovation the New York Innovative Theatre Awards presented the first Caffe Cino Fellowship Award in 2005. This award is given annually to an extraordinary Off-Off-Broadway theatre company. In 2007 it was awarded to the first "playwright-in-residence" at the Caffe, Doric Wilson. On April 28, 2008, the office of the President of the Borough of Manhattan issued a proclamation honoring Joe Cino's achievement in founding Off-Off Broadway which "altered the world's conception of drama's possibilities forever." The proclamation was read by John Guare at the unveiling of a bronze plaque affixed to the wall at 31 Cornelia Street, the Caffe Cino's site.

Personal life

Joe Cino, the son of first generation Sicilian-Americans, came from a working-class family in Buffalo. He moved to New York City at the age of sixteen, studying performing arts for two years in hopes of becoming a dancer. Though he made a living dancing throughout much of the 1950s, his continual struggles with weight curtailed his dance career.

Cino eventually became addicted to amphetamines as he struggled to keep up the pace that Caffé Cino demanded from him. In January 1967, Jon Torrey was electrocuted. Though his death was ruled accidental, skeptical insiders claimed that he committed suicide. The event sent Cino into a depressive spiral. He began socializing with members from Andy Warhol’s Factory (attracted by the success of "Dames"), including the notorious Ondine, with whom Cino did a great deal of drugs. Caffe Cino itself was beginning to suffer. The Caffe Cino, as a commercial enterprise, was ineligible for the government grants which had allowed other experimental theatres to prosper, and Joe refused to charge an admission or even a minimum.

On March 30, 1967, Cino hacked his arms and stomach with a kitchen knife. He was rushed to the hospital, where doctors announced that he would live. However, on April 4, Jon Torrey’s birthday, Joe Cino died. Though friends tried to keep Caffe Cino open, it closed in 1968, finally falling victim to cabaret laws now being strictly enforced by the young, ambitious alderman, Ed Koch.

References

Further Reading:

* Banes, Sally. "Greenwich Village 1963: Avant-Garde Performance and the Effervescent Body". 1993. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999.
* Bottoms, Stephen J. "Playing Underground: A Critical History of the 1960s Off-Off-Broadway Movement". 2004. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 2007.
* Crespy, David A. "Off-Off-Broadway Explosion: How Provocative Playwrights of the 1960s Ignited a New American Theater". New York: Back Stage Books, 2003.
* McDonough, Jimmy. "The Ghastly One: The Sex-Gore Netherworld of Filmmaker Andy Milligan". Chicago, Acappella, 2002.
* Stone, Wendell C. "Caffe Cino: The Birthplace of Off-Off-Broadway". Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2005.
* Susoyev, Steve & Birimisa, George. "Return to the Caffe Cino". San Francisco, CA: Moving Finger Press, 2006.

External links

* [http://hometown.aol.com/rbrtptrck/CINOCONTENTS.html CAFFE CINO PICTURE PAGES 50 pages of photographs of or relating to Joe Cino's Caffe Cino from actor/playwright Robert Patrick]
* [http://nyitawards.com New York Innovative Theatre Awards]
* [http://hometown.aol.com/rbrtptrck/page40.html Surviving Artists Honor Joe Cino]
* [http://www.inthelifetv.org/html/episodes/52.html 2007 "The Caffe Cino:" Video Interviews With Cino Playwrights]