Early Plays, Late Plays, Gay Plays
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From 1958 to 1968, plays were produced on the floor of New York’s Caffe Cino. The first plays were pirated classics, but gradually new plays became the rule. More photos of early plays here. See Cino Gay Plays PAGE.
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- The CAFFE CINO nestled quietly on a one-block long side-street, Cornelia, in New York’s Greenwich Village. Photo, JAMES D. GOSSAGE. Cino Wikipedia PAGE.
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- Founder JOE CINO. Photo by CONRAD WARD.
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- Earliest dated photo of a Cino play: RON FABER and HELEN HONKAMP in Here We Are by Dorothy Parker, Dec., 1958.
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- LARRY NEIL CLAYTON, PAXTON WHITEHEAD, JANE LOWRY, and GARY FILSINGER in the earliest known photo of a Cino original, DORIC WILSON’s And He Made a Her, May 1961. See DORIC’s WEBSITE HERE. Doric later founded the first professional gay theatre, T.O.S.O.S. (The Other Side Of Silence).
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NORMA BIGTREE!
Photo: CONRAD WARD.
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- EDITH LAURIE’s The War Against Women (her and CLARA HOVER, 1964).
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- SAM SHEPARD’s Icarus’s Mother, 1965. Better scan HERE. Director Michael Smith’s story of the production HERE!
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- HELEN HANFT in TOM EYEN’s Why Hanna’s Skirt Won’t Stay Down, set by JOSEF BUSH, 1967. Photo by Gloaguen.
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- CONNIE CLARK and unidentified actor in DANIEL HABEN CLARK’s The Singing Lesson, 1964.
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- JUDITH L’HEUREUX, PAUL BOESING, in PAUL FOSTER’s Hurrah for the Bridge, 1963. Photo by CONRAD WARD.
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- CLARIS NELSON’s The Clown (JAYNE HARRIS, DAVID STARKWEATHER, SOREN AGENOUX, LANFORD WILSON, ARNOLD HORTON, 1967). Photo by JAMES D. GOSSAGE.
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- DAVID STARKWEATHER’s You May Go Home Again (SHELLIE FELDMAN, KAY CARNEY, RON HANSEN, RON FABER), 1965. Photo by JAMES D. GOSSAGE.
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- CHARLES STANLEY in H.M. KOUTOUKAS’ Medea, 1965 (photo, JAMES D. GOSSAGE).
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- DONALD L. BROOKS & ONDINE in SOREN AGENOUX’s Chas. Dickens’ Christmas Carol, 1966, dir. MICHAEL SMITH. Photo: CONRAD WARD.
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- NEIL FLANAGAN in WILLIAM M. HOFFMAN’s Thank You, Miss Victoria, 1965 (Carol and Victoria photos, CONRAD WARD).
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- An early Gay play: WILLIAM M. HOFFMAN and me in my The Haunted Host, dir. MARSHALL W. MASON, 1964. See the Haunted Host PAGE.
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An early Gay play: TOM BIGORNIA, NEIL FLANAGAN, and LUCY SILVAY in LANFORD WILSON’s The Madness of Lady Bright, 1964, photo by CONRAD WARD.
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- An early Gay play: JIM JENNINGS and WALTER MCGINN in BOB HEIDE’s The Bed, dir. BOB DAHDAH, 1965, photo by JAMES D. GOSSAGE.
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And Walter Michael Harris responded to him with:
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Dear Bob,
You’ve done it at last
Made a Time Machine, fast
That we can now ride
On yesteryear’s tide
To the Days of Downtown
When we all owned this town
And Jayne was in Clown
And I in Brown Crown
When Mom, Dad and clan
With Joe, Magic Man
Could play out our dreams
On alternative themes
Speaking the words
Of yours – and the herds
Of playwrights (not nerds)
From stages absurd
O what a time!
In memory it shines
And now, any time
In your pages online.
XO
w
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Mark Waren replied to it:
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My darling Robert dear,
You’ve become a nostalgic queer
Copping a look at your memory book
Filled with pictures of yesteryear.
I’m not disparaging the sheer
Vertiginous near
Splendor of your Cino flock
But bloody hell it’s yesteryear!
Life’s highways often veer
Far from first home. A seer
Wrote theatre’s a back look
A warm glance. Yesteryear.
So I suppose it’s mere
Bad sportsmanship on my part dear:
I’m envious you had a nook
To do your stuff without a fear
Even only yesteryear.
mgw
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I sent this poem about these pages to a group of Cino People:
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Now and then I must look
Through my memory book
At pictures of yesteryear.
Oh, what joy and what grief
I relive as I leaf
Through pictures of yesteryear.
Please don’t frown if I laugh
At a sad photograph
Or a happy one brings on a tear,
For here at the last
All the past is the past
And a smile and a frown are both dear
In pictures of yesteryear.
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Robert, you have done a magnificent job with this. One of life’s many paradoxical gifts–AOL stops hosting sites, we all go into a severe depression, then Ms. PD James steps forward and fosters a much more interesting, sophisticated and user-friendly site. Bravo!