I hate endings... Sam Shepard

"I hate endings. Just detest them. Beginnings are definitely the most exciting, middles are perplexing and endings are a disaster.  The temptation towards resolution, towards wrapping up the package, seems to me a terrible trap. Why not be more honest with the moment? The most authentic endings are the ones which are already revolving towards another beginning. That's genius."

                                                              ~ Sam Shepard 

Picture courtesy of Caffe Cino Pictures

"When you write a play, you work out like a musician on a piece of music. You find all the rhythms and the melody and the harmonies and take them as they come."                                                 ~ Sam Shepard

Theatre 167 & The Caffe Cino Fellowship Award

In 1958 when Joe Cino opened the doors of his Caffé and invited members of a burgeoning arts scene to use the 10 by 10 foot stage as their playground, it started a revolution. Theatre artists, poets and musicians, puppeteers and clowns, playwrights and directors, dancers and actors all found a home at the Caffé Cino. It was a place that valued diversity, encouraged experimentation an collaboration and often witnessed groundbreaking work that pushed at the very boundaries of the theatrical art form. The recipient of the 2015 Caffé Cino Fellowship Award shares these qualities.

Theatre 167 receives the 2015 Caffé Cino Fellowship Award

Theatre 167 was born in one of the most unique and diverse neighborhoods in the world, Jackson Heights, Queens – where 167 different languages are spoken on a daily basis. This company of artists embraced the character of their home and dedicated their company to investigating the cultural and artistic intersections, boundaries and borders of storytelling. Through productions like 167 Tongues, You Are Now the Owner of this Suitcase, The Church of Why Not and Jackson Heights 3AM, Theatre 167 derives inspiration from their multiracial, multicultural, multilingual, multifaith community to explore how both individual and collective perspectives enrich the theatrical experience.They perform their work in venues throughout New York City, playing to: what one critic called “the most diverse audience I’ve ever seen.” 

Their works have been presented as part of the World’s Fair Play Festival, The Theatre: Village Festival and has even been reimagined as an immersive theatrical exhibit for the Queens Museum. Like Joe Cino, Theatre 167 strives to create a nurturing space where artists come together to create work that elucidates their experiences and reflects their society. Through collaboration they work to build a new “artistic language” that celebrates and amplifies the voices of their community.

The recipients of the Caffé Cino Fellowship also receive a grant to be used towards an Off-Off-Broadway production. Theatre 167 used that money to help fund their production of  You Are Now the Owner of This Suitcase, which will run April 9th - May 1st at the West End Theatre. Read more about this project.

In addition to the grant, this last year, we initiated a new and powerful tradition by passing on Joe Cino's ring. Joe Cino’s ring has become something of a legend and has passed through the hands of some of the most influential artists in our community including: Joe, Lanford Wilson, Kenny Burgess, Magie Dominic, Doric Wilson, Daniel Talbott, Martin Denton and Rochelle Denton and the Founders of the New York Innovative Theatre Awards. This ring is a symbol of the circle of our community and has become an article of faith – faith that each new recipient will carry on the traditions of the Caffé Cino in their own endeavors.

From this time forward, Joe Cino’s ring will be passed each year from one Fellowship Award recipient to the next. We hope that it will serve to remind us of our rich artistic heritage and the independent spirit that binds us together. 

Check out You Are Now the Owner of This Suitcase and join us in supporting this incredible theatre company by making a donation.


The Caffe Cino Fellowship Award grant is funded in part by the Donn Russell Fund.

The Story of the Caffé Cino

Magie Dominic recently gave a presentation at the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation about the origins of Off-Off-Broadway and the Caffé Cino. She says that she covers Lanford Wilson to Bette Midler and everyone in between.




You can read also her 2paragraphs post about the presentation.

Cast of Tom Eyen's “Why Hannah’s Skirt Won’t Stay Down” at the Caffe Cino, 1965. Featured: Magie Dominic, Joe Cino, Helen Hanft, Tom Eyen, Steven Davis, Jack Quinn. (Photo: Jim Gossage)

Caffe Cino Photo Archive

If you want a real treat, take some time to peruse the Caffe Cino Photo Archive compiled by playwright Robert Patrick.

  

Honorary Awards Applications Now Available Online

Honorary Awards Applications
Now Available Online

Applications are due Monday, May 1, 2013 @ 6PM 

The Honorary Awards are:

• The Artistic Achievement Award, presented to an individual who has made a significant artistic contribution to the Off-Off-Broadway community;
• The Caffe Cino Fellowship Award, presented to an Off-Off-Broadway theatre company that consistently produces outstanding work. This award also includes a grant to be used toward an Off-Off-Broadway production.
• The Ellen Stewart Award, presented to an individual or organization demonstrating a significant contribution to the Off-Off-Broadway community through service, support and leadership.

Complete your application today!


The 2012 recipients were The 5 Lesbian Brothers (Artistic Achievement Award), Theatre Development Fund (Ellen Stewart Award) and Astoria Performing Arts Center (Caffe Cino Fellowship Award). Find out more about these amazing artists and organizations.

Honorary Award Application Due 5/1

Every year, in addition to the production categories, the IT Foundation presents three honorary awards at its annual ceremony. These Honorary Awards are presented to individuals and organizations that have made significant contributions to the Off-Off-Broadway community and are selected each year by the Honorary Awards Committee.

Applications are due Monday, May 1, 2012 @ 6pm

The Honorary Awards are:

• The Caffe Cino Fellowship Award, presented to an Off-Off-Broadway theatre company that consistently produces outstanding work. This award also includes a grant to be used toward an Off-Off-Broadway production;
• The Stewardship Award, presented to an individual or organization demonstrating a significant contribution to the Off-Off-Broadway community through service, support and leadership;
  
• The Artistic Achievement Award, presented to an individual who has made a significant artistic contribution to the Off-Off-Broadway community*

Complete your application today!

* While there is not an application for the Artistic Achievement, we encourage community members to email suggestions to the committee at info@nyitawards.com.

Caffe Cino Fellowship Applications due May 1

Do you belong to an awesome, kick ass OOB theatre company like:  Inverse Theater Company, The Vampire Cowboys, Rising Phoenix Repertory, Boomerang Theatre Company, The Brick Theater, The New York Neo-Futurists or Flux Theatre Ensemble?
 

If so... apply for the Caffe Cino Fellowship.

Submit your application today [Caffe Cino Application].

Applications Due May 1 @ 6pm.

The Caffe Cino Fellowship is awarded to a theatre in recognition of outstanding work Off-Off-Broadway, and for demonstrating a commitment to continue to produce Off-Off-Broadway. The Award includes a grant to be used in an Off-Off-Broadway production.

This award is named in honor of the Caffe Cino, the first Off-Off-Broadway theatre, founded by Joe Cino in 1958. This theatre was an open arena for theatre artists of all disciplines to develop their craft, inspire and learn from one another, and present their work to the public.

The Caffe Cino Fellowship will be presented to the theatre company best representing this spirit. 

No Business Like

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Contributed by Guest Blogger of the week, Doric Wilson.


Had I not left school early (so to speak) I never would have walked in the door of the Caffe Cino. It was during the run of And He Made a Her that I met my second most important mentor. Richard Barr was involved with Orson Wells and the Mercury Theater. (He is the first voice you hear in Citizen Kane). After producing on Broadway (Bert Lahr in Hotel Paradiso, Nancy Walker in Fallen Angels, etc.), he decided to move Off-Broadway to, in his words, “Turn the theater back to the playwright.'' In 1960, Richard mounted Edward Albee's first play, The Zoo Story, beginning a long time relationship with the playwright.

He also presented the first American professional productions of works by Ionesco and de Ghelderode and the world premiere of Samuel Becket’s Happy Days. In 1967 he became president of the League of New York Theaters, instituting the 8 pm Broadway curtain and inventing the preview (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf) to replace out-of-town tryouts. But more significantly, he was the first producer to recognize the importance of Off-Off-Broadway. Among the playwrights he found there were John Guare, A. R. Gurney, LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Terrence McNally, Sam Shepard, Jean-Claude Van Itallie, Lanford Wilson, and even Doric Wilson (no relation). An alternative theater award really should be named after Richard Barr, no one ever did more to legitimize what we do. He taught me how to produce and gave me the courage to start TOSOS.

I was sort of an unpaid assistant for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and got to watch and learn.
At the time, there was a lot of concern. The play was very long with some heavy going language
new to the delicate ears of uptown. Thanks to the McCarthy hearings, Uta Hagen had been
away from the stage for a long time. In 1963, no one was sure if she would be welcomed back.
A week before it started previews, Clinton Wilder, the co-producer begged me to use whatever
influence I had over Richard to get him to make Edward change the title of the play. Richard
budgeted Virginia Woolf for $65,000 but brought it in for $30,000, giving it a cushion to run long enough for word-of-mouth to counter hostile reviews. And the reviews were very Republican.

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Watch out for the Snakes

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Contributed by Guest Blogger of the week, Doric Wilson.


I have reached an age when the days of my life are numbered like the grains of sand in a fairly intimate fish bowl. It tends to make one look to the past more frequently than to the future. Because I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, the landscape was very much a part of what I ultimately became. The Cascade mountains, the high desert of eastern Washington State, the Columbia River Gorge where my grandfather’s ranch was–-this was my real birthplace, however I initially and very firmly denied it. I hated the tumbleweeds and cheat grass and the forever blowing winds of home sweet home. I was determined to be someone far more elegant than the Horse Heaven Hills would permit. I refused to be a character in a Sam Shepard play. I knew in my heart and soul I belonged to Noel Coward.

No one knows where I first encountered theater. It would be years before I would move to town where I could see a movie. Our radio on the ranch was a crystal set strictly reserved for the news and crop reports. All I know is that by the mid-1940s I was putting on plays in my grandfather’s barn with my poor cousins as less than eager actors. King Arthur and his Court or ravaging, pillaging Vikings or Cowboys killing the Indigenous Peoples. All for a penny.

At the end of World War II, I moved to the nearby town of Kennewick to live with my mom and go to school. My mother was a war widow and away at work for long hours seven days a week. I was left all alone with my imagination and a more modern radio. (Most of the playwrights at the Cino in the 1960s grew up with radio, not television.) I never played games with the neighborhood kids, I organized them in huge, costumed, carefully plotted extravaganzas. Julianne Clark remembers, at age seven she was my first leading lady.

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Next Week's guest blogger: Doric Wilson

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Thank you to Katie Rosin and Antonio Miniño from Kampfire Films PR for blogging for us last week. Your marketing and PR tips are good rules to live by.

Next week's guest blogger is Doric Wilson.


Doric Wilson was the first playwright at NYC's legendary Caffe Cino, his comedy And He Made a Her opening there in 1961. His success, in the words of playwright Robert Patrick, helped “establish the Cino as a venue for new plays, and materially contributed to the then-emerging concept of Off-Off-Broadway.” A social-political satirist, Doric Wilson has focused his career on the development of queer culture, receiving in 1994 the first Robert Chesley Award for Lifetime Achievement in Gay Theatre; the 2007 IT Award for Artistic Achievement; and in 2009, the ATHE Career Achievement Award for Professional Theatre. He is an elected member of the National Theater Conference.


Website: www.doricwilson.com
Blog: http://doricwilson.blogspot.com/
TOSOS theater company www.tosos2.org
publisher: United Stages http://www.unitedstages.com/index.php

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