While emerging gay and lesbian playwrights sought to address lgbt

Photo by Conrad Ward. Wendell C. InJoe Cino rented a ground-story commercial space here, originally intending to operate a coffeehouse with art displayed on the walls. The Caffe Cino provided an important platform for newly emerging gay playwrights, directors, and actors.

Source: The Villager. She did so in a way that could not be silenced: on live television while discussing the case of an employee who was unjustly fired for being LGBTQ. He then allowed patrons to stage poetry readings and short avant-garde theatrical performances, including gay-themed works.

Several of these figures would go on to win Pulitzer Prizes, Tony Awards, and various other prestigious theater awards and recognitions, and some founded influential theater companies. By JulyJohnny Dodd took over as the lighting designer and became known for his innovative work here.

A year later, infour plays including two gay-themed plays by Doric Wilson helped establish the Cino as a venue not only for new work but also for new work with gay subject matter. Subsequently, the Yale-educated Cardenas founded a center for LGBTQ equality and wrote a declaration of LGBTQ rights.

Several of these figures would go on to win Pulitzer Prizes, Tony Awards, and various other prestigious theater awards and recognitions, and some founded influential theater companies. The Caffe Cino provided an important platform for newly emerging gay playwrights, directors, and actors.

For the first time in New York City, and perhaps in the country, LGBT people — on a year-round basis and in one centrally located space — regularly saw depictions of themselves in a more multi-dimensional and realistic light, contrasting the negative stereotypes that had permeated mainstream theater and film for most of the 20th century it was, in fact, still illegal in the early and mids to depict homosexuality on the Broadway stage.

In our continued series Playwrights You Should Know, we feature 10 contemporary LGBTQ+ playwrights who have made a significant impact in the representation of the LGBTQ+ community through their work. At the time, it broke Off-Off-Broadway records with a run of performances.

Source: Time magazine. We were no longer victims. Photo by James D. Photo by Ben Martin. Bythe Cino had become well known for its gay-themed plays. The archive includes gay and lesbian newspapers from more than 35 countries, reports, policy statements, and other documents related to gay rights and health, including the worldwide impact of AIDS, materials tracing LGBTQ activism in Britain from throughand more.

The Caffe Cino is widely recognized as the birthplace of Off-Off-Broadway theater and was located on the ground floor of this building from to It is also highly significant as a pioneer in the development of gay theater, at a time when it was still illegal to depict homosexuality on stage.

Included are playwright Tom Eyen right, in sports jacketJoe Cino leftand stage manager Magie Dominic center, in black. That was the kind of empowerment that the place gave us. While gay playwrights tended to place their homosexual characters centerstage and focus on myriad aspects of the gay experience, straight playwrights more often relegated gays to the sideline as colorful, witty, or bitchy supporting characters.

Photo by James Gossage.

Gay and Lesbian Theater

I never would have been a playwright without the Caffe Cino. I never certainly would have written about gay subjects that freely. Source unknown. It is now regarded as the birthplace of Off-Off-Broadway theater.