The Brig by Kenneth H. Brown
KENNETH H. BROWN was born in Brooklyn and attended Brooklyn Preparatory, a Jesuit high school. He joined the Marine Corps after graduation and traveled to Korea, Japan, Okinawa, and Quantico, VA; after his discharge, he attended Columbia University. He experimented in many jobs—textile buyer, salesman, bartender—before his first play was produced in 1963. He is author of the plays Blake’s Design, The Cretan Bull, Devices, The Green Room, The Happy Bar, Night Light and The Brig, for which he won an Obie in 1965. Mr. Brown also adapted the play for the film by Adolfas and Jonas Mekas.

Monuments by Diane di Prima
DIANE di PRIMA was born in 1934 in New York City, where she lived and worked till 1968. She founded the New York Poets Theatre in 1961 with James Waring, Amiri Baraka, John Herbert MacDowell and Alan Marlowe. While in NY she was also typesetter, editor, printer & published of Poets Press. In 1968, she moved to northern California, where she writes and teaches privately. She has published 43 books, and been translated into more than 20 languages. A collection of her plays, ZipCode, was due to be published in the 1970s but has still not seen the light of day.

Home Movies by Rosalyn Drexler, music by Al Carmines
ROSALYN DREXLER “I’ve written books, plays, reviewed movies for Vogue and the Sunday Times Arts & Leisure Section. Have exhibited art since 1960. Awards include 2 Pollock Krasner awards in painting, New York State Council on the Arts play commission, NEA grant in theatre, Work Study Center at Bellagio to work on novel, 3 Obies for The Writer’s Opera, Transients Welcome, Home Movies, 4 Rockefeller grants in playwriting, Emmy for writing excellence (Lily Tomlin special), a Guggenheim. Worked in other fields: wrestled professionally, playground director, salesperson, Swedish masseuse (licensed), Have two children; husband is a painter. Am working on a book: part memoir, part fantasy based on reality, essay, story, confession, commentary, dream, play.”

The Recluse by Paul Foster
PAUL FOSTER is the author of 18 produced plays, 2 musicals, 4 produced television and film scripts, 14 book publications of play scripts, New York City Opera reviews, 20 internet programs on art and is the lead writer for artspass.com and arts4all.com. Awards include the Rockefeller Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEA, the NEH, the British Arts Council, and the Irish Universities award. He has lectured on theater world-wide for the U.S. Department of State, and lives mostly in Essex, New York.

The Successful Life of 3 by Maria Irene Fornes
MARIA IRENE FORNES was born in Havana, Cuba. Her first play, Tango Palace (1964) was staged by the Actors Workshop in San Francisco and directed by Herbert Blau. She became a regular contributor to such venues as the Judson Poets Theatre, La MaMa, and the Caffe Cino, both as a playwright and as a designer, creating sets and costumes for her own plays and for the works of others. Her plays during this period include The Successful Life of 3 (1965), Dr. Kheal and Molly's Dream (1968), a brush with Broadway on The Office (1966), and the commercially successful Promenade (1965), with music by Al Carmines, which moved Off Broadway from the Judson Poets Theater. In 1972 Fornes, Ed Bullins, Rosalyn Drexler, Adrienne Kennedy, Rochelle Owens, Sam Shepard and Megan Terry created the New York Theatre Strategy, a space where playwrights could test out their ideas and have control over their work. Fefu and Her Friends (1977) was produced under her direction at New York Theatre Strategy. Fornes has not only directed many of her own plays but has translated and directed works of others including Calderón, Ibsen, Chekhov and contemporary plays of younger playwrights she has encouraged. Other works include Evelyn Brown (1980), The Danube (1981), Mud (1983), Sarita (1984), The Conduct of Life (1985) Abingdon Square (1987), Enter The Night (1993) and Letters From Cuba (2000), Fornes is the recipient of numerous awards, inlcuding nine Village Voice OBIE awards.

The Bed and West of the Moon by Robert Heide
ROBERT HEIDE’S plays include West of the Moon and Hector off Broadway; The Bed, Moon at the Caffe Cino; Why Tuesday Never Has a Blue Monday at LaMama; Suburban Tremens at NY Theater Strategy; Tropical Fever in Key West and Crisis of Identity at Theater for the New City. His plays have been published in The Best of Off Off Broadway, edited by Michael Smith; American Hamburger in Greenwich Village: A Primo Guide to True Bohemia (St. Marks’ Press); and in the upcoming Plays from the Caffe Cino (Moving Finger Press). With co-author John Gilman, Heide has published 13 books on subjects from Mickey Mouse to cowboys to homefront America in World War II to New Jersey, and has written articles in periodicals like The Village Voice, The Native and Other Stages. The Bed was filmed by Andy Warhol (his first split-screen), and he wrote Lupe for Warhol to direct with Edie Sedgwick. Heide and Gilman were also interviewed by Katie Couric for their book, Disneyana, on the Today show, viewed by 40 million people.

Goodnight, I Love You by William M. Hoffman
WILLIAM M. HOFFMAN is best known for his Broadway play As Is (1985), which earned him a Drama Desk Award, an Obie, as well as a Tony and Pulitzer nominations. He also wrote the libretto to the opera The Ghosts of Versailles (music by John Corigliano), which premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in 1991. The Met has slated it again for 2010. Recent works include Shoe Palace Murray, Chico de Jazzzz, Cyberian Nights, and The Stench of Art. He is currently working on an adaptation of The Blue Monster by Carlo Gozzi, and the opera Morning Star (music by Ricky Ian Gordon). Hoffman attended the City College of New York. He started writing for the theater at the legendary Caffe Cino. He is Associate Professor at Lehman College, where his popular CUNY television interview show, Conversations With William M. Hoffman, originates.

The Rue Garden by Claris Nelson
When CLARIS NELSON arrived in New York in March, 1962, her Northwestern classmate Marshall W. Mason took her directly to the Caffe Cino. Mr. Mason directed her The Rue Garden, The Clown, Neon in the Night, and Medea there, and The Girl on the BBC at LaMama. Ms. Nelson, usually as Claris Erickson or Mae Durnhelm, appeared off-off in The Rue Garden, Neon in the Night, The Clown, Lanford Wilson’s This is the Rill Speaking, Wandering, Rimers of Eldridge, and Balm in Gilead, and Jeff Weiss’s A Funny Walk Home. She toured Europe with the LaMama Troup in 1967 (Melodramaplay, Time Square, Futz and Tom Paine), and returned in 1968 to London and Edinburgh with American Theater Project in Lanford Wilson’s Home Free and The Madness of Lady Bright. She was a playwright and actor with Edinburgh’s Traverse Theater Company from 1968 to 1970, and with Circle Repertory Company thereafter. She played the Hospice Worker in William M. Hoffman’s As Is from its first reading through its Circle Rep and Broadway runs, and again in the Circle Rep revival. Ms. Nelson now writes screenplays.

The Haunted Host by Robert Patrick
Robert Patrick has written most plays, including Kennedy's Children. His many Caffe Cino Picture Pages begin at http://hometown.aol.com/rbrtptrck/Dailypage1.html.

Richard Schechner and The Performance Group's Dionysus in 69
RICHARD SCHECHNER is University Professor and Professor of Performance Studies at Tisch School of the Arts, NYU. He is editor of TDR: A Journal of Performance Studies and general editor of the Worlds of Performance book series. Schechner’s own books include Environmental Theater, Between Theater and Anthropology and The End of Humanism. He worked with The New Orleans Group from 1966-67, then formed the legendary Performance Group in NYC, which he directed from 1968-1980. Recent works include Aeschylus’ Oresteia (his own adaptation, translated into Chinese and performed in Taipei), Chekhov’s Three Sisters and Shakespeare’s Hamlet in NYC, a new play written with Saviana Stanescu, Yokastas, and Beckett’s Waiting for Godot at Cornell University. He is currently Artistic Director of East Coast Artists.

THE PERFORMANCE GROUP was an experimental theater troupe started by Richard Schechner in 1967. Based in The Performing Garage in SoHo, an environmental theatre where each production could took place in an entirely redesigned space. Their major works include: Dionysus in 69 (1968), based on Euripides’ The Bacchae, text by Schechner based on group improvisations; Makbeth (1969), based on Shakespeare; The Tooth of Crime (1972) by Sam Shepard; and several original works written by Spalding Gray and other TPG members, directed by Elizabeth LeCompte (1975-79).

Red Cross by Sam Shepard
SAM SHEPARD won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize in Drama for his play, Buried Child. He is also author of the Obie-award-winning plays Chicago, Icarus Mother, Red Cross, Forsenic and the Navigators, Melodrama Play, The Tooth of Crime, Action, Curse of the Starving Class, True West, Fool for Love, A Lie of the Mind (NY Drama Critics Circle Award), States of Shock, Simpatico, and God of Hell. In 1986 Mr. Shepard was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters and, in 1992, he was awarded its Gold Medal for Drama.

In Circles text by Gertrude Stein, music by Al Carmines, concept by Larry Kornfeld

The use of text from A Circluar Play by Gertrude Stein is granted by the Estate of Gertrude Stein, through its Literary Executor, Mr. Stanford Gann Jr. of Levin & Gann, P.A.

And He Made a Her by Doric Wilson
DORIC WILSON is a pioneer of the Off-Off-Broadway movement, his play And He Made a Her opened at the Caffe Cino in 1961. Dedicated to alternative theater he has written, directed, produced and/or designed hundreds of productions. A founding member of the Barr/Wilder/Albee Playwrights Unit and Circle Repertory Theater, in 1974 he formed TOSOS––the first professional theatre company dedicated to an honest exploration of the gay life experience. In 2001 it was resurrected (with Mark Finley & Barry Childs) as TOSOS Il (www.tosos2.org). He received the first Robert Chesley Award for Lifetime Achievement (1994) and was recently honored by inclusion in “Perform,” the new permanent theater exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York. (www.doricwilson.com)

The Madness of Lady Bright by Lanford Wilson
LANFORD WILSON received the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the New York Drama Critic’s Circle Award for Talley’s Folly. He is a founding member of Circle Repertory Company and one of twenty-one resident playwrights for the company. His work at Circle Rep includes: The Family Continues (1972); The Hot L Baltimore (1973); The Mound Builders (1975); Serenading Louie (1976); 5th of July (1978); Talley’s Folly (1980); A Tale Told (1981) and Angels Fall (1982), all directed by Marshall Mason. His other plays include: Balm in Gilead (1965); The Gingham Dog (1966); The Rimers of Eldritch (1967); Lemon Sky (1969) and some twenty produced one-acts. Other awards include the New York Drama Critic’s Circle Award, the Outer Critic’s Circle Award and an Obie for The Hot L Baltimore, an Obie for The Mound Builders, a Drama-Logue Award for 5th of July and Talley’s Folly, the Vernon Rice Award for The Rimers of Eldritch and Tony Award nominations for Talley’s Folly, 5th of July and Angels Fall. His plays Talley and Son (1985, the third play in the Talley Trilogy); Burn This (1987); Redwood Curtain (1993); Book of Days (1998) and Rain Dance (2002) were all presented in New York to great critical acclaim. Mr. Wilson is the recipient of the Brandeis University Creative Arts Award in Theatre Arts and the Institute of Arts and Letter Award.