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A BRIEF HISTORY
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FROM OUR ARCHIVES
MANDELBROT'S CHICKEN, or, THE ORIGINS OF SCIENCE CHAR*IS*MA BLACKOUT OPENING STARTING OUT MANNA OF THE DAY STANLEY PRIOR EXPERIENCE |
“In 1977 three artists opened a tiny one-room café in the heart of Greenwich Village. The engine of the enterprise was a toaster-oven, but its soul was in the artists who made it their home. Within a month there were poetry readings and music performances; and then a tiny play written for the café; and pretty soon all sorts of things: fiction writers and journalists; and programs of bawdy and Inuit poetry; and puppeteers and flute players and classical guitarists; and a living portrait of James Joyce; and the Four Quartets and the entire Iliad; and mime shows and dances and stiltwalkers on the street outside the café; and recorder, oud, and concertina music; and comedians; and shows of paper and air; and fairy tales and storytellers and Punch and Judy shows."
“Thirty years later, it has grown. The toaster-oven has been replaced by a real kitchen—in fact there are two kitchens now, and a beautiful oak bar rescued from the Bowery, and three dining rooms upstairs and a performance space downstairs. In this space there are now some seven hundred performances a year. Some very distinguished people appear down there—Nobel laureates, Pulitzer prize-winning authors, Presidential candidates, members of Monty Python and the Royal Shakespeare Company—but that early, eclectic, freewheeling spirit still percolates through the entire enterprise.” |