ONLINE ISSUE
no. 5

A Partial Index of the
American Theatre for Poets, Inc.
1961–1965

Venue
Maidman Playhouse
416 West 42nd Street

In March 1962, the American Theatre for Poets Inc. staged a series of performances over multiple weekends at Maidman Playhouse, a theatre on W. 42nd Street.

"It was probably soon after the McClures left New York that someone offered Alan Marlowe the Maidman Playhouse on 44th Street for a couple of months. Whoever it was, they were offering the space to Alan in order to cut their own losses, having engaged the theatre for a play that didn't run. Alan rented the place cheaply and produced another two-month season, March to May, 1962. This one was quite different from what we'd been doing at the Off-Bowery. For one thing we didn't do, or try to do, any plays, instead we had various people arrange and be in charge of various kinds of performances: we had music, dance, happenings, and movies, on different week nights. There was even a poetry reading: I still have a series of photographs, all in one long frame, which shows the same set-up: table, chair, and glass of water, with Paul Blackburn, LeRoi Jones, myself, and Frank O'Hara, at the table by turns, and then finally the table and empty chair and glass of water. I look very pregnant in the photo ... " -- Diane di Prima. Recollections of My Life as a Woman: The New York Years. New York: Viking, 2001.

Events
5 March 1962
Dance works by Yvonne Rainer and Fred Herko
The Bells: A Study
Satie for Two
Three Seascapes
Edge: A Work for Dancers and Actors
Three Satie Spoons
Grass
16-17 March 1962
Jazz
Ted Curson and Archie Shepp
18 March 1962
Poetry Reading
Various Poets
22 March 1962
Performances by Allan Kaprow and Robert Whitman
Untitled by Robert Whitman
A Happening - Untitled
23 March 1962
New Dance Works
Exercise
Contact
Untitled
Dance for Three People and Six Arms
Strelitzia
Trillium
Garden
Desert Music
24 March 1962
Variety
Unidentified Film
Another Garden
Second Nothing
The Stewed Prunes
A La Mode
Unidentified Music
24 March 1962, midnight
Blues Singers
Muddy Waters and Sonny Lee Williams
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