Joe Cino
American theatrical producer
Joseph Cino (November 16, 1931 – April 2, 1967), was an Italian-American theatre producer. The Off-Off-Broadway theatre movement is generally credited to have begun at Cino's Caffe Cino in the West Village of Manhattan.
Caffe Cino and off-off-Broadway
Founding the Caffe Cino
Joe Cino moved from Buffalo to New York City to become a dancer. In 1958, Cino retired from dancing and rented a storefront at 31 Cornelia Street in Greenwich Village to open a coffeehouse where his friends could socialize. He and his early customers created their own patois of Italian and English. He did not intend Caffe Cino to become a theatre, and instead visualized a café where he could host folk music concerts, poetry readings, and art exhibits. Actor and theatre director Bill Mitchell says he suggested that Cino start producing plays at the Cino. Dated photographs show that plays were staged at the coffeehouse from at least December 1958. After 1960, plays were usually directed by Bob Dahdah. Cino initially saw theatre as simply another kind of event to host.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6209098. VIAF identifies the subject as 11606468. The Library of Congress control number is n97858103. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1931, 1967, 1958 and 1960.
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This entry incorporates text from “Joe Cino” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.