Intermission
a creative coffee break from writing the play

Seems so long ago already, yet last week I was in NY to see relatives, a couple of shows, and eat a doughnut.

Okay, not just any doughnut. It was a Creme Brulee type of doughnut. It was worth the 4 mile walk to find it. It would be worth any walk. I could have forgone the theatre and just had the doughnut. *pulling myself together* The baker touts his natural ingredients, yada yada, all good stuff… The guy’s created an inspired take on Creme Brulee in doughnut form. The Tres Leches doughnut is pretty good, too.

On the way to the Doughnut Plant, we passed by 31 Cornelia Street in the Village. These days that location houses a restaurant, but 50 years ago it held the coffeehouse where the Off-Off-Broadway movement was born. It was at the Caffe Cino where the earliest work of Lanford Wilson, John Guare, Maria Irene Fornes, Tom Eyen — providing here only a few names of many wonderful dramatists — were first performed.

Earlier this year, a plaque commemorating the Caffe’s founder Joe Cino was posted at 31 Cornelia Street. It took us but a moment to find the plaque. It was moving to me, looking at the tiny, tiny space and to know here “artists brought theatre into the modern era.”