Theatre Genesis
Located in the historic St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery in the East Village of Manhattan, it produced the work of new American playwrights, including Lanford Wilson, Tony Barsha, Murray Mednick, Leonard Melfi, Walter Hadler, and Sam Shepard.
Their work didn't fit comfortably into the perceived camp aesthetic and looser structure at Caffe Cino and La MaMa.
The church housed a 70-seat black box theater with sixteen lights, nine dimmers, spare sets, and minimal props.
He quickly created a diligent and thorough selection process with a two-pronged production track: there was a season of six or fewer new plays, and a Monday night workshop series where playwrights could have their work read.
Cook believed in giving new playwrights exposure and continuity, in order to develop the artist in addition to the individual play.
After an early off-key production of Michael Boyd's Study in Color, Cook produced a double-bill of one-acts by Sam Shepard.
This code allows union actors to perform in experimental, not-for-profit productions in exchange for being compensated for travel expenses to rehearsals.
Theatre Genesis' production of Koutoukas' Medea opened on October 31, 1965, the final weekend of the Caffe Cino run.
Paul Foster describes the play's climax: Medea was there for you to reach out and touch, forming the unspeakable crime of infanticide in her mind.
They drink and talk into the night, going further into their hidden pasts, until Velma reveals that she murdered her mother earlier that morning.
An exploration of drug addiction, The Hawk employed the ritual elements and poetic language emblematic of Theatre Genesis.
Smith, of The Village Voice, wrote: The Hawk is convincingly detailed, yet mysterious... sharply contemporary, the form strange but not obstructive; it is performed with exceptional immediacy and authority; its ultimate intent remains veiled or vague, but the other levels are so rich it doesn't matter.... in moving beyond the documentary realism of the world of heroin addiction, The Hawk and Theatre Genesis had gone a step beyond gritty poetic realism, and for that reason, it was perhaps the most daring venture yet attempted by Genesis and perhaps its single most important achievement.
[7]Mednick describes his use of poetic language in the play: Most of the work produced at Theatre Genesis incorporated testosterone and drugs, and the close-knit community of artists created a perceived machismo persona for the theater.
Each soldier had a name like Banana, Melon, or Cherry, and the seriousness of their situation was intended to be juxtaposed against the trivial nature of the fruit salad.
Throughout the play, Banana makes homophobic comments to Cherry, then eventually reveals to his own homosexuality in a sexual interaction between the two men.
Although the play includes homosexual themes, a departure for Theatre Genesis, many critics have noted that the overall aesthetic of the piece was consistent with the earlier work produced at the theater.
Barsha directed the production, and Smith of The Village Voice wrote that it was "vivid, simple and arresting... A bitter, painful, almost despairing vision presented with lightness, fluidity, conciseness and cunning".
In 1966, St. Mark's accepted a $185,000 federal grant brokered by The New School to support the church's art and educational outreach programs, giving each production a budget of $200.
Later in 1966, Cook and Allen refused a large Ford Foundation, and later stopped accepting the New School funding deal due to "excessive entanglement with the government".
David Crespy wrote, "The [East] Village was morphing around them as well... Jazz was being replaced by psychedelic rock, and the long-haired counterculture of 1969 was bringing a less angst-driven energy".
