ABSTRACT
The WOW Cafe is a force more than a place. Unlike many East Village performance spaces, WOW, at 330 E. 11th Street, did not begin as a location seeking work to produce but was born the other way around. Women who had been producing a vast variety of work all over the East Village sought a permanent home. Recently, during one of their weekly open staff meetings, the 15 or so women who make up the Cafe’s anarchic organizing collective spoke about the origins of their cafe. In typical WOW fashion, women periodically wandered in and out. The Cafe’s oral history, recounted at this meeting for the first time, is richand long enough that the tellers disagree about the details of their story. At the same time, WOW’s creatively amorphous organization includes enough newcomers that some women were surprised to hear there was an extensive past.
