Those were the people who saw the need. Marvin and Mikey and Miguel. They were the people who started it. - Lois Elaine Griffith

when you think about what theater really is, you can’t do theater alone. Theater by its very nature is a collaborative effort. And that’s how we were. Everybody has a part to play, either on stage or behind.

the Cafe opened almost, how would you say, organically. That’s something I really learned in working with the Cafe and working with Miguel Algarín. Certainly you have an idea of something you want to create, but allow it to happen organically. Don’t try to force it into being. And it will happen if you, and this may sound corny, if you have a certain kind of spiritual alignment to the universe where you can see, you feel, you think, you speak to manifest. And it was like that. It really was.

I think that’s one thing, too, about the Nuyorican. The desire for people to want to come together to be in community, to want to be a part. In those early days, on 6th Street, there were some poets that used to get there early, before the place even opened, to trade their words off in a very serious way. “I wrote this last night. You have to check it out!” That kind of passion, and it wasn’t something to joke about. And everyone understood, “Yeah, this is our community. This is what we do. We’re serious about this poetry, about these words. Yeah, I want to hear that poem! No, I don’t like that poem you wrote. Let me tell you the line that doesn’t work.” In really serious ways like that. And I don’t see that anywhere now. And especially in the last years where I was really active at the Cafe, everyone came in and just wanted to be a star. And I shouldn’t lay blame, but Russell Simmons who came around with the Def Poets and all that. “Come with me. I’ll take you to Broadway! I’ll put you on TV! Everyone will see you on TV!” It kind of polluted the intent of what we were doing. That kind of twisted the mindset, just undermined the real purpose and value of the writing, of the creative act. Because you don’t do it to be on TV. You do it for you, because you have to do it! Initially, that was the intent. We have to have this community! We have to share our voices. Nobody else out here is listening, so we’ll make our community. And that’s what it was about.