Rev. Al Carmines, Off-Off-Broadway Theater Pioneer, Dies
Rev. Al Carmines, a producer-composer-singer-actor who was one of the pioneers of the avant-garde Off-Off-Broadway theater movement in the 1960s, died on Tuesday, August 9 at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village at age 69 .
He was born Alvin Allison Carmines Jr. in Hampton, Virginia on July 25, 1936; his father was the captain of a fishing trawler, his mother a substitute schoolteacher and a strict Protestant. Carmines exhibited talent at an early age and won a scholarship that he could have applied to any music school, but he decided instead to go into the ministry and enrolled at Swarthmore, where he majored in English and philosophy. He later attended Union Theological Seminary, earning degrees as a bachelor of divinity and a master of sacred theology.
In 1961, Carmines was hired as assistant minister at Judson Memorial Church, located on Washington Square South in Greenwich Village. Howard Moody, the senior minister, asked him to found a theater company there in collaboration with playwright-architect Robert Nichols. Carmine and Nichols agreed with the proviso that the company would offer no religious plays and would not be subject to any form of censorship. Thus was the Judson Poet’s Theater born.
Carmines began composing in 1962 and kicked off his acting career at the Provincetown Playhouse with his performance as Father Shenanigan in the outrageous spoof Home Movies, for which he also wrote the music. Over the years, he co-created musicals about such figures as Gertrude Stein, Bessie Smith, Abraham Lincoln, and St. Joan.
For more than a decade, he was a major player in the Off-Off-Broadway movement that was also jump-started by artists working at such venues as the Caffe Cino and La MaMa E.T.C. The movement burgeoned at a time when Carmines and his cohorts viewed Off-Broadway theater (not to mention Broadway theater) as increasingly conventional and commercial. Carmines was also a trail-blazer in that several of his productions had strong homosexual content — e.g., The Faggot (1973).
Carmines wrote dozens of musicals, operas and oratorios, 10 of which had Off-Broadway runs. His 1969 musical Promenade, with book and lyrics by Maria Irene Fornes, opened the theater of the same name (located on Broadway at West 76th Street). David Barbour’s notes on that show in The TheaterMania Guide to Musical Theater Recordings indicate the aggressively avant-garde nature of Carmines’ work: “Two prisoners identified as ‘105’ and ‘106’ escape from jail and wander through various settings, including a park, a banquet, and a battlefield. Among the people they encounter are Mr. R., Mr. S., Miss O., and a bereaved woman who thinks she’s their mother. At the end of the day, they return to prison.”
Throughout his career, Carmines won five Obie Awards, including one for lifetime achievement. His only shot at Broadway, the musical W.C. — about W.C. Fields — closed out-of-town. For many years, Carmines also had a cabaret act in which he performed his own songs and old standards.
In the fall of 1977, Carmines suffered an aneurysm that required a lengthy operation, and he subsequently underwent months of therapy. For some years thereafter, he was prey to severe headaches that led him to resign his post at Judson in 1981. He is survived by his brother Ted of Bloomington, Indiana and by his partner, Paul Rounsaville.
