Life Magazine June 13, 1969 : Cover – The Life poll : science, sex, and morality.

Theater – off Broadway hit, “Curley McDimple” with a photo of Robyn Morgan.

Robyn Morgan later made a wonderful tap dance video with Donald O’Connor

Bernadette Peters got a Drama Desk Award

for “Dames at Sea”

David Christmas & Bernadette Peters 

starred in “Dames at Sea”

Burns Mantle, Best Plays of 1966-1967:

“Perfectly cast and directed by Dahdah.”

Bernadette Peters starred

 in “Curley McDimple”

The Very Lovely Butterfly McQueen

who appeared in “Curley McDimple”

The radiant and always glamorous

 Margaret O’Brien in “Curley McDimple” 

Bayn Johnson with Ingeborg Rhodin,

the Horsewoman Extraordinaire at the circus

with her stallion, Baby.

[Amanda Stevenson] for the Norway Times.

ROBERT DAHDAH

Director – Librettist – Composer

433 West 46^th Street • New York, NY 10036

 (212) 586-7954 [Office] • (212) 568-0453 [Home]

THEATRE EXPERIENCE

1999    “White Dwarfs” by Jerry Kaufman                Director       Theatre Studio, NYC

1999    “OTB” by Gene Ruffini                                  Director       Newspaper Guild, NYC

1999    “Role Play” by Sid Theil                                Director       Theatre Studio, NYC        

1998    “Dames at Sea” by Wise & Haimsohn         Director       Columbia Center Arts, Longview, WA

1998    “Bridge Jumpers” by Bob Quinn                   Director       St. Clement’s Theatre, NYC

1998    “Frame Up” by Bob Siegel                            Director       John Harm’s Theatre, Englewood, NJ

1997    “Irish Ghost Stories” Irish Theatre                Director       St. Clement’s Theatre, NYC

1997    “Sic Gloria Tantra” by Gene Ruffini              Director       Trilogy Theatre, NYC

1997    “Common Princess”                                    Director       Regina Laudis Abbey, Bethlehem, CT

1996    “Watch Your Step” by Irving Berlin    Adaptor/Director     Theatre for the New City, NYC

1995    Shows for the Regina Laudis Abbey            Director       Bethlehem, CT

1994    “Irving Berlin’s Ragtime Revue”           Author/Director    Theatre for the New City, NYC

1994    “You Can’t Have Everything” Bob Quinn      Director       Bethlehem, CT

1993    “Curley McDimple”     Co-author-Lyricist-Composer       Jan McCart Dinner Theatre, Miami, FL

1993    “La Roca” by Sean Brown                            Director       Theatre for the New City, NYC

1993    “Gloria Gloriosa” by Gual-Rexach                 Director       St. Clement’s Theatre, NYC

Robert Dahdah is noted for his

contributions to the “Caffe Cino”

“Return to the Caffe Cino” by Steve Susoyev and George Birimisa

“Caffe Cino: The Birthplace of Off-Off Broadway (Theater in the Americas)”                       by Wendell C. Stone

“In May 1966, Robert Dahdah, who had directed frequently at the Cino, opened the coffeehouse’s most successful production, Dames at Sea.  It was the only show at the Cino to have an open ended run.”

SUGAR was directed by Robert Dahdah in 1976.

The Chatham Community Players.

   “Dames at Sea” Cast and Robert Dahdah.

Robert Dahdah’s IMDb Biography:

In addition to film and stage work as an actor, he has been for fifty years one of the

most respected directors in New York’s Off-Off Broadway theatre world. He has

directed plays by Lanford Wilson, Robert Patrick (III), and Bob Heide, as well as the

original Caffe Cino production of “Dames at Sea,” and many other award-winning

works.

On May 25, 2007, he was presented with an award as “The Father of Off-Off

Broadway.”

Actors With Character: Woody Allen favorite Mary Boylan

June 17th, 2008 by Scott Marks

Mary Boylan

Remember the old woman who lived in a shoe? Here’s an old woman who looked like a lived-in shoe and made a career out of it!

Seeing Mary Boylan on screen for the first time gave me a gigantic laff at the movies. It was towards the end of Woody Allen’s Bananas. In order to to avoid courtroom photogs, Fielding Melish covers his face with a hat. He spots Miss Boylan in the crowd and taken aback by her homeliness, Melish kindly places his cap over her face. Allen later used her as the blue-haired Miss Reed in Annie Hall.

She was born on February 23, 1913 in Plattsburgh, New York. Due to a genetic quirk, Ms. Boylan looked many years older than her age, so she invariably was cast as senile spinsters. Her first big screen appearance was as the lady who looks like she’s always smelling something bad in Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man.

She appeared in two of the most influential films of their day, Midnight Cowboy and The Exorcist, in which she received billing as “First Mental Patient.” Sadly, she didn’t get a crack at the role she was born to play.  Ms. Boylan never starred as Eleanor Roosevelt opposite Ralph Bellamy’s F.D.R. in a touring company of Sunrise at Campobello.

Offscreen, she was described as lively and energetic. In addition to her film roles. Miss Boylan starred in New York’s Off-Off Broadway theatres such as the Caffe Cino and La Mama, with vehicles written especially for her by such writers as H.M. Koutoukas.

And shades of Skip Bittman, when Ms. Boylan auditioned for musical roles, she brought a tape recorder to auditions instead of an accompanist.

The next time you hear someone mimic Norma Desmond’s “They don’t make faces like that anymore,” think of meeskite Mary Boylan.

************************************************************************************