Early off-off-Broadway directors moved fluidly across overlapping downtown scenes

Evidence

Both The Baptism and The General featured Taylor Mead, who would receive an Obie for his portrayal of the eponymous military man, a Douglas MacArthur–type returning to scenes of his former triumphs only to discover no one cares. Both were directed by Jerry Benjamin, “a very brilliant but awry director who conceived of doing the two plays together and nearly drove us crazy,” per Mead. Benjamin’s previous credits included Andy Warhol’s unfinished Soap Opera and the 1963 Judson premiere of John Wieners’s Asphodel, in Hell’s Despite, an early rock opera for which Warhol designed the sets. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 611

Categorization

• XREF: Documents the dense cross-pollination scene network — cheap rent/ignorable art forms — that is the book’s core argument about avant-garde conditions.