We’re thrilled to share our latest oral history, with writer, actor, radio producer, and theater historian Janet Coleman. Janet worked at the New York Review from 1963 to 1966, and authored The Compass: The Improvisational Theater That Revolutionized American Comedy andMingus/Mingus: Two Memoirs (with Al Young). She is a founding producer of the seminal off-off Broadway’s Loft Theatre Workshop, and she and husband David Dozier host Cat Radio Café, a “live salon of the arts, exploring the politics of art and the creative bounty of New York,” on WBAI. She is currently writing a biography of Viola Spolin, the creator of theater games. Highlights of her oral history include firsthand memories of Charles Mingus and the improvisational jazz scene that surrounded him in Greenwich Village; memories of the early years of the Loft Theatre Workshop; and early recollections of the Greenwich Village of her youth.

Village Preservation maintains more than 70 oral histories with figures who witnessed, participated in, or made significant history in our neighborhoods, including Jane Jacobs, Penny Arcade, Wolf Kahn, Jonas Mekas, Marlis Momber, Edwin Fancher, Margot Gayle, David Amram, Matt Umanov, Merce Cunningham, Joan Davidson, Richard Meier, Ralph Lee, Mimi Sheraton, John Guare, Calvin Trillin, and Chino Garcia.