Janet Coleman is a writer, actor, radio producer, and historian of the theater. She worked at the New York Review from 1963 to 1966. She authored both The Compass: The Improvisational Theater That Revolutionized American Comedy and (with Al Young) Mingus/Mingus: Two Memoirs. She is a founding producer of the seminal off-off Broadway’s Loft Theatre Workshop. She and her husband David Dozier currently 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.