At Joe’s Pub, the nightclub and performance space inside the Public Theater building on Manhattan’s Lafayette Street, there’s a sense of drama even before the show begins. The 18-foot ceilings and original 19th-century columns are painted a rich, dark brown, and the golden light from the globe chandeliers and candles on every table makes everyone look like a star. Simultaneously cozy and grand, the room was first brought to life in 1998 by co-owner Serge Becker, the designer and restaurateur (Time Café, the Box, La Esquina) who also oversaw its 2011 refurbishment. The overall goal, according to Kevin Abbott, the managing partner of Joe’s Pub, “was to make you feel you were walking into Radio City Music Hall, on an intimate scale.”
Named for Joseph Papp, the theatrical producer and director who founded the Public Theater (first known as the Shakespeare Workshop) in 1953, Joe’s now occupies what was once a ground floor casting office and storage space inside the Public’s historic red brick headquarters. Papp acquired the Italianate-style building, which previously served as a public library, in 1966 and it was George C. Wolfe, the Public’s director from 1993 to 2004, who introduced the cabaret space. “He wanted to create a home for developing artists and new works,” says Abbott, 52, “showcasing the best in live music and entertainment.”
It’s safe to say he succeeded. Last season there were almost 600 shows at Joe’s Pub, and there are plans for about as many this coming season. The scope — flamenco dance, folk music, literary readings, jazz, comedy, cabaret, satire, drag — is wildly ambitious, and the level of talent is astounding, even for New York. The Tony-winning performer and playwright Cole Escola (“Oh, Mary!” 2024) honed their craft at Joe’s for more than a decade, through regular collaborative pieces as well as their one-hour 2017 solo show, “Help! I’m Stuck!” In 2005, Billy Porter launched his autobiographical solo show “Ghetto Superstar” at the venue.
John Legend, Dolly Parton, Cush Jumbo, Bridget Everett, Lou Reed, Alicia Keys and even Prince have all performed in the 183-seat space, where the audience sits at tables set around the stage and on cushy banquettes a bit farther back. This fall, Justin Vivian Bond, the cabaret star, holds the annual curatorial residency, which gives artists (who’ve included Laurie Anderson, Margaret Cho and Judy Collins) the chance to program works by emerging talents.
Abbott describes Joe’s as “genre blind” and credits much of the diversity in programming to Alex Knowlton, 40, who’s been the club’s director since 2018. (Isabel Kim, Joe’s associate director, also plays a major part.) In May, I met Knowlton — who told me later, via email, that the goal at Joe’s is “to give all New Yorkers an opportunity to feel connected, reflected, represented or moved” — at a performance of “Freedom First,” a show created by the New York-based Catalonian pianist Albert Marquès and Keith LaMar, a poet, writer and activist currently incarcerated on death row. In addition to including lawyers working on LaMar’s case, the audience that night ranged widely in age and, in this way, made me think of the Greenwich Village where I grew up. As Francesca Zambello, 69, the artistic director of the Washington National Opera, says, “Joe’s Pub evokes an era when people went out at night to enjoy themselves, rather than binge-watch Netflix.” A regular there, she likens the space to “a Vienna coffeehouse or French cabaret, with great shows, good food and a scale that’s just right.”
That comparison makes sense — and the food, now overseen by the chefs Andrew Carmellini and Angel Monge, is among the tastiest nightclub fare I’ve come across — but for me, what’s particularly special about Joe’s Pub is how invested the place feels in both the reality and the ever-evolving myth of downtown New York. In 1847, the now long-demolished Astor Opera House opened just up the street from where the Public now stands. Two years later, it was the site of a tragic riot after William Charles Macready, a notable English actor, was cast as a leading man there, rather than Edwin Forrest, a hometown favorite. The violence led to the closure of the theater, but did nothing to dampen the creative passion of the neighborhood. Over the decades, the Village has been central to the evolution of jazz, poetry, stand-up comedy, painting and experimental theater. Downtown, art of all kinds has always mattered, and there has always been drama.
The post Anyone Who’s Anyone Got Their Start at Joe’s Pub appeared first on New York Times.
