8BC was a nightclub, performance space, and art gallery located at 337 East 8th Street in the East Village neighborhood of

New York, New York New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Uni ...

. Founded in 1983, the space closed in late 1985.

History

In 1980 co-founder Cornelius Conboy purchased the building with the intention of opening a

theatre Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The perform ...

. During his time working on Theatre Row, Conboy became aware of the lack of experimental performance support in the area. He came across the space, a former

farmhouse FarmHouse (FH) is a social Fraternities and sororities in North America, fraternity founded at the University of Missouri on April 15, 1905. It became a national organization in 1921. Today FarmHouse has 33 active chapters and four associate ch ...

, in an area of the East Village described as "Little Dresden" due to the large quantity of burnt out and abandoned buildings. He intended the facility as a casual performance-oriented club space rather than a formal theater. His partner in the venture was Dennis Gattra, a member of a

traveling circus A circus is a company of performers who put on diverse entertainment shows that may include clowns, acrobats, trained animals, trapeze acts, musicians, dancers, hoopers, tightrope walkers, jugglers, magicians, ventriloquists, and unicyclis ...

and road manager for

The Flying Karamazov Brothers The Flying Karamazov Brothers (FKB) are a juggling and comedy troupe that has been performing since 1973. They learned their trade busking as street artists starting in Santa Cruz, California, eventually going on to perform nationally and internat ...

. The space opened on October 31, 1983, with ''Ucci's Circus Romanus''; a four-hour

variety show Variety show, also known as variety arts or variety entertainment, is entertainment made up of a variety of acts including musical theatre, musical performances, sketch comedy, magic (illusion), magic, acrobatics, juggling, and ventriloquism. It is ...

. The small space had a capacity of 200 people and a very large stage, which was longer than the main room of the club, and allowed for large performances. Large murals decorated the exterior and interior, and rotating exhibitions were held showcasing local and regional artists. The space relied solely on cover charges and bar sales, paying its performers a percentage of the admission revenues. 8BC was awarded a

Bessie Award The New York Dance and Performance Awards, also known as the Bessie Awards, are awarded annually for exceptional achievement by independent dance artists presenting their work in New York City. The broad categories of the awards are: choreography, ...

for its contributions to the local art community in 1985. The space closed on October 22, 1985 by agreement with the New York City Department of Buildings due to never obtaining a Certificate of Occupancy to operate and violating

zoning regulations Zoning is a method of urban planning in which a municipality or other tier of government divides land into areas called zones, each of which has a set of regulations for new development that differs from other zones. Zones may be defined for a si ...

for the neighborhood. A few days after the closing, a front-page ''New York Times'' article about the demise of 8BC and several other East Village clubs and performance spaces speculated that an era of small downtown New York clubs was being eclipsed by larger enterprises such as

Palladium Palladium is a chemical element with the symbol Pd and atomic number 46. It is a rare and lustrous silvery-white metal discovered in 1803 by the English chemist William Hyde Wollaston. He named it after the asteroid Pallas, which was itself na ...

The Limelight The Limelight was the name of a chain of nightclubs owned and operated by Peter Gatien. It had locations in New York City, Chicago, Atlanta, London and Hallandale. Context During the 1980s, club culture had died down because of the AIDS ...

and

Area Area is the quantity that expresses the extent of a region on the plane or on a curved surface. The area of a plane region or ''plane area'' refers to the area of a shape A shape or figure is a graphics, graphical representation of an obje ...

. In 2000, Conboy donated his materials related to 8BC to the

Archives of American Art The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 20 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washingt ...

Performers

During its first year the space showcased over 650 performances ranging from punk rock bands to cultural performances such as Japanese

Butoh is a form of Japanese dance theatre that encompasses a diverse range of activities, techniques and motivations for dance, performance, or movement. Following World War II, butoh arose in 1959 through collaborations between its two key founders ...

. Notable performers include:

Karen Finley Karen Finley (born 1956) is an American performance artist, musician and poet. Her performance art, recordings, and books are used as forms of activism. Her work frequently uses nudity and profanity. Finley incorporates depictions of sexuality, ...

Steve Buscemi Steven Vincent Buscemi ( ,As stated in interviews by Buscemi himself, some may insist that his pronunciation of his own name is "wrong" because it does not match the original Italian pronunciation as well. It is not uncommon for people to pronou ...

John Zorn John Zorn (born September 2, 1953) is an American composer, conductor, saxophonist, arranger and producer who "deliberately resists category". Zorn's avant-garde and experimental approaches to composition and improvisation are inclusive of jaz ...

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, Leisure Class,

Ethyl Eichelberger Ethyl Eichelberger (July 17, 1945 – August 12, 1990) was an Obie award-winning American drag performer, playwright, and actor. He became an influential figure in experimental theater and writing, and wrote nearly forty plays portraying women ...

, Holly Hughes,

Charles Busch Charles Louis Busch (born August 23, 1954) is an American actor, screenwriter, playwright and drag queen, known for his appearances on stage in his own camp style plays and in film and television. He wrote and starred in his early plays Off-off- ...

Rhys Chatham Rhys Chatham (born September 19, 1952) is an American composer, guitarist, trumpet player, multi-instrumentalist (flutes in C, alto and bass, keyboard), primarily active in avant-garde and minimalism, minimalist music. He is best known for his "g ...

's XS: The Opera Opus, and

k.d. lang Kathryn Dawn Lang (born November 2, 1961), known by her stage name k.d. lang, is a Canadian pop (music), pop and country music, country singer-songwriter and occasional actress. Lang has won Juno Awards and Grammy Awards for her musical perfor ...

In popular culture

8BC is mentioned in the song " La Vie Bohème" in the musical

RENT Rent may refer to: Economics *Renting, an agreement where a payment is made for the temporary use of a good, service or property *Economic rent, any payment in excess of the cost of production *Rent-seeking, attempting to increase one's share of e ...

References

Notes

Bibliography

* Hager, Steve. ''Art After Midnight: The East Village Scene''. St. Matins Press, 1986. *Adler, Norma. "Jo Andres' "Liquid TV" at 8BC." ''The Drama Review'' 29. 1 (1985): 36-38. *McCormick, Carlo, Marvin J. Taylor, Lynn Gumpert, et al. ''The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene 1974-1984''. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. *McCormick, Carlo & Walter Robinson. "Slouching Toward Avenue D." ''Art in America'' 72. 6 (1984): 138, 158.

External links

8BC records from the Archives of American Art
{{East Village, Manhattan Nightclubs in Manhattan Defunct art museums and galleries in Manhattan East Village, Manhattan 1983 establishments in the United States 1985 disestablishments in New York (state) Art galleries established in 1983 Art galleries disestablished in 1985