Bernadette Peters Remembers Late DAMES AT SEA Director, Robert Dahdah

As reported by BroadwayWorld, Off-Off Broadway pioneer Robert Dahdah passed away on Saturday, February 6th at Calvary Hospital in the Bronx, where he was under hospice care.

Dahdah was best known as director of the original 1966 Caffe Cino production of DAMES AT SEA, which starred a teenage Bernadette Peters as a Ruby Keeler type character in Jim Wise, George Haimsohn and Robin Miller's 1930s spoof.

"He was a terrific director and basically got the show on at the Cino and imbued it with love that transported over the little postage sized stage right into the audiences hearts," Peters recalled this morning.

The next year, Bernadette Peters starred Off-Broadway in Dahdah's CURLEY McDIMPLE, a Shirley Temple spoof for which he wrote the score, co-authored the book (with Mary Boylan) and also directed.

Regarded as the birthplace of Off-Off Broadway and American gay theatre, Joe Cino's Caffe Cino provided a small stage for early works of writers like Lanford Wilson, Tom Eyen, Doric Wilson, Sam Shepard, William Hoffman, John Guare, and Robert Patrick. Dahdah was a frequent director at the Greenwich Village hot spot, and discovered the original one-act version of DAMES AT SEA in Cino's trash can.