As a beginning playwright in the early 1960s, Robert Heide was associated with two of the most important theaters of the then fledgling Off-Off Broadway movement: Caffe Cino and Cafe LaMama. Although, with his partner John Gilman, he has written several books on popular culture, his reputation as a creative artist rests on about a dozen plays written and produced since 1960. Heide also worked with the artist Andy Warhol on several major projects, including a 1966 filmed version of his 1965 play, The Bed. In addition to his contributions to Off-Off Broadway, Heide is significant for his contributions to the development of a gay-lesbian theater through several plays that, at a time in which theaters could be closed for broaching the topic of homosexuality, presented gay characters favorably and unambiguously. Influenced by such philosophers as Jean-Paul Sartre, Heide gained a reputation early in his career for being an existentialist writer...