6 Questions with Tarish "Jeghetto" Pipkins of THE HIP HOPERA OF 5P1N0K10

Tarish Pipkins a.k.a. Jeghetto is puppetry infused with Hip Hop culture. He has been building his puppets out of recycled and found materials for about 20 years. He has worked with Missy Elliott, Pharrell Williams, Alec Baldwin, and others. Jeghetto travels the country performing his unique style of puppet theater and facilitates puppet workshops and performances online. Learn all about him at jeghetto.com. Jeghetto will be performing four performances of The Hip Hopera of 5P1N0K10 from March 23–26, which will be the first full performance in the newly-renovated 74 East 4th Street. Tickets can be purchased here, and puppet packages (for those who'd like to see two or three upcoming puppet shows at a discounted rate) can be purchased here. 

Jeghetto will also be performing in and facilitating La MaMa Kids: Puppet Self Portrait on Saturday, March 25 at 12PM. Watch him get lost in his imagination as he performs with his unique puppets made out of recycled materials. This production gives you a glimpse of his process with visual projections, spoken word, and hip hop beats.

1. How would you describe your work as a puppetry artist?

I would describe my work as “making something from nothing.” I use mostly found and recycled materials to create my work. I like to call my puppets “moving sculptures”.

2. Who or what has inspired you?

Life itself inspires my work. It could be a past experience, watching a documentary, or a conversation with a stranger. 

3. What should audiences expect from the performance?

I like for audience members to leave my show with questions about themselves and the world around them. 

4. What are your upcoming plans for 2023?

My upcoming plans for 2023 is to stay on the current path of creativity and discovery that I’m on. I can’t imagine being in a better place in my life artistically. I foresee a great future in puppetry.

5. How would you Remake a World?

I believe the world has an over abundance of resources for everyone. I would make energy and resources available so that humans wouldn’t have to pay to live. Poverty and famine is intentional. A control mechanism to keep the evil that runs our world in power. I would establish a system of true justice where everyone is equally held accountable for their actions.

6. What does working at La MaMa mean to you?

Working at La Mama means everything. To be able to perform in such a historic venue is very motivating. I’m standing on the shoulders of giants. 

La MaMa presents

The Hip Hopera of 5P1N0K10

March 23 –26, 2023

The Club
74 East 4th Street
New York, NY 10003

Thursday at 7:30PM

Friday at 7:30PM

Saturday at 7:30PM
Sunday at 12PM

Tickets:

Adults: $30
Students/Seniors: $25
First 10 tickets are $10 (limit 2 per person)
Ticket prices are inclusive of all fees.

Progress Report: 74 East 4th Street Capital Project

If you've walked by 74 East 4th Street lately, you've seen La MaMa's beloved building and first permanent home is being renovated as part of a multi-phase capital project.

To everyone's surprise, windows that no one knew were there were revealed on the west wall of The Club.  If these walls could talk...

When the project is finished, 74 East 4th Street will be handicapped accessible with the installation of an elevator and the lowering of the street entrance so there is no longer a step.   This renovation was long over-due to insure that the building will be available to everyone for years to come.

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To learn more about La MaMa's Restore a Building/Remake a World capital project:
CLICK HERE

6 Questions: Amy Surratt

Amy Surratt’s FIRST AND LAST (show) comes to The Club @ La MaMa on June 9th.  Amy took time out from rehearsals to answer our 6 Questions about the show, Appalachia and what working at La MaMa means to her.  You can read her answers below and get tickets to the show HERE.


1. Where did the idea for Amy Surratt’s FIRST AND LAST (show) come from?

I was in a community beauty pageant when I was a small child, and SPOILER ALERT: I didn't win. It was my first theatrical experience paired with the first time I really LOST IT as a child! I threw a fit -- which was a longstanding family joke – and an impetus for investigation. As I began this project, I started making connections to the great natural beauty and horror that lives side-by-side in Southern Appalachia. A lot of the problems of my home region are based on a long history of exploitation – and I just expanded the real pageant memory as a framework, a way into the idea of representation and the repercussions of exploitation in Appalachia.

At the same time that I was thinking about my own personal history and learning more about the distinct history of Southern Appalachia, Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance was topping the New York Times bestseller lists of 2016. It was recommended to me by many educated, thoughtful, ostensibly otherwise progressive people. My friends were reading it and telling me that they “finally understood” my home. I thought, that’s funny, cause I lived there 25 years and I am STILL working it out! Not to mention, the media ate it up as a way to understand “Trump voters” during the election. I mean that book was everywhere, and it’s finally starting to receive a lot of criticism for its problematic representations of Appalachian culture and people. Almost too little, too late for me. I wouldn’t be surprised if Vance is using his personal “memoir” on a trajectory towards a political career as a “conservative.” It’s dull as hell to read, but it basically boils down to a familiar bootstraps narrative. Poor white Americans in Appalachia and the Rust Belt are lazy, stupid, backwards addicts with a propensity towards violence – and Vance at 30 years old is an expert! He got out! He worked hard! Learn from him, America! Poverty is the fault of the impoverished. They choose it! They ignore opportunity! This narrative justifies the abuse of the poor and the continued widening of the wealth gap because it argues that some people deserve to be stuck in poverty

What’s funny is that we are the same age, and have some similarities in our family dynamics and traumas– but Vance is either vastly ignorant of the history of the culture he was raised in, is blind to how his narrative is grossly simplistic and opportunist, or simply has no compassion or perspective. I suspect it’s a bit of all three. That’s me being kind.

The phrase “reality tv” calls to mind a more nefarious figure these days, but I began this piece thinking about Honey Boo Boo. Who will she be at 30? American media has a grotesque love/hate relationship with poverty and the stories (some camp, some romantic) they’ve built around it. I worry about that kid, and I found her celebrity to be very upsetting and often very cruel.

And, of course, I have my own Unfinished Business with Home – both America and Southern Appalachia.

So, prepare yourself, folks! There’s a lot to unpack.

2. How much of the ‘Amy Surratt’ character is Amy Surratt?

I’ve been thinking of the entire work as an elaborate and layered investigation of identity—a pageant of all the ways my own experience of the place and the people around me from my childhood are and have been represented and misrepresented in the media: from news segments covering poverty in America to television/Hollywood tropes and how the people of this place have been misrepresented by their politicians and corporate America… to the point that a lot of people have accepted the narrative as their own identity.

It’s probably best to leave you with a Hazel Dickens tune. 
Check out: “It’s Hard To Tell The Singer From The Song” 

3. What’s the biggest misconception about Appalachia?

There are many to choose from, but I think the one that is most important to our current situation is the very damaging narrative in mainstream America that rural America and Americana = whiteness, heterosexuality, political conservatism. A lot of people within and without Appalachia see the place as an origin point for this narrative. The place is often reduced to classist stereotypes.

Historically and contemporarily speaking, there’s a lot to learn and to study about the diversity of people, traditions, and cultures of Appalachia. I’ve really had a lot of my own notions challenged. And I think there are values that I learned from having been born in Southern Appalachia that are threatening to white supremacist capitalist America … which doesn’t fit the typical narrative you often hear about the place.

Appalachia is a complex, nuanced, and resilient region of America – it doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and it never has.

4. Who inspires you?

bell hooks, Wendell Berry, Dorothy Allison, Dolly Parton my grandmothers, my mother, the strong women who keep families all over Appalachia going, even in the face of hardship and trauma … and to all the outlaws, LGBTQ folk, anti-capitalist and progressive members of the rural resistance out there who are standing together and fighting the good fight against the Trump administration and white supremacist “Alt-Right” -- I SEE YOU! – you are needed, and you inspire me!

5. What was the last good book you read?

Skin by Dorothy Allison was a big influence on me as a person, as was Belonging: A Culture of Place by bell hooks.

But unrelated to the show, I was also pretty excited by House of Leaves By Mark L Danielewski and I am looking forward to re-reading it this summer.

6. What does working at La MaMa mean to you?

La MaMa is one of the few remaining spaces in New York City to take an artistic risk, and to create experimental work as an emerging artist. It’s incredible. And in many ways it’s THE nexus for downtown theatre and original performance art. I am very privileged to be a part of this community, and learn something every day from the influx of theatre makers through these spaces. It’s a home for so many of us.

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La MaMa presents

Amy Surratt’s 

FIRST AND LAST (show)

Written and Performed by Amy R. Surratt
Created in collaboration with Kristen Holfeuer and Tosha Rachelle Taylor
Scenic Design by Greg Laffey | Costume Design by Dusty Childers (aka Dust Tea Shoulders) | Lighting Design by Cecilia Durbin
Video Projection and Media Design by s.o. O’Brien and Erin Lemkey

June 9 - 18, 2017
Friday and Saturday at 9:30pm; Sunday at 6pm

The Club @ La MaMa
74A East 4th Street
(between Bowery and Second Avenue)
New York, NY 10003

Tickets: $20 Adult Tickets; $15 Student/Seniors - ten $10 tickets available for every performance, in advance only, as part of La MaMa's 10 @ $10 ticketing initiative. 

For Tickets and Info: CLICK HERE

Video Preview: Karen Finley's The Expanded Unicorn Gratitude Mystery

  The Expanded Unicorn Gratitude Mystery from La MaMa on Vimeo.


Acclaimed artist Karen Finley came to nation-wide attention when she and three other artists, who came to be known as the NEA-4, had their National Endowment for the Arts grants rescinded in 1990 which lead to a years-long court battle.  

Finley brings an expanded version of her most recent show to The Club at La MaMa for six performances. The Expanded Unicorn Gratitude Mystery explores the recent heightened US political presidential landscape that takes on citizenship, gender disparity and abuse of power.  

La MaMa presents

THE EXPANDED 
UNICORN GRATITUDE 
MYSTERY

Written and performed by Karen Finley

May 5, 2017 - May 14, 2017

Friday and Saturday at 9:30PM; Sunday at 6PM

The Club @ La MaMa 
74A East 4th Street
New York, NY 10003

Tickets: $25 Adults; $20 Students/Seniors

For Tickets and Info: CLICK HERE

6 Questions: Susana Cook

Photo by Annabelle Contreras Castro

Susana Cook's newest work, Non-Consensual Relationships With Ghosts,  premieres at The Club at La MaMa on March 24th and runs through April 2, 2017.  Susana took a break from rehearsals to answer our 6 Questions.  


1. How do you describe your new show, Non-Consensual Relationships With Ghosts?
Non-Consensual Relationships with Ghosts has many experimental components in the writing, and suddenly we are all singing a la Broadway. It’s an ensemble work but it’s also a solo show. It’s playing with language and the non-sense of our times. It’s a collage of powerful images, trying to create resistance through form. It’s fun and it’s tragic too. It’s intense, like the moment we are living. It has 15 actors onstage trying to make sense of a structure that keeps destroying itself all the time.

2. How does it feel to be doing this play in our current political climate? 
It feels necessary and urgent. We can’t do anything else but referring to what’s happening with whatever art we are creating. Non-Consensual relationships with Ghosts is a show of the resistance. It’s an attempt to make people feel better, to laugh, to sing and to make them feel part of a community; that’s the best part of the theater experience.

3. What have you learned during the creation of this piece? 
That the most important part of a theater piece is the energy. That people leave their house to come see us to experience something, and as directors we have to be magicians who can unleash that transformative energy.

4. Who inspires you? 
Heiner Muller

5. What was the last good book you read? 
I couldn’t read books lately, I am constantly following the news, reading articles, things are happening so fast. But Post-Dramatic Theater by Hans- Thies Lehmann is what comes to mind.

6. What does working at La MaMa mean to you? 
I always wanted to do a show at La MaMa, I am ecstatic that is finally happening.

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La MaMa presents

Non-Consensual 
Relationships 
With Ghosts

Written and Directed by Susana Cook 
Sound Design by Julian Mesri

March 24, 2017 - April 2, 2017

Fridays & Saturdays at 10pm; Sundays at 6pm

The Club at La MaMa

74A East 4th Street

(between Bowery and Second Avenue)

New York, NY 10003

Tickets: $20 Adults; $15 Students/Seniors

For Tickets and Info: CLICK HERE

Video Preview: ONE IN THEMSELVES

Part ritual / part wrestling match, One-in-Themselves is a physical and vocal venture; a call to unbridle the deep desires and fears of the silenced woman.

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La MaMa presents

One-in-Themselves 

Conceived, Directed, and Performed by Sophie Bortolussi and Sara Galassini

March 03 - March 12, 2017 
Fridays & Saturdays at 10pm, Sundays at 6pm 

The Club @ La MaMa
74A East 4th Street (3rd Floor)
New York, NY 10003

Tickets: $20 Adults; $15 Students/Seniors; ten tickets are available for every performance for $10 each, advance sales only, as part of La MaMa 10 @ $10 ticketing initiative.

For Tickets and Info: CLICK HERE

NY1 Looks at the 2017 American Human Beatbox Festival

NY1 previes the 2017 American Human Beatbox Festival which comes to La MaMa this week Thursday February 23 - Sunday February 26, 2017.

Watch the preview: HERE

La MaMa presents

7th Annual 

Human Beat Box 

Festival
The Return of The Vocal Wars
Curated by Kid Lucky

“La MaMa is excited to present beatboxers in our theater, to give them a platform outside of the club scene,” says La MaMa Artistic Director, Mia Yoo. “We want audiences to experience beatboxing as an art form that communicates across generations and cultures.” The American Human Beatbox Festival is curated by Kid Lucky, a renowned beat-MC who has the unique ability to simultaneously create vocal beats and rhyme.

Full schedule here

Advance tickets 2 for $20 with code '2420'

For Tickets, Info and Full Schedule: CLICK HERE

First Look at DAVID'S FRIEND

 All photos by Minji Lee

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La MaMa presents

DAVID'S 
FRIEND

Written and performed by Nora Burns

Directed by Adrienne Truscott

January 27 - February 5, 2017
Fridays and Saturdays at 10pm; Sundays at 6pm

The Club @ La MaMa
74A East 4th Street
(between Bowery and Second Avenue)
New York, NY 10003

Tickets: $20 Adults; $15 Students/Seniors

For Tickets and Info: CLICK HERE

6 Questions: Nora Burns from David's Friend

David's Friend is a fast-paced multi-media solo show from Nora Burns that celebrates friendship, fun, freaks, fag hags, youthful passion, changing times, aging, emotions, memories, music and Manhattan! Nora took time out of her day to answer these 6 questions about this upcoming production in The Club at La MaMa!

1. Who is David?

David was my best friend who I met dancing on a speaker of a gay disco in Boston when we were 17 in 1979. He died of AIDS in 1993.

2. What did you learn from creating the show?

About 2 years ago I was suddenly hit with this terrible sadness at the loss of my friend and I wanted to do a show to celebrate our friendship and his life. I think a lot of people who lived through the age of AIDS are experiencing a sense of mourning as the PTSD wears off. I’ve been traveling around workshopping the show and I always have people come up afterward and tell me that they’re going through the same thing.

3. What should audiences expect from David's Friend?

Well, as I’ve said, it’s a celebration, it’s not a memorial, and I want it to be fun and funny and have as much life as David did. It’s also a love letter to New York City, my wonderful home, and disco, the music that beats my heart.

4. What is the biggest change you've seen in New York City in your time here?

It’s gotten a lot safer and cleaner and more expensive and homogenized and crowded, but it still feels like home.

5. What is the last good book you read?

The last 2 books I read were amazing! Christodora by Tim Murphy, a very fun and fascinating novel about New York City and AIDS and the lives and paths people take, and Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, incredible. I’m obsessed with slavery and the fact that this country acts like it was so far in the past and not part of our present.

6. What does working at La MaMa mean to you?

I love La Mama! I’ve seen so many amazing productions here over the years, it’s part of my New York. I remember my old roommate directing Jackie Curtis in Champagne here in the 80’s and my comedy group The Nellie Olesons performed here in the early 90’s so it’s nice to be back.

David’s Friend

January 27 - February 05, 2017

David’s Friend is a fast-paced multi-media show is a celebration of friendship, fun, freaks, fag hags, youthful passion, changing times, aging, emotions, memories, music and Manhattan. David’s Friend is a coming of age story, a love story, a loss story, and a New York story, a story we all know and experience in some way, and, as David would say, “a story that just gets better with the telling.” 

Tickets & More Info Online: http://lamama.org/davids_friend/

6 Questions: Seonjae Kim

Seonjae Kim's Riot Antigone comes to The Club at La MaMa from February 10 - 19, 2017. The show is a new take on Sophocles' tragedy, told from the perspective of a Chorus Leader and her all-female punk band, reminiscent of the 90s' Riot Grrrl movement iconized by bands like Bikini Kill, Sleater-Kinney and Bratmobile.   Seonjae took a break from preparing for the show to answer our 6 Questions.

1. What was the original inspiration behind creating Riot Antigone?

I was one of many international students from South Korea at my boarding high school in Concord, MA. At first, I didn't really fit in with the Korean kids or the American kids. So I found solace in losing myself for hours in front of my computer, developing obsessions with magnificent things outside my little world. I felt a strong, strange connection with the American Riot Grrrl movement of the 90s, even though I didn't grow up in that time, or that place. I would listen to Bikini Kill, Hole, Sleater-Kinney for hours alone in my dorm room, dreaming of screaming out loud

A couple of years later, in college, I encountered Sophocles' Antigone in my theater classes. I explored it as an actor, then a director, and even as a playwright. In playwriting class, I was writing things that bore resemblance to the classic play's structure. I started imagining the play with the rebellious songs that my younger self loved as the soundtrack. I am primarily a director. So initially, I thought I would direct Antigone with some Riot Grrrl inspired sound design, or maybe make it a jukebox musical. I knew there wasn't really a pre-existing adaptation I liked, so I started typing on a blank page. Soon I realized that what I felt inside my heart needed its own melodies, its own words

I've been working on the piece for a while, and it's gone through numerous drafts and changes in collaborators and collaborative dynamics. One thing that's been true is that it's felt more and more me - Jae - as I've been working on it. It was hard to embrace that at first, because it sometimes felt self-indulgent. But Riot Grrrl is about empowering each and every girl to find her own voice. I'm so proud of this iteration of Antigone, and so so grateful to everyone for devoting their time and talent to make it finally come true. 

2. How is music important to the piece?

Riot Antigone is told from the perspective of a charismatic Riot Grrrl rock singer who conjures the event with the help of her band of Riot Grrrls. In a traditional Greek tragedy, a Chorus of male elders comment on the action as it happens. In this piece, they are replaced by Riot Grrrls who sing songs about Antigone's turbulent internal life. They are the music Antigone hears in her head but doesn't have the words for yet. The music is a soundtrack of girlhood, of coming of age, of articulating questions and confusions, of letting your feelings explode into something beautiful and real, so that someone out there somewhere might say, "I feel that, too." 

3. In what ways is the Sophocles play important today?
Oh man. Our political climate is so appropriate - unfortunately so - for Greek tragedies right now. I think sometimes the secular, individualistic culture we live in can feel like it's all about what you want, what you can get - and not quite about what is right. We are driven by instant gratification instead of our internal moral compass. Greek tragedies are about people trying to do the right thing, and disagreeing, and failing, and learning. What would our world look like if we all lived a bit more like them - constantly examining the chilling moral impacts of our actions?
4. Who inspires you?
I am inspired by my parents, who built everything out of nothing so they could give me the world. By Patti Smith and David Bowie, who blazed trails for weirdos everywhere. By Hillary Clinton, whose tenacity, grace and commitment has fueled me, even after the heartbreak of November 8th, to make this play the best it can be. What she said in her extraordinary concession speech - "never forget that doing what is right is always worth it" - has sharpened my understanding of this piece. And of course, I am inspired by all the Riot Grrrls. 

5. What was the last good book you read

I loved Citizen by Claudia Rankine and The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson. I'm also currently reading Perpetually Cool, a biography of Anna May Wong, the first Asian American movie star totally excluded from our cultural memory of old Hollywood. 

6. What does working at La MaMa mean to you?

I've wanted to work at La MaMa since I was eighteen years old and first learned about it. A legendary theatre in New York hosting artists from my home, South Korea, and all over the world, with "experimental" in its name? Sign me up. I believe La MaMa is one of the rare places left in New York City that takes true risks on new artists. I get frustrated at how the term "emerging artist" has become so muddled. You need a body of work to be recognized as an "emerging artist", but you can't build a robust body of work if no one is willing to take a chance on you. For artists who are hustling and making their own opportunities, but who still need an artistic home where they can be weird, messy and raw, La MaMa rises to the occasion. All it takes is one magical "Yes!" Mia Yoo and La MaMa have the courage to be the ones to say, "Yes!" I am honored to make my glorious mess here.

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La MaMa presents 

RIOT 

ANTIGONE 

A Hannah Greene and J. Mehr Kaur Production 

Created & Directed by Seonjae Kim 

Book, Lyrics & Direction by Seonjae Kim 

Music by Seonjae Kim, Erato A. Kremmyda, Mori Einsidler, Jane Cardona, Jess Marlor  February 10 - February 19, 2017 The Club @ La MaMa 74A East 4th Street New York, NY 10003 $20 Adults/$15 Students/Seniors - ten tickets are available for every performance for only $10 each (advance sales only) while they last

For Tickets and Info: CLICK HERE