6 Questions: Alice-Therese Gottschalk

Wunderkammer | Cabinet of Curiosities opens La MaMa's 2018 Puppet Festival this week with an alluring cabinet of marionettes and allow them to transport you to a place of pure wonder. All the way from Germany, puppeteers Alice Therese Gottschalk, Raphael Mürle, and Frank Soehnle, all disciples of the internationally-renowned master puppeteer Albrecht Roser, convene as a trio to challenge and intensify their puppeteering skills.

Alice Therese Gottschalk took time out of her busy rehearsal schedule to answer 6 Questions for La MaMa about this upcoming production:

1) Do you have a favorite puppet in your performance? 
I think all charters and styles of the puppet are so different and each character has its special wonders and surprised - so I can‘t say there is „the one.“ 

2) What is the history behind cabinets of curiosity? 
The origin of the show was our wish to develop the art form of string puppetry. All three of us are normally solo performers, we often work together with musician, actors, dancer, but seldom with other string puppeteers.

So it was a pleasure to develop puppets and discover movements together and with the permanent possibility to get a different outside view because we could see our puppets performed by other string puppeteers. I learned a lot from the other two during this process! The idea to make a show out of this research came later - first there was our curiosity. 

3) What's one thing you learned working with puppeteer Albrecht Roser? 
Just one? Mhm, to observe movement and to listen to the material, objects, puppets what stories they want to tell through their movement. 

4) Is there a universal connection between all things? 
In the show I would think the music of Bradley Kemp (NY) and the costumes of Evelyn Meersschaut (Belgium) are connecting elements and give the very different styles of our marionettes a strong frame. 

5) What draws you to work with marionettes? 
The art form of puppetry connects for me the fine and the performing arts. Through the way of construction of my own puppets I influence the performance. I can play with forms and movement and this is an deep and endless pool of possibilities and stories. String puppets especially are, for me, the most independent and surprising puppet form. 

6) What does working at La MaMa mean to you? 
To show our work at La MaMa gives us the possibility to present Wunderkammer in the US the first time, which hopefully will be an exciting experience. And looking through La MaMa's diverse and courageous program, I think Wunderkammer found the right place to be.

La MaMa presents

Wunderkammer | Cabinet of Curiosities
Part of the La MaMa Puppet Festival
Puppeteers: Alice-Therese Gottschalk, Raphael Mürle and Frank Soehnle
Music by Michael Wollny and Tamar Halperin

November 1st - November 3rd, 2018

$25 Adult Tickets; $20 Students/Seniors; $10 Tickets

Ellen Stewart Theatre
66 E 4th Street; Basement level
New York, NY 10003

For tickets and more information: CLICK HERE

La MaMa Puppet Festival starts next week!

2018 La MaMa Puppet Series from La MaMa on Vimeo.

November 1 - 25, 2018

Curated by Denise Greber

More info HERE

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"The downtown mainstay La MaMa E.T.C. (Experimental Theater Club), winner of the 2018 Regional Theater Tony Award, will present a monthlong festival of puppet performances by an international roster of artists. This isn’t a children’s theater event, though: The creators, mainly women, will be presenting shows that grapple with immigration, Black Lives Matter, disability and other weighty topics."

-Steven McElroy. Full article HERE

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"Innovation goes hand in glove with theater at this biannual festival of new puppetry for grown-ups." 

Full read HERE

Photo courtesy of Patrick Argirakis, BLIND

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"This year's installment of its biannual festival will include New York and world premieres of works by Chinese, French, Japanese, and African-American artists."

Full article HERE

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La MaMa's Annual Puppet Festival Returns to New York

"For four weeks (November 1 - 25, 2018), La MaMa's Puppet Series presents work from artists around the world including Germany, Brazil, Netherlands, Japan, Colombia, China, Belgium, and the USA."

Full article HERE

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Next on the horizon is the 2018 edition of the biannual La MaMa Puppet Festival — touted as their biggest yet — running Nov. 1-25. The director and curator of the festival since the beginning has been Denise Greber, a Downtown actress who has been with La MaMa since 1999. “I started working with Ellen [Stewart] on a puppet series in 2004,”Greber noted. “Ellen always loved puppetry. It’s always been at least 20 percent of the programming at La MaMa. It was a small series at first. But it’s continued to grow.” Full Article HERE

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PURCHASE A PUPPET PACKAGE

See multiple shows in the 2018 La MaMa Puppet Festival for one low price! 

Congratulations to Jane Comfort and Company

Congratulations to Jane Comfort and Company! 

Jane Comfort and Company received the 2018 Outstanding Revival Award for the company's 40th Anniversary Retrospective at La MaMa.

Everyone at La MaMa is also pleased and grateful for this sweet, lovely and overdue recognition for an incredible retrospective of a very talented company.

ABOUT THE BESSIESThe Bessies were established by David R. White in 1984 at Dance Theater Workshop to recognize outstanding work in choreography, performance, music composition and visual design. Nominees are chosen by a Selection Committee comprised of artists, presenters, producers, and writers, which this year is comprised of Ronald Alexander, Elise Bernhardt, Diana Byer, Tymberly Canale, Alexis Convento, Leah Cox, Parijat Desai, Maura Donohue, Boo Froebel, Angela Fatou Gittens, Diane Grumet, Brinda Guha, Joseph Hall, Irene Hultman, Celia Ipiotis, Koosil-ja, Matthew Lopez, Matthew Lyons, Lydia Mokdessi, Harold Norris, Craig Peterson, Doug Post, Rajika Puri, Susan Reiter, Ali Rosa Salas, Walter Rutledge, George Emi?lio Sanchez, Andrea Snyder, Carrie Stern, Risa Steinberg, Sally Sommer, Kay Takeda, Catherine Tharin, Muna Tseng, Eleanor K. Wallace, Martin Wechsler, Adrienne Westwood, and William Whitener.

Responsible for setting policy and providing ongoing oversight, the 2018 Bessie Awards Steering Committee is comprised of Cora Cahan, Beverly D'Anne, Lane Harwell, Jeanne Linnes, Stanford Makishi, Nicky Paraiso, Carla Peterson, Paz Tanjuaquio, Laurie Uprichard, and Sylvia Waters.

Story of the Week: Aaron Landsman's Language Reversal

The Language Reversal Process: How can technology be integrated into the aesthetic and artistic process of a theatrical experience?

Language Reversal will feature Serbian theatre collective, Kulturanova, performing in the Ellen Stewart Theater. In August, the realities of US immigration policy and visa denials threatened the show’s timeline, forcing its director Aaron Landsman to re-conceptualize the entire piece. Now, La MaMa will be presenting the collaborative work-in-progress, in partnership with video design from Culturehub that utilizes interactive live-feed video technology from artists and audiences in Novi Sad and New York.

Click here to see the process:

Language Reversal

Presented by La MaMa
with co-commissioning support from ASU Gammage
Written by Aaron Landsman
A Workshop Presentation

October 12th - October 14th, 2018

Ellen Stewart Theatre

66 E 4th Street; 2nd Floor

New York, NY 10003

For tickets and more information: CLICK HERE

Press Roundup for KINK HAUS

Final weekend of KINK HAUS nearly sold out! See what the press are saying about Gunnar Montana's "brutal underground nightclub where no f*cks are given"

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“It was just like ‘Rose’s Turn’ from Gypsy,” commented an attendee after the show in response to a brilliantly illuminated “FAGGOT” sign that flashed to the beat of Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out For a Hero” during one of the numbers.

By Matthew Wexler. Full post HERE

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Their runway intro prepares us for a panoply of “costumes on acid” to come, along with hair colors and makeup that would make a drag queen jealous. How about a queer version of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” backed-up by “Dreamgirls” as envisioned by Ru Paul?  

By Steve Nardoni. Full post HERE

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BWW Review: KINK HAÜS at La MaMa is a Rad, Dizzying Spectacle

 "This joyous celebration of queer identities is so uplifting and powerful that you can actually feel the soul and bones of the East Village reverberating its message through the walls of the theater."

By David Clarke. Full article HERE

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"Kink Haüs is most successful when it digs deepest and mines the potential of the human body as living art"

By Richard Patterson. Full article HERE

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Kinky Glitter Boots

"...the show is a kinetic swirl of movement that grabs you and doesn’t let go"

By Michael Musto. Full read HERE

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"The propulsive mix of sound and movement and dazzling exhibition of lighting, costume and prop design is nonstop."

By Dan Dwyer. Full article HERE

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"...an attention-grabbing, joyful gender-romp that is athletically choreographed and a visual smorgasbord ..."

Full read HERE

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KINK HAUS EXTENDED THRU OCT 14!

Tickets HERE

74A East 4th Street Ground Breaking Ceremony

"La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club (ETC), the Off Off-Broadway theatre that was the recipient of the 2018 Regional Theatre Tony Award, celebrated the official groundbreaking of its upcoming renovation September 25.

The groundbreaking launches the season with the company’s first-ever capital campaign project: the renovation of their first home, a landmarked building at 74A East 4th Street.

This will mark the first restoration since the building was constructed in 1873. The space is being re-imagined by Beyer, Blinder & Belle which is working with theatre consultants Jean-Guy Lecat and Charcoalblue."

Thank you to everyone who attended the Ground Breaking Ceremony on September 25th:

Jeff Haley, Mary Fulham and Scott Wittman

John Jesurun and John Kelly

Kevin and Josephine Tarrant of the SilverCloud Singers

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer

City Council Member Carlina Rivera

Amy Surratt, Alice Griffin and Sophie Glidden Lyon

Joan Rose and Frank Carucci

Ozzie Rodriguez

Click here to get involved in the future of La MaMa!

After more than 50 years of intensive use as theatrical space, by more than 100,000 artists and audiences of all nations, cultures, races, and identities, our building must undergo urgently needed renovations and be made ADA accessible if it is to remain a viable resource for the next generations of artists and audiences.

You, our artists, audience members, and supporters, are at the heart of La MaMa. We hope you will help us to restore and remake this building as a creative home for new artists, new work, and new ideas for decades to come.