What Does Working at La MaMa Mean to You, Part 2!

The 53rd season has come to an end at La MaMa after another wonderful year featuring dozens of different artists performing in 80+ productions and working in our art spaces on the Lower East Side! There is no better time to reflect on our mission dedicated to the artists and all aspects of the theatre. Ever since Ellen Stewart founded La MaMa in 1961, our interest has been in the people who make art, and it is to them that we give our support with free theater and rehearsal space, lights, sound, props, platforms, and whatever else we have that they can use to create their work. 

We want them to feel free to explore their ideas, and translate them into a theatrical language that can communicate to any person in any part of the world. Here are some thoughtful quotes from old friends and new artists who spent time at La MaMa this season about what brought them to La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club and why they keep coming back:





"La MaMa has always been an artistic home for me."

~ Nicky Paraiso, Christmas in Nicklyland & Director of Programming -- The Club

"La MaMa means having a safe haven to experiment and create alongside some amazingly talented and wonderful artists."

~ Sorab Wadia, Tempest directed by Karin Coonrod

"La MaMa is an amazing place. They love and support artists above all, and I am so in awe of that."

~ Jane Comfort, Altiplano 

"La MaMa is home. I have been in two plays here, and I wrote and directed a circus at the Café years ago. It’s a place where my work is welcomed and supported, and where the community of fellow artists is rich and diverse." 

~ Obie-award winner Winsome Brown, This Is Mary Brown

"I have never experienced anything quite as magical as living and collaborating with Ellen. When she smiled, the whole world lit up. I can feel her smile in rehearsal."

~ Arthur Adair, Your War'try Grave

"I can tell you exactly what the dressing room smells like in the Ellen Stewart Theater with the same detail that I can tell you what the kitchen in my childhood home smells like, if that’s any indicator as to how vivid and loved La Mama is in my memory."

~ OBIE Award-Winner Heather Christian, Daily Life Everlasting

"I feel lucky to have the opportunity to perform and develop in such a nurturing environment. I will keep coming back, sniffing out all your squirreled pianos, as long as y'all will have me."

~ Dane Terry, Bird in the House

"Ever since I was a drama student at NYU, La MaMa, and The Public Theater, have always, and continue to be, definitive hubs for cutting edge, innovative theatre, and we're proud to be a part of that tradition."

~ Darian Dauchan, INCOMING! The Mighty Third Rail

"To have my students and my colleagues come together for this production at La MaMa is an honor."

~ Martha Tornay, The Shell Shocked Nut

"For me, working at La MaMa means having a home to pursue my creative work to its fullest potential. It also means having an artistic family and being directly connected to an amazing culture and community."

~ Mike Gorman, If Colorado Had an Ocean…

"To step into the house that Ellen Stewart built is a watershed."

~ Daniel Alexander Jones, An Integrator's Manual 

"Rehearsing at 47 Great Jones is like coming home." 

~ Andrea Assaf, Eleven Reflections on September 

"To have this work, which is so important to me, at la MaMa, which has been on an altar of creativity for such a long time, is empowering and inspiring. La MaMa, for me, represents exactly what this work is attempting: to build on history while constantly seeking a new way to communicate, to bridge relationships, to foster a future."

~ Alexandra Beller, Milkdreams

"Having known both Ellen Stewart and Mia Yoo, I can say that they both radiate this same quality, a sort of ethic of being welcoming and nurturing, of hearing you, and supporting you, not just materially but morally."  

~ Trav S.D. , Horseplay

"What I love most about La MaMa is the lack of fear in the shows they choose to present, with a look towards risk and beauty and vital things that need to be said."

~ Megan Kennedy, Dusk Ahead

"Working at La MaMa means performing in a space I have been thinking about since I was a teenager in Virginia, imagining the magical world of experimental New York theater. And in a space where I have seen work that defined my idea of what performance could and should be. We are so honored to be here."

~ James Harrison Monaco, INCOMING! Aaron/Marie

"I love the values that La Mama supports and promotes, and am glad to play a part in this." 

~ Sam Trubridge, Sleep/Wake

Looking forward, keep an eye out for the new season on our website and consider making a tax-deductible donation to support our artists & productions!

6 Questions: Daniel Alexander Jones

Daniel Alexander Jones, an award-winning inter-disciplinary theatre artist, is currently performing An Integrator's Manual in The Club at La MaMa, March 26-29, 2015. We asked Daniel about collaborating, staying open to your audience and performing at La MaMa.

1. When did you first begin developing An Integrator's Manual and what inspired you to begin the project?
I needed to begin a process of articulation. I had to say something about this moment in my country, about the place I find myself in, and about the conversations I am having with friends, colleagues, students spurred on by the horrific series of killings of black people that have gone largely without justice. This piece takes an odd road to get at some questions I have not been able to answer well on my own and others' paradoxical relationship to this history - and our places in it. An Integrator's Manual is very much that beginning, breaking the skin and exposing those questions and taking the first steps at sounding them out.

2. How does creating a performance that speaks to ongoing problems of integration in the US change your relationship to the audience?
My relationship to audience is a constant variable. By this, I mean, I know, always, that I will never know who shows up to be the audience on a particular night, or for a particular run. Much of my work is in the tradition of the theatrical jazz aesthetic; I approach each performance knowing that I must seek clarity of expression and direct connection with whoever comes to be part of the experience, whether the subject matter is charged or not.

3. The show was been described as 'part pop-quiz.' Can you tell us anything more about this element of the piece?
As this is the first sharing of this new work, and we will be continuing to develop it over the next year, I am eager to know of folks' experience of the work. It is grounded in the personal, as a way to get at relationship to the larger idea and experience of integration. I'm hopeful that it will invite others to consider the minute, personal, intimate ways the questions raised have operated in their own experience of this subject, from whatever vantage point or vantage points they have held.

4. How would you describe the nature of your collaboration with Will Davis? Are there specific ways you challenge each other?
Will Davis amplifies the light in others and exerts some kind of gravitational pull - the best ideas rise up around him. I feel utterly safe to try anything, whether is falls or flies. I know that Will intimately understands the process of building a living, breathing piece of art and is concerned with authenticity, clarity and presence. I think we both challenge one another to go to the heart of the matter. I am profoundly grateful to be in collaboration with this brilliant artist.

5. When did you know that you wanted a career in the arts?
I knew from a very early age. Making art was, and still is, the state of being where I feel the most alive and purposeful. I have always wanted to help alleviate suffering; turns out the way I was led to do so is through making and sharing art, which I hope feeds others' imaginations and senses of agency in some small but measurable way.

6. What does working at La MaMa mean to you?
To step into the house that Ellen Stewart built is a watershed. To be able to take these first public steps at the invitation of Mia Yoo and Nicky Paraiso is evidence that there are still spaces dedicated to artists who want, and need, to explore.

La MaMa presents

An Integrator's Manual

Written and performed by Daniel Alexander Jones
and featuring Jacques Gerard Colimon
Directed by Will Davis
Dramaturgy by Kyla Searle

March 26th - 29th, 2015 - Four Performances Only!
Thursday - Saturday @ 7:30pm; Sunday @ 2pm

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

Tickets: $18 Adults; $13 Students/Seniors; Ten tickets prices at $10 each are available for every performance at part of La MaMa's 10@$10 ticketing initiative - advance sales only!

For Tickets and Info: CLICK HERE

The Many Faces of Daniel Alexander Jones

Daniel Alexander Jones' new show, An Integrator's Manual comes to The First Floor Theatre at La MaMa this weekend for four performances only!

Daniel is a performer, playwright, curator and educator.  

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An Integrator's Manual

Named by American Theatre magazine one of fifteen artists whose work would “change American stages for decades to come,” Daniel Alexander Jones is an award-winning interdisciplinary artist. 

An Integrator’s Manual traces loss and transfiguration resulting from the failures of integration in the USA. Will we be agents of death or of life? Will we weep and moan, or will we rise up? This work-in-progress presentation is directed by Will Davis and features performer Jacques Gerard Colimon. Daniel Alexander Jones sounds a ritual of release and a challenge for the future using story, song, and humor and features original live music.

La MaMa presents
An 
Integrator's 
Manual
Written and performed by Daniel Alexander Jones
and featuring Jacques Gerard Colimon
Directed by Will Davis
Dramaturgy by Kyla Searle



March 26th - 29th, 2015 - Four Performances Only!
Thursday - Saturday @ 7:30pm; Sunday @ 2pm

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

Tickets: $18 Adults; $13 Students/Seniors; Ten tickets prices at $10 each are available for every performance at part of La MaMa's 10@$10 ticketing initiative - advance sales only!

For Tickets and Info: CLICK HERE

Spring Season @ La MaMa Announced!

The Spring Season at La MaMa has been announced and it includes:

DANIEL ALEXANDER JONES

WITNESS RELOCATION/CHUCK MEE/

HEATHER CHRISTIAN

DANE TERRY

BELARUS FREE THEATRE

LA MAMA MOVES! DANCE FESTIVAL 2015

WINSOME BROWN

and MANY MORE!!

Check out the full Spring schedule!

CLICK HERE

Tickets now on sale, including 10@$10 Tickets!