A Message From Mia

April 28, 2020           Dear Friends, In these past three weeks, there is not one day that goes by that I don’t think about La MaMa’s treasured resident set designer, Jun Maeda, who died on April 6 due to complications related to the Covid-19 virus. In some moments I am filled with deep sadness, overwhelmed with the loss and with all the loss that is happening around us.  Mostly though I hold on and remember that we live on in the people that we touch.  His exquisite art, unwavering creative force and magic live in the spaces where he worked at La MaMa, in the sculptures and art pieces he made, and of course in our hearts. With Maeda’s passing, I cannot help but think of generations of La MaMa that came before us.  I go back to the beginnings when Ellen Stewart started La MaMa. She didn’t set out to establish a theatre, but her friends were theatre artists and they needed space to create.  Now with our theatres closed, La MaMa is focused on the virtual space for artists as we continue to present a multiplicity of perspectives and to experiment with different artistic mediums and theatrical forms. Ellen used theatre as a vehicle to bring global communities together; now we are leveraging the internet and other emerging technologies as creative tools for making art and connecting people around the world. Since 2009, La MaMa in partnership with Seoul Institute of the Arts founded CultureHub. Together we have been exploring emerging technologies, making online art and educational programs, and livestreaming countless productions. Artists need to be in this space, to inform how these online platforms can be used for art. In the artist’s hands, work generated online will expand our understanding and potential of this new venue where we can gather as humans, as a community. During this crisis, the numbers of viewers in our livestreams have drastically increased. Each stream shows viewers from various states, as well as in countries across the globe. The impact and access of the artists’ work to go beyond the four walls of our theatres is how we imagine La MaMa’s future. La MaMa will always present live performance in our theatres and nothing will replace the need for us to experience something in a physical space together.  When our work resumes in the theatres, these online explorations will continue and inform how artists can make/share work and how audiences can be engaged. For now we are postponing our productions for the rest of the season but we forge ahead to experiment and collaborate with our artists online through the summer. Life is changing around us and as we process where we are and where we are headed, art creates an environment of sensitivity which opens up the possibility for change. La MaMa has always been shaped by its community of artists and audiences. It is all of you who give me energy and hope. In exploring what new experiences we can create I am inspired by Maeda who never stopped working until his last days. I feel his spirit in this endeavor to never stop experimenting and examining our humanity through artistic creation. Love, Mia

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La MaMa @ the Tony Awards!

  La MaMa Accepts the 2018 Regional Theatre TONY Award from La MaMa on Vimeo.

It was a great night for La MaMa as it was awarded the 2018 Regional Theater Tony Award at Radio City Music Hall. _____

Board President Frank Carucci and Artistic Director Mia Yoo on the red carpet

Mia Yoo being interviewed on the red carpet

Mia Yoo and the La MaMa Company backstage at The Tony Awards

La MaMa's Tony Award

Mia Yoo in the press room

photo by David Gordon (TheaterMania)

Meanwhile, back at La MaMa, we held a Tony Viewing Party in The Ellen Stewart Theatre for friends and family!

Photo by Sophie de Baun

Click Here to see photos from the party!

Diane Lane Visits La MaMa

Academy Award Nominee Diane Lane came back to La MaMa to film an interview with Anthony Mason for CBS This Morning.  Diane began her career here at La MaMa at the age of six.

Diane Lane in the La MaMa Archive

Archive Director Ozzie Rodriguez and Diane Lane

Diane Lane with Artistic Director Mia Yoo

Archive Director Ozzie Rodriguez and Diane Lane

All Photos by Theo Cote

See the full interview here.

Artistic Director Mia Yoo on The 55th Season!

Dear Friends,

Our 55th season celebrates the creative and collective histories of La MaMa's local and global communities. La MaMa was born from a need within a small community of artists for an artistic home where they could create and voice their struggles and triumphs through art. Over the years, this community grew to include artists based in different parts of the United States, Europe, Asia, Oceania, South America and Africa.

Today, these long-term relationships have taken on a new life. New pathways in performance and technology can now connect the myriad experiences, politics, conflicts, aesthetics, intimacies, and dreams of people and communities participating in an increasingly globalized world. Our season programming explores the different connections between our local and global communities and how, in a world with changing modes of communication, these connections sustain and even thrive.

In bringing together different people from different places, my hope is that our 55th season could perhaps create a theatre of peoples, of the languages and maps and stories with which we build and inhabit shared worlds.

Love,
Mia
Artistic Director

Celebrate 55 Years of La MaMa!

#LaMaMa55 #LaMaMaWorld

Visit www.lamama.org for Tickets & More Information!

 

BroadwayWorld on Pasolini's PYLADE at La MaMa

BroadwayWorld covers the US premier of PYLADE by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Directed by Ivica Buljan, the cast includes leading actor of the Slovenian National Theatre, Marco Mandic joining members of The Great Jones Repertory Company, including La MaMa's Artistic Director, Mia Yoo,  Perry Yung, Cary Gant, Eugene the Poogene, Maura Donahue, Valois Mickens, John Gutierrez, Chris Wild and Tunde Sho.

"Pasolini's PYLADE, a contemporary reinterpretation of the relationship between Pylades and Orestes from Greek mythology and the ORESTEIA, is a poetic, tragic meditation on democracy, consumerism, and the struggle for real social change. The rhythm and emotion of Pasolini's text, translated into English by Adam Paolozza and Coleen MacPherson, is heightened by the music and movement incorporated into this production by Buljan and GJRC, to create a total theatre of movement, text, spectacle and music. "The re-construction" of democracy was of principal interest to Pasolini," stated Mr. Buljan."

PLYADE plays The Ellen Stewart Theater from December 3 - 18, 2015 for 10 performances only.

La MaMa presents

PYLADE

Written by Pier Paolo Pasolini
English Translation of Pylade is by Adam Paolozza and Coleen MacPherson
Directed by Ivica Buljan
Assistant Directed by Arthur Adair
Performed by Great Jones Repertory Company with Marco Mandić
Music composed by Michael Sirotta, additional music by Yukio Tsuji and Heather Paauwe

Thursday December 3 - Friday December 18, 2015
Thursday - Saturday at 7pm; Sunday at 4pm

The Ellen Stewart Theatre at La MaMa
66 East 4th Street
(between Bowery and Second Avenue)
New York, NY 10003

Tickets: $25 Adults; $20 Students/Seniors; ten tickets priced at $10 each available for each performance, in advance only, as part of La MaMa's 10@$10 ticketing program!

For Tickets and Info: CLICK HERE