NY Times Fall Preview

Thanks to The New York Times for featuring La MaMa in their Fall Preview issue!  Come see Charles Ludlam's CONQUEST OF THE UNIVERSE OR WHEN QUEENS COLLIDE directed by Everett Quinton, the New York premiere of BURNING DOORS by Belarus Free Theatre, The world premiere of PANORAMA PT. 1 by Motus Theatre and The Great Jones Repertory Company and so much more this season at La MaMa.

And you can get $10 tickets to ALL shows at La MaMa with an ETC Membership.  CLICK HERE to learn more.

2014 @ La MaMa (in Pictures)

Here is a pictorial look 

at just a handful of shows 

that happened in 2014 @ La MaMa!

Peggy Shaw in RUFF

Black Out by Philippe Saire (Under The Radar Festival)

El Año en Que Nací by Lola Arias (Under The Radar Festival)

The Wong Kids In  The Secret Of The 

Space  Chupacabra Go! by Ma-Yi Theater

Rumore di acque 

(Noise in the Waters) 
by Marco Martinelli 

Captain John Smith Goes to Ukraine by Yara Arts Group

What I learned from 
a decade of fear by Aluna Theatre

Bum Philips: All-American Opera by Monk Parrots

Zachary Karabashliev's Lissabon

THE MAIDEN by Nerve Tank

 DJ Spooky's Seoul Counterpoint by Culturehub

Theodora Skipitares' The Chairs

Myth or Meth by Radiohole 

(part of The Tom Murrin Full Moon Performance Festival)

Catherine Filloux's Selma 65

Tempest directed by Karin Coonrod (part of the Tempest 3 series)

The Elephant in Every Room I Enter 

written and performed by Gardner Comfort

AdA: Author directing Author 

by Neil LaBute and Marco Calvani 

Dead End Dummy by Dick Zigun 

Mokwha Repertory Company's The Tempest 

(part of the Tempest 3 series)

Motus Theatre Company's Nella Tempesta

(part of the Tempest 3 series)

We'll see you in 2015

@ LaMaMa

The reviews are IN for NELLA TEMPESTA!

“'Nella Tempesta,' which runs through Dec. 21 at the Ellen Stewart Theater at La MaMa, 

is a full-throated cry to the young and disaffected to get off their collective duffs, 

shake off their shackles and do something. Conceived and directed 

by Daniela Nicolò and Enrico Casagrande, this production turns 

a cast of six and an assortment of blankets into an 80-minute youthquake 

that seems likely to leave even cynical audience members shaken and stirred."

- Ben Brantley, The New York Times

-----

"a ruminative and resonant production by Italy's Motus Theatre Company...This isn't so much a drama as an evocative theatrical search through the symbolic sphere. Nella Tempesta can be discursive, but ultimately it makes an elegiac and stirring forecast of bad political weather headed our way." 

-Tom Sellar, Village Voice

-----

"BEST BET...A mind expanding new production from Italy’s Motus Theatre Company that masterfully illuminates contemporary political and climate change issues alongside text borrowed from Shakespeare."

- Keith Paul Medelis, Theatre Is Easy

-----

"Political Drama At Its Finest...It’s refreshing to see this kind of play at La MaMa. Plays like Nella Tempesta provide exactly the kind of theater experience that keeps La MaMa so relevant."

- Marcina Zaccaria, Theater Pizzazz 

-----

 the third production of “The Tempest” at LaMaMa this season, 
and it is richly inventive and visually arresting.
..it’s the blankets that make this show so breathtaking. 
The blankets comfort, and buffet and transport us. 

- Jonathan Mandell, New York Theater.me

La MaMa presents
NELLA 
TEMPESTA
by Motus Theatre

Now through 21st, 2014
Thursday - Saturday @ 8pm; Sunday @ 4pm

Audiences are encouraged to bring a clean, unwanted blanket to the performances.  The blanket will be used in the performance and donated to someone who needs it after the NYC run.

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

Tickets: $30 Adults; $25 Students/Seniors; 10@$10 Tickets are sold out!

For Tickets and Info: CLICK HERE

Theater Pizzazz on NELLA TEMPESTA

Marcina Zaccaria, of Theater Pizzazz,  has high praise for Motus Theatre Company's Nella Tempesta, now playing at The Ellen Stewart Theatre until December 21.

"Political Drama At Its Finest" 

"rigorous theater that is unafraid of the larger inquiry into dynamics of power and people." 

"It’s refreshing to see this kind of play at La MaMa. Plays like Nella Tempesta provide exactly the kind of theater experience that keeps La MaMa so relevant."

Read the full review HERE.

La MaMa presents
NELLA 
TEMPESTA
by Motus Theatre

December 11th - 21st, 2014
Thursday - Saturday @ 8pm; Sunday @ 4pm

Audiences are encouraged to bring a clean, unwanted blanket to the performances.  The blanket will be used in the performance and donated to someone who needs it after the NYC run.

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

Tickets: $30 Adults; $25 Students/Seniors; 10@$10 Tickets are sold out!

For Tickets and Info: CLICK HERE

NY Times Loves NELLA TEMPESTA

The New York Times' Ben Brantley came to see Nella Tempesta last night and his review is already on line.  He loved it, and you will too!

“'Nella Tempesta,' which runs through Dec. 21 at the Ellen Stewart Theater at La MaMa, is a full-throated cry to the young and disaffected to get off their collective duffs, shake off their shackles and do something. Conceived and directed by Daniela Nicolò and Enrico Casagrande, this production turns a cast of six and an assortment of blankets into an 80-minute youthquake that seems likely to leave even cynical audience members shaken and stirred."

"There was a time, a half-century ago, when such rough-hewed, kinetically charged, politically aggressive theater was common in New York. And “Nella Tempesta” quivers with vibrations from that time. It seems only right that the production should be staged at La MaMa, which has a history of convention-flouting theater in the raw that dates to the early 1960s, and that its soundscape includes the recorded voice of Judith Malina, a founder of the iconoclastic Living Theater."

"The third installment of La MaMa’s season of plays inspired by “The Tempest” (which included a New York-grown version and an import from South Korea), “Nella Tempesta” is openly didactic and exhortative in ways seldom encountered in American theater these days. It doesn’t pretend to have any answers to the crises of environmental degradation, war, famine and racism that the world faces."

"What it does do is convey the belief that nothing will come of nothing, as another tyrant out of Shakespeare, King Lear, observed — that stasis breeds only more stasis. Tempests may destroy, but they have the virtue of sweeping people into action. And for as long as this determined, resourceful company is in extravagant, unceasing motion onstage, you may even believe that world-shaking change is possible after all."

Read the full NY Times review HERE

Now through Sunday, December 21st only!

La MaMa presents
NELLA 
TEMPESTA
by Motus Theatre

December 11th - 21st, 2014
Thursday - Saturday @ 8pm; Sunday @ 4pm

*Dance party immediately following the Saturday, December 13th performance.  DJ: Silvia Calderoni.  Free for all ticket holders.  Cash bar.

Audiences are encouraged to bring a clean, unwanted blanket to the performances.  The blanket will be used in the performance and donated to someone who needs it after the NYC run.

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

Tickets: $30 Adults; $25 Students/Seniors; a handful of 10@$10 Tickets are still available for some performances

For Tickets and Info: CLICK HERE

TheaterLab Party for MOTUS!

On Tuesday, our friends at TheaterLab threw a Celebrate The Artist party for Motus!  

It was a fabulous event as you can see here:

Come see Motus' NELLA TEMPESTA at La MaMa December 11 - 21, 2014.

La MaMa presents
NELLA 
TEMPESTA
by Motus Theatre

December 11th - 21st, 2014
Thursday - Saturday @ 8pm; Sunday @ 4pm

*Dance party immediately following the Saturday, December 13th performance.  DJ: Silvia Calderoni.  Free for all ticket holders.  Cash bar.

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

Tickets: $30 Adults; $25 Students/Seniors; a handful of 10@$10 Tickets are still available for some performances

For Tickets and Info: CLICK HERE

Julia Dobner-Pereira on MOTUS

We left a rained out Sagra to drive back through the hills of Umbria to the magical and ethereal house of La MaMa. A Sagra is an outdoor celebration of life and family that happens most weekends of an Italian summer. This one was rained out, held in a plastic tent with fluorescent lighting and tiny beers. The band left before dinner.

The ride back was dark and turbid, and for the first few minutes we just listened to the rain and thunder that was everywhere. I was happy to be in the MOTUS car, with two soft, heavy heads on my shoulders. We sang softly and Daniela asked for more. Neither Enrico Casagrande nor Daniela Francesconi Nicolò (founders of MOTUS) joined; they just listened with rapt attention, because that is what they do. MOTUS is youth, fire, revolution: urgent political theatre. It is not about creating to match up or pursue, it is creating because that is the only thing to do.

The stormy, beautiful Sagra night ended Enrico and Daniela’s week at La MaMa Umbria. When I think about the summer now, I remember first, effortlessly, three distinct things. I can pull up myriad other tiny kaleidoscope details from my idyllic summer but these come first.

One. A film I created with two other students about monotony, broken patterns, and blasphemy. Enrico and Daniela fired us up and then set us free – giving us only two guidelines: observe someone in town for an hour or so on your own, and then work in a small group to create a one-shot film. The instructions weren’t important. What kindled every film created was the foundation we received during our first workshop with MOTUS. Enrico and Daniela shared footage from their experiences at demonstrations across Europe, occupying an abandoned city in Germany, and, most memorable to me – their time spent on a refugee camp island between Northern Africa and Italy. Never before had I seen politics and theatre converge like this.

Two. Occupy Teatro Valle. Really, for me - physically - this was just posing in a photo. Mentally, it was a heart-racing engagement that made me want to scream. Since then, topped only by the injustice of Ferguson and what is happening right now. In August, The Roman government was trying to take away the theatre of the people – Teatro Valle – and artists like MOTUS reacted fiercely: occupying the space in higher numbers, organizing protests, and starting an international social media campaign that La MaMa Umbria took part in.

Three. The storm. MOTUS examined storms on a personal, political, and environmental plane, and then they went even further, asking people around the world “What does it mean to be in the eye of the storm?” In Umbria, we dealt with this question by interviewing each other while Enrico and Daniela observed. We polarized ourselves to two sides of the room, with a camera, monitor, and microphone at one end. We played with this polarization, interacting in pairs to find ways across the line. Two by two, we took turns interviewing each other, our answers projected through body and voice on the monitor. The intimacy of being interviewed by one person demanded truth, while the knowledge that your words affected the group’s movement and polarization demanded compassion.

MOTUS is doing what we all need to do. They are responding now to what is happening now, not living in a post-70s delusional haze or grasping for some un-nameable immersive technological experience to credit to their names. They will stay up all night to help you work, because they love each other and their work and their actor Silvia and all things that speak with truth.

After that rained-out Sagra last summer, Enrico and Daniela said – “we will dance in New York!” 

Go see Nella Tempesta at La MaMa and dance with Enrico and Daniela after the show on December 13th, when Silvia Calderoni will be DJing after the 8pm performance. Bring blankets to support MOTUS and then warm a body that needs it. Feel the thing you thought you were going to feel when you were 15, dreaming about imaginary art on your bedroom floor.

La MaMa presents
NELLA 
TEMPESTA
by Motus Theatre

December 11th - 21st, 2014
Thursday - Saturday @ 8pm; Sunday @ 4pm

*Dance party immediately following the Saturday, December 13th performance.  DJ: Silvia Calderoni.  Free for all ticket holders.  Cash bar.

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

Tickets: $30 Adults; $25 Students/Seniors; a handful of 10@$10 Tickets are still available for some performances

For Tickets and Info: CLICK HERE

Nella Tempesta Blanket Drive

Blankets play a very important part in Motus Theatre Company's Nella Tempesta - both on stage and off.  Where ever Nella Tempesta has played, audiences have been asked to bring blankets to the performances that will be used in the show and then donated to a local organization after the run.

The company in making Nella Tempesta thought about what would be a necessary item for a defenseless body after a hurricane, a shipwreck or an armed conflict? The most immediate answer was a blanket. The set of Nella Tempesta is created from blankets that will be donated to shelters and social service organizations at the end of the run.

We hope you come see this amazing show, and that our New York audience will engage in this way and give back during the holiday season!

So, bring a clean blanket to The Ellen Stewart Theatre when you come see Nella Tempesta, see it used in the show, and know that it will be given to someone who needs it after the run.

La MaMa presents
NELLA 
TEMPESTA
by Motus Theatre

December 11th - 21st, 2014
Thursday - Saturday @ 8pm; Sunday @ 4pm

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

Tickets: $30 Adults; $25 Students/Seniors; a handful of 10@$10 Tickets are still available for some performances

For Tickets and Info: CLICK HERE