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!

Time Out NY Reviews THIS IS WINSOME BROWN

Time Out New York's Raven Snook covers Winsome Brown's solo 

performance, This Is Mary Brown - now playing through June 28, 2015:

"A versatile performer on a near-empty stage, Brown inhabits more than a dozen characters, including her mum, her Alaskan frontiersman dad, Toronto-bred siblings and herself, shifting adeptly among them with slight but effective tweaks in voice and stance...a fitting tribute to the title mom, and all the flawed mothers who still toil away uncelebrated." 

Read the full review: HERE

La MaMa presents
THIS IS 
MARY BROWN
A new play written and performed by Winsome Brown
Directed by Brad Rouse

June 11 - 28, 2018
Thursday - Saturday at 7:30pm; Sunday at 2pm

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

Tickets: $18 Adults; $13 Students/Seniors; ten tickets priced at $10 each are available for every performance (while they last) pre-sale only! 10@$10 Tickets are sold out!  Regular priced tickets still available for most performances.

Tickets and Info: CLICK HERE

NY Times on THIS IS MARY BROWN

The New York Times' Ken Jaworowski has nice things to say about Winsome Brown's THIS IS MARY BROWN, now playing at The First Floor Theatre at La MaMa through June 28, 2015:

"The title character of “This Is Mary Brown” didn’t lead an exciting life, but she inspired a lovely little play. This one-woman show, written and performed by her daughter, Winsome Brown, never sugarcoats a somewhat sad story, and that honesty makes it all the more admirable."

Read the full review: HERE

La MaMa presents
THIS IS 
MARY BROWN
A new play written and performed by Winsome Brown
Directed by Brad Rouse

June 11 - 28, 2018
Thursday - Saturday at 7:30pm; Sunday at 2pm

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

Tickets: $18 Adults; $13 Students/Seniors; ten tickets priced at $10 each are available for every performance (while they last) pre-sale only! 10@$10 Tickets are sold out!  Regular priced tickets still available for most performances.

Tickets and Info: CLICK HERE

Video Preview: THIS IS MARY BROWN

Check out the trailer for Obie-award winner Winsome Brown's one-woman play, This is Mary Brown, coming to The First Floor Theatre at La MaMa, June 11 - 28, 2015. Winsome channels her wickedly funny Irish mother, her Alaskan frontiersman father, and her engaging family to tell the story of a simple life.

La MaMa presents
THIS IS 
MARY BROWN
A new play written and performed by Winsome Brown
Directed by Brad Rouse

June 11 - 28, 2018
Thursday - Saturday at 7:30pm; Sunday at 2pm

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

Tickets: $18 Adults; $13 Students/Seniors; ten tickets priced at $10 each are available for every performance (while they last) pre-sale only!
Tickets and Info: CLICK HERE

6 QUESTIONS: Winsome Brown

Photo by Mick Cantarella

In the beautiful one-woman show, This Is Mary Brown, Obie-award winner Winsome Brown channels her wickedly funny Irish mother, her Alaskan frontiersman father, and her engaging family to tell the story of a simple life. Winsome took time out of rehearsals to answer our six questions.

1. This is Mary Brown is about your mother - how did you decide to to turn your mother's story into a performance?
It was Brad Rouse, the director’s idea. It was January of 2014 and we were working on another project -- a secret project I am still working on, stay tuned! -- and he said “I think you have a more immediate story to tell. One that will touch many people.” “What’s that?” I asked. “The story of your mother,” he said. It was like a veil fell from my eyes, and I saw clearly that this was a good thing to do. Or to try. “I’ll call it This is Mary Brown,” I said. I had the title before a single word of the show was written. How it came as an idea to Brad was that he had heard me tell stories about Mum and found her both hilarious and deeply human.

2. What do you think your mother would think of the show?

This is a hard question – one I have struggled with myself. But I have an answer. I think at first she would think it was a preposterous idea, and invasive to boot. But after she saw how her story affects people, she would be moved and eventually proud. For example: an elegant woman in her 60s came to see a rehearsal of the show and after it was over she came up to me in floods of tears and said, “I know her!” Someone being so touched by her own private – and unimportant, I bet Mum would think – story, would eventually help her to see its value.

It means a lot to me to have this story be about Mum, rather than about a fictionalized version of her, or of the rest of my family. Mum was a housewife. Her legacy is in her children and in the family she created and managed. In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf searches for stories of women and finds none. All those women raising children, making beds, cleaning the house, do not figure in history. Their names are not known. I wanted Mum’s name to be known.

3. This is Mary Brown is a one-person play - what are some of the challenges and rewards of doing a solo performance?

The most daunting challenge is loneliness. There’s no other actor to share the ride with on stage. So my partner in the performance is the audience. I have developed this show over the course of a year and a half, showing it to a few people at a time. Through this process, I have come to trust the material, trust the audience, and be inspired and moved by the communion that happens between us. My relation with the director is also very important. It’s a very vulnerable piece. I am putting it all out there – surrendering. That kind of faith brings its own reward.

4. Who has inspired you?

The first time I saw a one-person show it was “The Importance of Being Oscar” by Micheál MacLiammóir, done by the Anna Livia Theatre Company in Toronto, my home town. I was blown away by the directness of that contact between the man on stage and me in my seat. Six years later, I performed and directed myself in that show my senior year at college. I am inspired by people who dare to try, who push themselves into the unknown and the uncomfortable. They dare to fail, and also, they dare to succeed.

I have been inspired and instructed by the gentle and long-form rehearsal process of André Gregory and Wallace Shawn. I was lucky enough to perform in The Master Builder, and see that incredible work up close. Their process of stripping away artifice – even within the confines of art – is something I aspire to in my own work on This is Mary Brown.
I am inspired by the language of real people. I hope that the writing of This is Mary Brown pulses with the energy of real life.

5. If you were stuck on a desert island, what three albums would you want with you?
Emilio de’ Cavalieri Lamentations (Le Poème Harmonique) 
Van Morrison Astral Weeks or Veedon Fleece (either one will do) 
Some Bach – right now I would choose Morimur by The Hilliard Ensemble, a mash up of Bach’s cantatas and partitas

6. What does working at La MaMa mean to you?
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. Also, the fact that I am debuting this very personal play about my mother at a place called La MaMa is wonderful to me. I am grateful to be here.

La MaMa presents
THIS IS 
MARY BROWN
A new play written and performed by Winsome Brown
Directed by Brad Rouse

June 11 - 28, 2018
Thursday - Saturday at 7:30pm; Sunday at 2pm

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

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!