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Off-Off-Broadway Theater for Emerging Playwrights, Avant Garde Drama and Performance Art
& why it made the Carpe City list
The theater has had many well-known performers and playwrights pass through such as Steve Buscemi, Julie Taymor, Bette Midler, Philip Glass, the Blue Man Group, Ed Bullins, Diane Lane, Harvey Fierstein, Al Pacino, Olympia Dukakis, Richard Dreyfus, Robert DeNiro, and Sam Shepard. Author David Sedaris said: “Were it not for La MaMa, Amy [Sedaris] and I would never have written a single play, much less five.”
Ellen Stewart was born in Chicago in 1919. In the 1950s, she moved to New York City and became a fashion designer and dressmaker. Ellen first worked as an alterationist at Saks Fifth Avenue and then as a designer at Bergdorf Goodman and Henri Bendel. She founded the theater in 1961 despite having no theater or performance background.
Because it was easier to get a license for a café than a theater, Café La Mama was its original name. She would charge for café items and pass a hat to pay the performers. According to The New York Times, neighbors originally wanted to shut the space down. In interviews Stewart said, “The neighbors thought I was running a brothel. Otherwise, why would so many white men be visiting a black woman in a basement?”
Soon La Mama became known as the place where up-and-coming artists with cutting-edge ideas could get their start. The theater outgrew its space and moved a couple of times before landing on East 4th Street, and the rest is history. In 1993, Stewart was inducted into the Broadway Hall of Fame. She passed away in 2011 at the age of 91.
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