Theodora Skipitares News

THE FOUR LIVES – the newest work by Theodora Skipitares, renowned for her innovative use of puppetry to explore classic Greek texts – will have its world-premiere with performances April 5-21, 2024 at the Ellen Stewart Theatre.

La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club announces its 62nd Season and its RADICAL ACCESS INITITATIVE (RAI), an expansion of La MaMa's local and global network that increases outreach to new artists and audiences beyond the four walls of La MaMa's three theatres and new Community Arts Space.

Tickets are now on sale for the 5th Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, the largest of its kind in North America, returning January 18-29, 2023, at venues large and small throughout the city.

A recreation of Eartha Kitt's brief speech at a White House event is the thrilling dramatic centerpiece of playwright/performer Dierdra McDowell's excellent solo play, Down To Eartha.

La MaMa in association with Skysaver Productions presents GRAND PANORAMA – a music-theater work by Theodora Skipitares about Frederick Douglass's obsession with photography and its power to 'tell the truth' about the humanity of African-Americans during slavery – will be given its world-premiere at La MaMa, with previews beginning February 17 prior to a press opening on February 20, it has been announced by Mia Yoo, La MaMa's artistic director.

Puppets of New York: Downtown at the Clemente is now on view at The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center, highlighting the work of 12 downtown NYC artists who explore the theatrical possibilities of puppet theater.

The Tony Award-winning theatre has announced a fresh season of work – on its various stages in the East Village - that explores new rituals of our time from a multiplicity of perspectives and speaks to the epic changes of the 21st century.

The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center has announced the new line-up of its new global series, SEGAL TALKS. Since the beginning in March the series featured close to 100 talks with 150 artists from 50 countries. New York, US, and international theatre artists, curators, researchers, and academics will talk daily during the week for one hour with Segal Center's director, Frank Hentschker, about life and art in the Ti

La MaMa's 58th Season continues to celebrate the centennial of La MaMa's celebrated founder, the late Ellen Stewart with the announcement of its Winter/Spring lineup in its 58th season. The season features dozens of artists, playwrights, choreographers, directors, and award-winning theater companies and composers, including Elizabeth Swados, Anne Bogart, Noche Flamencia, Culture Hub, Hideki Noda/Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre, Nick Payne, En Garde Arts, Split Britches, and more.

Theodora Skipitares has achieved renown for her large-scale puppetry epics on such topics as physics, genetics and medicine. An early American giant of science is the subject of her latest multi-media spectacle, 'The Transfiguration of Benjamin Banneker.' It celebrates the life of the free black man who, living in Maryland from 1731 to 1806, became one of his era's most outstanding engineers and astronomers. La MaMa will present the world premiere of the piece January 23 to February 2 in its Ellen Stewart Theatre, at 66 East Fourth Street.

La MaMa announced today their 2019 Gala celebrating Ellen Stewart's Centennial.

For its second installment of the 2019 Fall Puppet Forum Series, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will host Critical and Historical Investigations into Women and Puppetry with Claudia Orenstein, Alissa Mello, and Theodora Skipitares, moderated by UConn Puppet Arts student Felicia Cooper. Join us on Thursday, Oct. 24, 2019 at 7 p.m. at the Ballard Institute Theater, located at 1 Royce Circle in Downtown Storrs.

UConn Puppet Arts Director Bart. P. Roccoberton, Jr. will discuss the past, present, and future of the UConn Puppet Arts Program in a forum on Sept. 19, 2019 at 7 p.m. Photos courtesy of Bart. P. Roccoberton, Jr.] For its first installment of the 2019 Fall Puppet Forum Series, and in conjunction with the exhibit It's Always Pandemonium: The Puppets of Bart Roccoberton, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will host Building Puppeteers: How We Got Here and Where Are We Going with UConn Puppet Arts Program Director Bart. P. Roccoberton, Jr. on Thursday, Sept. 19 at 7 p.m. at the Ballard Institute Theater, located at 1 Royce Circle in Downtown Storrs.

For its 2019 Fall Puppet Forum Series, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will host four free scintillating discussions with puppeteers, scholars, and artists on Thursday evenings at 7 p.m. in September through December in the Ballard Institute Theater, located at 1 Royce Circle in Downtown Storrs. These forums will illuminate new perspectives on the creation, history, aesthetics, and performance of puppetry today. 

La MaMa announces its 58th season, featuring more than twenty world and US premieres, and dozens of artists, playwrights, choreographers, directors, award-winning theater companies and composers, including Philip Glass, Andrei Serban, Estelle Parsons, Germaine Acogny, Evan Yionoulis, Theodora Skipitares, Anne Bogart, Charlotte Brathwaite and many more.

Parity Productions, the New York based theatre company dedicated to producing new work and filling at least 50% of the creative positions (playwrights, directors, and designers) with women and/or trans and gender nonconforming (TCNG) artists, opened Charlie's Waiting by Inaugural Parity Commission Winner Melisa Annis on March 31 at Theaterlab (357 W 36th St, New York, NY 10018) hosted by TLab Shares. Charlie's Waiting is playing an extended run of 21 performances now through April 20. The cast is led by Tony nominee Xanthe Elbrick (Broadway: Coram Boy, Candida), and features Stephanie Heitman (A Snowfall in Berlin), and Amy Scanlon (Balladeers Play to the Moon) and is directed by Parity Productions Artistic Director, Ludovica Villar Hauser. 

LA MAMA KIDS -- a series of creative workshops and performances for youngsters ages 4 to 12 and their families, presented annually by the Tony Award-winning La MaMa theater - returns for its sixth year this spring with special events set for select weekends from March 23 to June 9, it has been announced by Mia Yoo, La MaMa's Artistic Director.

LA MAMA announces its Puppet Festival, (November 1 - 25, 2018), featuring the New York and World premiere of works by artists from around the world including Germany, Brazil, Australia, Japan, Colombia, China, Belgium, and the USA taking place at La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theatre and The Downstairs (66 E. 4 St.), in the East Village throughout the month of November.

LA MAMA announces its Puppet Festival, (November 1 - 25, 2018), featuring the New York and World premiere of works by artists from around the world including Germany, Brazil, Australia, Japan, Colombia, China, Belgium, and the USA taking place at La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theatre and The Downstairs (66 E. 4 St.), in the East Village throughout the month of November.

'There's Blood at the Wedding' is a new work by Theodora Skipitares employing large-scale puppetry and documentary narration.