Jeremy O. Harris, Nicky Paraiso, Ty Defoe and More Join La MaMa's December Lineup

La MaMa has announced upcoming programming for December 2020. The month will feature Cairo KitKat Club by HaRaKa Platform (Adham Hafez, Mona Gamil, Lamia Gouda, Adam Kucharski), co-presented with Goethe-Institut and in partnership with artists and specialists from New York, Berlin, Cairo, and London, on December 11-14; Christmas in Virtual NickyLand 2020 by Nicky Paraiso on December 15; and La MaMa's Squirts: Generations of Queer Performance - Reflections 2020, curated by Alexander Paris on December 18-19. The events will stream for free on La MaMa's website. For more information and to RSVP to receive a reminder, visit www.lamama.org.

CAIRO KITKAT CLUB

Digital Cabaret Performance

By HaRaKa Platform (Adham Hafez, Mona Gamil, Lamia Gouda, Adam Kucharski), co-presented with Goethe-Institut and in partnership with artists and specialists from New York, Berlin, Cairo, and London.

December 11-14, 2020 at 5PM EST

Cairo KitKat Club shuttles between the past and the present moment, reflecting on the future of performance in a world shaped by borders, pandemics, and financial collapse.

This multimedia project retells the history of cabaret and clandestine performance through the story of Egypt's KitKat Club, the now-demolished, infamous nightclub established in 18th century Cairo. The cabaret and its patrons witnessed radical performance practices by artists from Egypt, Germany, the US, and France against a backdrop of colonialist conquests, urban decay, and revolutionary hope.

Filming for the New York premiere at the Goethe-Institut New York was shot on location in Cairo, NYC, and Berlin, including the forgotten site of Egypt's Kit Kat Club, which has since been replaced with a bus station, mosque, and new subway station; the iconic Ellen Stewart Theatre at La MaMa ETC (NYC); and the Kit Kat Club in Berlin (now used as Covid-19 testing center) - the first time cameras have been allowed in the notorious nightclub.

Cairo KitKat Club is conceived, choreographed, and directed by Adham Hafez and performed, researched, and composed by Mona Gamil, Lamia Gouda, Hafez, Ohoude Khadr, Adam Kucharski, and Cindy Sibilsky. Guest stars include Ohoude Khadr (Berlin), Fadi J. Khoury (New York), Nicky Paraiso (New York), and Amie Sultan (Cairo). Mask designs and styling is by YASHMASK and Lamia Gouda and video and sound editing is by Gamil, Hafez, and Waad Taai. Mido Sadek is the technical director and production manager and Shayma Aziz is the visual consultant.

The project is developed through Cairo Critical Cabaret, a performance lab initiated by HaRaKa Platform, experimenting with the form and history of cabaret through the staging of artistic objects, processes, and interventions. The research was conducted in Berlin, Cairo, London, and New York. It includes recently declassified MI5 files, oral histories from the KitKat neighborhood in Cairo, and chronicles of intergenerational clubbing within Cairo, New York, and Berlin's nightlife as we face a contemporary moment devoid of theatres, cabarets, or clubs.

Cairo KitKat Club is an episodic and modular project, staged in different constellations each time it's presented. The New York premiere is made possible with support from Goethe-Institut New York and Co-presented by La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, and further supported by The Sundance Institute, Hilal Foundation, Kuchar&Co, and Yashmask.

CHRISTMAS IN VIRTUAL NICKYLAND 2020

By Nicky Parasio

Tuesday, December 15, 2020 at 7PM EST

La MaMa presents Nicky Paraiso as the master of ceremonies for the ultimate holiday cabaret at La MaMa. What does it mean to come together and celebrate during this particular holiday season? As a community of individuals of many beliefs and backgrounds, we can use this year-end holiday time to reflect, heal, find solace as we celebrate together. Joy to this world!

Scheduled to appear are Yoshiko Chuma with Ginger Dolden, Kyle Dacuyan, Ginger Dolden and Pete Lanctot, Potri Ranka Manis, Meredith Monk, John Scott with Mortimer, Justin Elizabeth Sayre, and Paz Tanjuaquio.

Nicky Paraiso has been Director of Programming at The Club at La MaMa since 2001 and is also Curator for the annual La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival.

LA MAMA'S SQUIRTS: GENERATIONS OF QUEER PERFORMANCE

Reflections 2020

Curated by Alexander Paris

Friday, December 18 & Saturday, December 19, 2020 at 8PM EST

Each year, La MaMa's Squirts gathers the most exciting voices from New York City's queer performance world, across the generations. In this year's live-streaming Squirts event, emerging artist Alexander Paris curates Reflections 2020--a weekend of queer introspection at a moment of global precarity.

On the first evening - Friday, December 18th - Paris will present reflections from a wildly diverse mix of 20 queer artists of multiple generations, genres and aesthetics, including Starr Busby, Staceyann Chin, Anne Cuntyham, Ena Da, Ty Defoe, K8 Hardy, Soo Intoit, Daniel Alexander Jones, Kyle Lopez, Junior Mintt, Jeremy O. Harris, Mthr Trsa, Nicky Paraiso, Richard Perez, Julius (Julie J) Powell, Lorelei Ramirez, Pamela Sneed, Basit Shittu, and Ianne Fields Stewart. Each of them will reflect upon who they are at this historical crossroads, as global fascism attempts to consolidate its grasp, as neoliberalism attempts to reclaim its dominance and as domestic movements for liberation are reshaping the cultural landscape.

The following night - December 19th - will reflect upon those reflections, as Paris engages Guggenheim Award-winning performing artist Daniel Alexander Jones in an evening-length, hybrid dialogue/performance about what it means to look within when the outside world brings so much chaos to our doorsteps.

Alexander Paris is a multidisciplinary performer, writer, and occasional existentialist. The work they create normally lives at some intersection of autofiction and surrealism. They enjoy world building, deep honesty, high camp, and mess. In 2019 they had artistic fellowships with the Performance Project at University Settlement and Clubbed Thumb. A reading of their play Suzanne happened as a part of La MaMa's Experiments series. Before the quarantine they were working out new material in the Brooklyn comedy and nightlife scenes. Now, in the middle of the pandemic, they are learning what is most important to them.

For eight years, La MaMa's Squirts: Generations of Queer Performance has been the flagship program of the The Helix Queer Performance Network, and while the festival will continue at La MaMa, Helix reaches its conclusion this year. Founded in 2013 by playwright/performer Dan Fishback, Helix has been a collaboration between La MaMa, BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange and the Hemispheric Institute of Performance & Politics, with Fishback serving as director. At La MaMa, Helix has previously presented seven annual iterations of La MaMa's Squirts, created by Fishback and featuring hundreds of queer artists over the years. Initially invited by Nicky Paraiso to help bring a new generation of queer artists to La MaMa, Dan Fishback conceived of La MaMa's Squirts as a healing space to mend fractures in queer community across age, race, gender and class. At the helm of the festival, Fishback ushered in a new chapter of queer abundance at La MaMa, akin to its early years, in which the stage was open to queer artists often overlooked by major institutions. Unlike many other downtown arts festivals, La MaMa's Squirts placed an emphasis on young artists of color who were developing work outside of the MFA industrial complex, and outside of white-dominant queer art scenes that historically favored the work of thin, white, cisgender men.

While Fishback curated the series through 2017, subsequent curators included Eva Yaa Asantewaa, Linda LaBeija, Shannon Matesky, Cecilia Gentili, Charlene Incarnate and Mizz June.

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