Shauna Davis, Sasha Velour, Federico Restrepo, Taylor Mac and More Join La MaMa's June Programming
La MaMa's 59th Season, “Breaking It Open,” explores how new works are created, performed, and experienced during a pandemic.
By: Chloe Rabinowitz Jun. 04, 2021
La MaMa has announced programming for June 2021, which includes the previously announced La MaMa Loves Cabaret with host Sasha Velour; Lottie Platchett Took a Hatchett, written and directed by Justin Elizabeth Sayre; La MaMa Kids: Nostalgia, A Toy Theatre Presentation by Loco7 Puppet Theatre and created & performed by Sirovich Senior Center Members; La Mama Galleria: fetch fiddle fidget - Adriana Farmiga, Daphne Fitzpatrick, Rune Olsen, curated by Ksenia M. Soboleva; La MaMa Coffeehouse Chronicles #160: Morgan Jenness - Markers of a Yenta Kitchen Dog, a look at the life and career of Morgan Jenness featuring David Henry Hwang, Anne Bogart, Taylor Mac, Talking Band, Nicky Paraiso, and more; Cafe La MaMa Live: Melody of Things by New Stage, created by Ildiko Nemeth; La MaMa Open Streets Dance Party; A Few Deep Breaths, presented by CultureHub and La MaMa; Cafe La MaMa Live: Lunch With Sonia (excerpt), written by Federico Restrepo with Denise Greber; and BLACK.ECO, directed and choreographed by La MaMa 59th Season Resident Artist Shauna Davis.
Much of the programming will stream live on LaMaMa.org before becoming available on demand via Patreon. Some events will take place in person, with proper safety precautions in place.
La MaMa's 59th Season, "Breaking It Open," explores how new works are created, performed, and experienced during a pandemic. The season revolves around development residencies that are customized to the specific needs and processes of each artist. Each residency is customized to suit the artist, their unique vision, and where they are at in their creative work.
EXPERIMENTS PLAY READING SERIES:
LOTTIE PLATCHETT TOOK A HATCHETT
Written and directed by Justin Elizabeth Sayre
Monday, June 7, 2021 at 7PM EDT
A Free Online Happening
Everyone remembers the trial of Lizzie Borden, the infamous woman who "took an axe," and "gave her Ma those forty whacks," but hiding in the shallows of history was another young woman who solved her problems with some blunt force trauma. Lottie Platchett was a rich but sheltered heiress living in the small town of Rammagansatt, Rhode Island, when in the early autumn of 1892, her father, the stern Josiah, and her stepmother, the real dirt-bag, Bertha, were brutally hacked to death. Suspicion immediately fell on Lottie, but did she do it? That's for you to decide.
Lottie Platchett Took a Hatchett will star Drew Droege, Tom Lenk, Tom Detrinis, Justin Sayre, and Ryan Garcia.
For more information, visit https://www.lamama.org/shows/experiments-21-lottie-platchett-took-a-hatchett.
LA MAMA KIDS: NOSTALGIA, A TOY THEATRE PRESENTATION
By Loco7 Puppet Theatre
Created & performed by Sirovich Senior Center Members
Thursday, June 10, 2021 at 4PM EDT
A Free Online Kids Event suitable for all audiences
Nostalgia will reveal instances of love through stories based on imagined or remembered reality from members of Loco7's Sirovich Senior Center's community of artists. This presentation is made up of twelve unique short toy theatre pieces that the participants created around the theme of nostalgia and love. When we search for the meaning of love, we often reflect on the people who touched our lives; we learn from our parents, siblings, children, community, friends, life partners, mentors, national and religious views.
Nostalgia will feature works by Piedad Dickinson, Nora Glikman, Maria Grande, Megan Haungs, Dolores La Guardia, Toby Levine, Jesse Marsh, Chuck Macdonald, Ruth Tobacco, Laura Anne Walker, and Margaret Yuen.
This is the first part in Loco7's exploration of love told from the perspective of youth, seniors and middle-aged artists. This intergenerational exploration will continue with various presentations, online and in person through December 2021. It will be an opportunity for broad sectors of the population to reflect upon their own values, and that of their family and global community through the power of love.
Studies in Puppet Form and Performance, conducted by Federico Restrepo, and in partnership with Sirovich Senior Center, introduced participants to the use of puppetry and storytelling. This creative process and development of work took place over a 3-month period through weekly online meetings.
For more information, visit https://www.lamama.org/shows/la-mama-kids-online-nostalgia.
LA MAMA GALLERIA: FETCH FIDDLE FIDGET
Adriana Farmiga, Daphne Fitzpatrick, Rune Olsen
Curated by Ksenia M. Soboleva
June 10, 2021 - July 30, 2021
In-person viewings Thursday - Sunday 12-6pm.
Playful and curious, fetch fiddle fidget brings together three New York-based queer artists whose work centers on found objects. Informed by different cultural backgrounds, this magic trio shares a fondness for the absurdities of the daily and the mundane, exploring how these speak to the larger structures of our world. The three alliterated verbs that make up this exhibition's title capture a poetic element of chance that is inherent to the artists' practice. Across various media, each of their respective bodies of work reveals the lasting importance of Surrealism as a vital reference point for queer artists working with objects trouvés today.
La MaMa Galleria is located at 47 Great Jones Street, New York NY 10012. For more information, visit https://www.lamama.org/shows/la-mama-galleria-fetch-fiddle-fidget.
LA MAMA COFFEEHOUSE CHRONICLES #160:
Morgan Jenness - MARKERS OF A YENTA KITCHEN DOG
A look at the life and career of Morgan Jenness
Saturday, Saturday, June 12, 2021 at 3PM EDT
A Free Online Happening
La MaMa Coffeehouse Chronicles #160 will be moderated by Morgan Jenness and feature panelists including Maxinne Leighton, Jodi McClintock, Tom Ross, Emmett Forster, David Henry Hwang, Shelly Raffle, Muriel Borst Tarrant, Jim Nicola, Chris Grabowski, Lisa Peterson, Nina Mankin, Susan Rubin, Shelby Jiggetts, Wiley Hausam, Mark Russell, Anne Bogart and Nina Mankin
La MaMa Coffeehouse Chronicles #160 features performances by Taylor Mac, David Cale, Lisa Ramirez, Daniel Alexander Jones, Luis Alfaro, Carl Hancock Rux, Talking Band and Nicky Paraiso.
For more information, visit https://www.lamama.org/shows/coffeehouse-chronicles-160-morgan-jenness.
CAFE LA MAMA LIVE: MELODY OF THINGS BY NEW STAGE
Tuesday, June 15, 2021 at 7PM EDT
A Free Online Happening
New Stage Theatre Company presents a work-in-progress showing of the early development of its original production, Melody of Things. In a Route 66-style motel a group of travelers gather at nightfall, each fleeing a troubling past, each on a quest. Their intertwining stories unfold across territories of the real, the imaginary, and the magical. Inspired by Italo Calvino's Crossed Destinies series, the project is concerned with subterranean longings and fears-the complex, ancient currents that exist beyond human language, with language always reaching. A series of monologues give voice to the travelers' memories, struggles, and dreams, their words sometimes revealing and sometimes concealing. Through these monologues, improv exercises, and explorations of movement, the presentation creates an intricate picture of characters coming to terms with their fractured existence, feeling their way toward moments of connection.
This presentation is the result of a three-week workshop/rehearsal process led by Ildiko Nemeth and includes improvisations, vignettes, and text developed during the rehearsals. These rehearsal exercises will inform further development of the eventual piece.
The project is created by Ildiko Nemeth and Marie Glancy O'Shea, in collaboration with lighting designer Federico Restrepo, costume designer Olimpia Dior, and performers Gina Bonatti, Maciej Bartoszewski, Lisa Giobbi, Markus Hirnigel, Tatyana Kot, Justine Ivan Brown,Daniella Hauser, and Olimpia Dior. Original music by Kris Force.
For more information, visit https://www.lamama.org/shows/cafe-la-mama-live-melody-of-things.
LA MAMA OPEN STREETS DANCE PARTY
Thursday, June 17, 2021 from 5:30PM - 7:30PM
This is a free outdoor event
In partnership with Fourth Arts Block (FAB), La MaMa is throwing a dance party on East 4th Street with live DJs including Doctor Bishop.
NYC's Open Streets program allows communities to embrace new public space and support small businesses. Open Streets prioritize pedestrians and cyclists by transforming streets into public space.
THE LA MAMA LOVE CABARET WITH HOST SASHA VELOUR
A Benefit of La Mama Experimental Theatre Club
Tuesday, June 22 at 7PM EDT
This is an in-person and online event. Tickets start at $25.
The La MaMa Love Cabaret celebrates intersectional queerness at this moment of historical change. This fundraising event brings together New York's most illustrious queer artists with performers from abroad to envision a new future: a future that is full of love!
The Cabaret will feature Jasmine Rice LaBeija, Justin Vivian Bond, The Illustrious Pearl, Sweaty Eddie, Pixel the Drag Jester, Untitled Queen. and our international queer community.
The Cabaret is a live, on site benefit that will welcome a limited number of vaccinated audience members into our theatre. La MaMa will adhere to the most recent COVID-safety protocols according to the State of New York. The event will also be live streamed globally to a virtual audience.
Love is what La MaMa was founded on: love for creativity, love for humanity, and love for the earth. As we celebrate Pride Month and close out our 59th Season, we will activate the shared love of our global community through art.
Proceeds from this benefit support La MaMa's creative home for marginalized and underrepresented artists.
For tickets and more information, visit https://www.lamama.org/shows/love-cabaret.
CultureHub and La MaMa present
EXPERIMENTS IN DIGITAL STORYTELLING: A FEW DEEP BREATHS
Friday, June 25, 2021 at 8PM EDT
A Free Online Happening
In this new online work, multiple playwrights, including Erik Ehn, Adrienne Kennedy, Haruna Lee, Chuck Mee, Robert Patrick and Christopher Rivas, two performers, and an online audience come together to make a whole. As the final work in La MaMa's 59th season, Experiments in Digital Storytelling: A Few Deep Breaths is an opportunity for multiple voices, disciplines, and approaches to converge serving as a poetic reflection of this critical moment in our shared history and a meditation on the road ahead.
A Few Deep Breaths is developed in CultureHub and La MaMa's Experiments in Digital Storytelling program, which incubates story-driven artworks that harness digital distribution platforms, expand online audience engagement, and push the boundaries of current artistic forms.
For more information, visit https://www.lamama.org/shows/deep-breaths.
CAFE LA MAMA LIVE: LUNCH WITH SONIA (EXCERPT)
by Loco7 Dance Puppet Theatre Company
Written by Federico Restrepo with Denise Greber
Co-Directed by Federico Restrepo & Denise Greber
Choreographed by Federico Restrepo
Tuesday, June 29, 2021 at 7PM EDT
A Free Online Happening
Loco7 Dance Puppet Theatre Company will share an excerpt from their work-in-progress, Lunch with Sonia, which will be live streamed from The Downstairs Theatre at La MaMa.
Lunch with Sonia will be a dance puppet theatre piece, inspired by Restrepo's true-life experience with his Aunt Sonia, a woman who decided to end her life with dignity after a long illness at the age of 72. The show will use puppets, live actors, music, video and physical theatre to deal with the themes of life, love and loss.
With this piece Loco7 hopes to acknowledge the incredible intimacy and the very personal nature of dying as the final event of living a self-actualized, individual human life and to move the dialogue from the philosophical arena to the realm of personal experience and stories related to the topic of Death with Dignity.
Lunch with Sonia will feature Federico Restrepo, with Marina Celander, Zulivet Díaz, Aaron Haskell, Chris Ignacio, and Hope Kroog. Luz Beatriz Pizano will be the voice of Sonia.
Lunch with Sonia will feature set & puppet Design by Federico Restrepo, sound design & music by Leonie Bell, costume design by Becky Hubbert, and research and selected written material by Diana Jaramillo and Catalina Restrepo.
For more information, visit https://www.lamama.org/shows/cafe-la-mama-live-lunch-with-sonia-excerpt.
BLACK.ECO
Directed and choreographed by Shauna Davis
Wednesday June 30 and Thursday July 1, 2021 at 8:30PM EDT
Tickets are Pay-What-You-Can $5 - $20
Using movement as a force, BLACK.ECO is a dance film that dives into the many worlds that exist within a Black woman. We open on a self-assured and poetic guide, whose sculptural hair is adorned in constellations. With her invitation, we dive into four ecosystems that reside within her, each with distinct movement, casting, color and sound worlds exploring four forms of Black joy. We return to our guide one final time to find her transformed. Touching on the divinity of the body, sisterhood, and being,
BLACK.ECO invites us to experience Black fantasy as a shiny vehicle for transcendence.
BLACK.ECO features sound design by Chris Ryan Williams, production design by Jarina De Marco, styling by Symone Holliday, and flowerhead design by Sarah Butler. Nathan Kim serves as director of photography.
La MaMa 59th Season Resident Artist, Shauna Davis is an LA-based dancer and choreographer who has worked with Ryan Murphy, Dallas Black Dance Theatre, LA Chamber Orchestra, and Kanye West.
For tickets and more information, visit https://www.lamama.org/shows/black-eco.
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