La MaMa's 58th season will feature more than 20 world and U.S. premieres, with a lineup of artists that includes Philip Glass, Andrei Serban, Estelle Parsons, Germaine Acogny, Evan Yionoulis, Theodora Skipitares, Anne Bogart, Charlotte Brathwaite, and the late Elizabeth Swados. The season will also celebrate the centennial of La Mama’s celebrated founder, the late Ellen Stewart.
Visit LaMaMa.org for the complete lineup of shows and events.
In October, Obie winner Yionoulis will direct the world premiere of All My Fathers by Paul Young. When the playwright's elderly mother discloses that she is the bastard child of the family pediatrician, her former employer (now dead), he is plunged into a real-life Arthur Miller drama. The new play includes text collage from a host of family plays, including Hamlet, All My Sons, Oedipus, and Well. Performances will run October 3–20.
Also in October, Oscar winner Parsons directs the one-night-only Re:Entry – Actors Playing Jazz, the story of eight formerly incarcerated men who have come together after their release from prison to start a theatre troupe.
In November, National Medal of Arts winner Glass returns to La Mama with his Days and Nights Festival. Now in its ninth season on the Monterey Peninsula, California, the four-day event (14–17) features music, theatre, dance, poetry and film with workshops and forums focusing on science and our environment. The best of the festival offerings will be presented at La MaMa including: a tribute to playwright María Irene Fornés, directed by JoAnne Akalaitis, with music by Glass; and spoken word by Jerry Quickley and Arturo Bejar, performed live with Glass at the piano.
December 5–15, director Serban will helm an all-new new production of his 1974 landmark show created with Elizabeth Swados, The Trojan Women. The new production will be performed with members of The Great Jones Rep and an international cast.
In Spring 2020, La MaMa will present the New York premiere of Swados and Paul Schmidt's The Beautiful Lady, helmed by SITI Company’s Bogart. The musical follows a group of influential Russian poets on the eve of the 1917 October Revolution.
“During this landmark centennial year I reflect on Ellen's vision, and the impact and necessity of that vision,” says La MaMa Artistic Director Mia Yoo. “Her vision dreams of a world where a multiplicity of perspectives is essential and where art is a means to bring people together. I am grateful to be a part of this artistic community that she nurtured, and this season again I am energized by its tenacity, passion, bravery, and transformative work.”
Other artists who make up the season include French-American interdisciplinary dance theatre Company SBB, Open Heart Surgery Theatre Company, Uwe Mengel, Dario D’Ambrosi, Jane Catherine Shaw, Gian Marco Lo Forte, and Sven Ratzke.
