Compagnia de' Colombari's KING LEAR Comes to La MaMa in January

Following a successful world premiere at the International Festival of Arts & Ideas and a sold-out four-performance run in New York City summer of 2024, Compagnia de' Colombari's KING LEAR will return for its official Off-Broadway run at La MaMa ETC at the Ellen Stewart Theatre (66 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003) for 16 performances, January 23-February 8, 2026. 

Throughout 2026, Karin Coonrod's Compagnia de' Colombari celebrates 22 years of reconstructing texts, disrupting spaces, and generating spectacle wherever it goes. Of Coonrod's direction, The New York Times proclaimed, “this experimental director has a knack for transforming high concepts into accessible theater” and calls her “a theater artist of far-reaching inventiveness” who uses a “style that deconstructs to construct.” Other highlights include the U.K. premiere of Flannery O'Connor's Revelation, and multiple U.S. tour dates for the community galvanizing project, Whitman on Walls!.

Opening Night of KING LEAR is Friday, January 23, at 7PM, with performances on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays at 7PM, Saturdays at 2PM and 7PM, and Sundays at 2PM. The play, explored in five “movements,” is adapted and directed by Karin Coonrod with long-time Colombari collaborators Grammy Award-winner Frank London (original music), Obie Award-winner Oana Botez (costumes), Krista Smith (lighting), and Ty Hunt Fitzgerald (sound), and a star-studded cast of ten actors who each play King Lear and the other roles interchangeably as they inhabit the love-tested world of the play. CAST TO BE ANNOUNCED.

Compagnia de' Colombari's KING LEAR is a primal, physical, and potent  “paper crown” Lear that strips the Shakespearean classic to its essence. Coonrod utilizes her signature “multiplicity” to shift and deepen audiences' connection with the characters. Ten diverse actors, ranging in age and gender, embody King Lear at the beginning and conduct a radical takeover of the text and space. Their unity fractures as they tear off their paper crowns and assume other roles, competing for influence and diminishing the legion of Lears. Through a vigorous exploration of the characters' egos, motivations, and power dynamics, the actors delve deeply into the internal and external journey of a stubborn, fractured soul who must lose everything to find himself. Transformation takes place in the apocalypse. Coonrod's immersive production commands us to, as Kent demands of King Lear, “See better.”