Fall Performance Schedule Set for La Mama's 64th Season

La Mama Experimental Theatre Club has revealed the Fall performances of its 64th season–featuring dozens of new works from around the world, including a new work by actor/director Tim Blake Nelson and directed by Mark Wing-Davey entitled AND THEN WE WERE NO MORE, Anthony Nikolchev’s THE (UN)DOUBLE, inspired by Dostoevsky’s novella The Double, renowned dance troupe from Palestine, El Funoun Dance Troupe, with TAWASUL, Teatro Patologico’s Festival featuring their groundbreaking work with the disability community, along with Hoi Polloi”s FAMILY by Oscar-nominee Celine Song (Past Lives, The Materialists) officially kicking off the La MaMa season with a three-week run September 11 to 28 (The Downstairs, 66 E. 4th St.).

La MaMa’s 64th Season, LA MAMA NOW, focuses on creating solidarity and building community, exploring ways to build connections for cross-sector coalition and invite artists, activists, organizers and community members into the creative process with more than 20 community events, as well as 60-70 productions.  The 64th Season La MaMa’s Online Happenings will continue with two live streams every month.  Performances, Livetalks, workshops and community events will be streamed to audiences nationally and internationally.

 Following is an abbreviated list of productions this fall, winter at La MaMa.  

Sept 12-28, 2025 (The Downstairs)

Family
Written by Celine Song
Directed by Alec Duffy
Composer/Sound Designer: Steven Leffue
Choreographer: Dan Safer
Lighting Design: Kate McGee
Scenic Design Consultant: Mimi Lien

In this grotesque and pitch-dark play by Oscar-nominee Celine Song (Past Lives, The Materialists), three half-siblings mourn their late father and battle over what lies underneath the floorboards. More Possession than Past Lives, this early work of Song’s serves as a surreal parable of America’s psyche.

OBIE-winning theater company Hoi Polloi – known for bracing work such as Winning is Winning and White on White – re-envisions their 2024 site-specific production for La MaMa’s architecture, seizing the opportunity to push the psychosis of the play to the max.

Sept 19-Nov 2, 2025 (Ellen Stewart Theatre)

And Then We Were No More

Written by Tim Blake Nelson
Directed by Mark Wing-Davey

A Stop The Wind Theatricals production 

A searing and provocative world premiere by actor/writer Tim Black Nelson, directed by Mark Wing-Davey. In the not-too-distant future a lawyer is forced to represent a prisoner deemed ‘beyond rehabilitation.’ In the ensuing trial that would have her client executed in a newly developed machine designed to do so ‘without pain,’ the attorney must strive for justice in a system devoid of mercy. 

How do you plead for compassion in a world that no longer believes in mercy?
The cast features Elizabeth Marvel (Broadway: King Lear, Other Desert Cities; Long Day’s Journey Into Night; House Of Cards; Homeland)

Oct 2-5, 2025 (The Downstairs)

Te Ao Mana/Tatou Festival
Created by Anthony Aiu and Kaina Quenga
TATOU FESTIVAL is NYC’s only Ta’ata Moana Nui (Pacific Islander) festival created by and for Pacific Islanders celebrating traditions and artistic innovation.  
Te Ao Mana creates opportunities for Pacific Islanders to connect to their artistic heritages, explore their creative processes, and present contemporary performances to Pacific Islander and Non-Pacific Islander audiences. These opportunities share holistic depictions of contemporary Pacific Islanders that disrupt dominant cultural narratives about Pacific Islander people.  

Oct 9-19, 2025 (The Club) 

The (Un)Double
By The Useless Room
Written and Directed by Anthony Nikolchev
Adapted after Fyodor Dostoevsky's "The Double"
Co-creation Lukasz Przytarski
Performers: A. Nikolchev, L. Przytarski, Chris Polick, and collaboration from WD 
Co-Direction Gema Galiana

Socratic dialogue, psychiatric intake exam, dance/movement, and literary adaptation—The (Un)Double is inspired by Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novella The Double. Taking the audience through the lens of several real-life icons of doubleness, it dissects the space between the self, the ideal, and the unreliable if not violent role of narrative.

From Dostoevsky’s incisive characterization of the human desire to be seen as someone we are not, a complicated journey emerges by which one maintains the self. How dangerous is the desire to become an image of oneself, and where does that image come from? Focusing on extreme cases of doubleness today, the performance asks,  “How does The Double pathology manifest in contemporary society, and is there a point at which it can be identified and rerouted?” 

Recently featured in the 2025 Venice Biennale Teatro under the artistic direction of Willem Dafoe, The Useless Room is a performance company based in Los Angeles, CA run by Gema Galiana (Spain) and Anthony Nikolchev (USA). They began working together as founding members of a physical theater laboratory in the Grotowksi Institute in Poland. In addition to the Venice Biennale, their work has been presented at The International Theater Olympics (India), Summerhall (Edinburgh), Ovalhouse (London), venues throughout Los Angeles and other strange alleyways.
 

Oct 10-12, 2025 (The Downstairs)

Tawasol
By El-Funoun Palestinian Dance Troupe

Experience the vibrant heritage of Palestinian dance in a powerful two-hour event with the renowned El-Funoun Palestinian Dance Troupe.
Merging dynamic dance, storytelling, and audience participation, this performance offers an intimate window into the lives and legacies of El-Funoun’s dancers. Through the voices and movements of five performers, stories of long-time members unfold, tracing cultural roots across generations, from parent to child. More than a performance, this is a living archive of memory, identity, and the enduring spirit of dabke as both resistance and celebration. Audiences are invited not only to witness but to share stories, ask questions, and join in the joy of dancing together. 

El-Funoun is a non-profit, almost fully volunteer dance company with 267 members. The Troupe is widely regarded as the premiere dance company in Palestine inspired by Arab-Palestinian popular dance in particular, and world dance in general, developing artistic productions that express the feelings and ideas of its in-house creative artists and contribute to liberating the individual and society at large. Since its establishment in 1979, El-Funoun has produced 16 major dance productions. It has an impressive track record of over 1,000 performances locally, throughout historic Palestine, regionally and internationally and has performed in major Arab and international festivals, earning several awards and certificates. 

Oct 17-Nov 2, 2025 (The Downstairs) in

Drop Dead…Gorgeous
Tamar Rogoff Performance Projects
Choreographed by Tamar Rogoff
Composed by Avi Fox Rosen

Tamar Rogoff’s Drop Dead…Gorgeous ushers audiences into the studio of a TV game show that gives the contestants the chance to win their dream body. As they compete to shed pounds, gain inches, and reverse the aging process, the show's charismatic yet troubled host offers the audience the opportunity to buy their way to beauty. When two of the contestants find love, the spell of the game is vanquished.

A multimedia dance performance, Drop Dead…Gorgeous, explores our obsession with the one “perfect“ youthful body and the intersection of money, media and madness that keeps us going to greater and greater lengths in the hopes of finding happiness in the mirror. From the ballet world‘s insistence on its cookie cutter body, to a mass culture that promises us we can order happiness with a credit card, Drop Dead…Gorgeous, uses humor and the sensuality of the body proposing that all living beings are inherently, beautiful, alive and worthy of love.

Tamar Rogoff is a choreographer and filmmaker who explores the outer limits of how people negotiate extreme circumstances. As artistic director of Tamar Rogoff Performance Projects, Rogoff creates inclusive, multidisciplinary, multigenerational, and site-specific performance and film as well as proscenium performance. Rogoff’s subject matter is deeply personal and often autobiographical, but in the vast diversity of her casting, it finds its universality.

Oct 23-Nov 2, 2025 (Building 74a 4th Street)

Creatures
Co-conceived by maura nguyen donohue (NYC) and Erik Ehn (New Mexico), with members of The Great Jones Repertory Company

Creatures is a two-week inhabitation of 74 E 4th St. with installations, performances, workshops, meals, vigils, processions, and conversations about liminal beings as they manifest across cultures. Creatures, co-conceived by maura nguyen donohue (NYC) and Erik Ehn (New Mexico), and produced by La MaMa ETC, CultureHub, and The Great Jones Repertory Company is built around non-human protagonists as prophets of compassion in an era of great ecological precarity. 

Great Jones Rep is an OBIE-winning, diverse ensemble of artists that started in 1972 as the resident company of performers for La MaMa. The Company will be joined by artists, theologians, scientists, and scholars considering how compassionate consciousness from an artistic perspective can be genuinely interconnected with scholarship and scientific research.  

Nov 6-9, 2025 (The Club)

Celebration for Native American Heritage Month
By Safe Harbors NYC
Artistic Director: Murielle Borst-Tarrant (Kuna/Rappahannock) 

Reflections of Native Voices Festival which will feature members of the Safe Harbors NYC Ensemble in “Feasts of Ghosts.” This event will include performances by visionary native american artists. This event is in collaboration with New York Theatre Workshop.

Safe Harbors focuses on the development and production of Native Theater and Performing Arts in New York City within the broader American theater; we combat stereotypes and support vibrant Native communities. We develop ongoing dialogue with Policymakers about the approach to cultural and socioeconomic issues using Theatrical performances, Performing Arts, Native Cultural Consultancy, panel discussions, and Cultural Events.
Murielle Borst-Tarrant is the recipient of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s 2020 National Playwright Residency Program.

Nov 6 -23 (The Downstairs)

Ready For Company and Other Family Tales

Created and performed by Kim Ima

Ready For Company and Other Family Tales is a one-woman show of family and legacy;  Stories, music, longings, a Jewish-Japanese-American family tree – and cake by Kim Ima.

Nov 13-16, 2025 (The Club and CAS)

Jump Start Works-in-Progress Series
Curated by Denise Greber 

Puppet artists get a chance to showcase their works in progress in the La MaMa Puppet Series. Featuring works-in-progress from Deniz Khateri, Leah Ogawa, Sarah Finn, Amanda Card, William PK Carter.

Nov 20-23, 2025 (Ellen Stewart Theatre)

Teatro Patologico 40 Year Anniversary La Commedia divina (The Divine Comedy)
Adapted and directed by Dario D’Ambrosi

The Associazione Teatro Patologico was founded in 1980 by the founder and creator Dario D’Ambrosi. Since 1980 the Association has been involved in a unique and universal work, that of finding a contact between the theater and an environment where you work on mental illness, where children with serious mental problems go around. For years the Association carried out its educational, pedagogical and theatrical activities in the room of Via Ramazzini inside the XVI Town Hall, until 2006 when the Lazio Region gave it a new space. Since October 30, 2009 the Association of the Pathological Theatre has its own theater in Rome in Via Cassia 472.

Nov 20-23, 2025 (The Club)

Osni the Flare
Tristan Allen - Creator, Composer, Puppeteer, Builder
Jim Freeman - Technical Director, Lighting
Miryam Moutillet / Lauder Weldon / Duygu Bayar Ekren - Fabrication
Osni the Flare is a puppet ballet set to an original album. Through use of rod, shadow, light, and body puppetry, Osni dances a luminous blaze into being. 
 
Tristan Allen is a composer and puppeteer building a world through the storytelling power of instrumental music and movement. With a background in piano, bass, electronic music, and marionette theater, Tristan creates rich works of wordless fantasy. Tristan’s debut, Tin Iso and the Dawn, began a trilogy of creation myths through shadow puppetry and sound. Now, the sequel Osni the Flare moves beyond shadow - wielding rod, body, and light puppetry to illuminate the origins of fire, life, and death. Osni will dance a luminous blaze into being.

Dec 4-21, 2025 (The Club)

Protest Song

Directed By Lou Mirabal
 

"Protest Song" by Tim Price is a powerful one-man play that explores themes of homelessness, protest, and social inequality. First performed at The National Theatre's The Shed in 2013, and reimagined at East London’s Arcola Theatre in 2023, the play is both emotionally compelling and grounded in real human experiences.

The story is told through the character of Danny, a homeless man living on the streets of London. Danny is charismatic, witty, and street-smart, but also struggles with mental health issues and addiction. The play is set during the Occupy London movement, which took place outside St. Paul’s Cathedral in 2011.

The monologue is fast-paced, filled with dark humor and raw emotion, as Danny reflects on his life, the failures of society, and his growing connection to the protest. It becomes a poignant examination of who gets to have a voice in society and whose stories are heard.

Dec 4-14, 2025 (Ellen Stewart Theatre)

From the Other Side
Reimagining Theatre of the Balkans, Edition 1.0
Co-Produced by My Balkans (New York)

FROM THE OTHER SIDE, Reimagining Theatre from the Balkans, Edition 1.0, a unique undertaking to happen in New York City from December 4-14, 2025, when La MaMa will become a home to the artists from the Balkans. 
This showcase will primarily consist of three theatre performances – created in their respective local context, all for the first time shown in the United States. It will also include staged readings of three contemporary plays from the Balkans, followed by conversations and discussions that will enable the presentations to become part of a living dialogue in the context of New York City. Video presentations of five exceptional theatre productions will offer additional insights into the artistic and thematic performing arts landscape of the Balkans.
 

Dec 4-21, 2025 (The Downstairs)

Oklahoma Samovar
Written by Alice Eve Cohen

Directed by Eric Nightengale

In 1887, two Latvian teenagers flee the Russian Army and become the only Jews in the Oklahoma Land Run. 

A hundred years later, twenty-year-old Emily tries to decipher her late mother’s mysterious request to have her ashes spread on a stranger’s farm, in a place she has never heard of. Based on the playwright’s ancestors, the only Jews in the Oklahoma Land Run, the play wrestles with themes of immigration, assimilation, generational trauma, and the transcendent power of mother-daughter love.  

In Oklahoma Samovar, five generations put down roots and dig graves, embodying their own Jewish variations on the turbulent and mythologized American Dream. It is an utterly human and absolutely unique American story.  OKLAHOMA SAMOVAR is the winner of the National Jewish Playwriting Contest.

Alice Eve Cohen is a playwright and author. Her award-winning plays have been performed for over 200,000 people on four continents.

Dec 18-21, 2025 (Ellen Stewart Theatre)

Birth + Carnage
Choreographer + Director: Marla Phelan
Director: Tim Richardson
Composer: Concrete Husband
Digital Artist: REINFECTED.ME
Digital Artist: KLSR

Birth + Carnage is a dance work at the intersection of choreography and astrophysics. Born from the collaboration between choreographer Marla Phelan and astrophysicist Dr. Blakesley Burkhart, the piece draws from computational simulations of stellar birth as both visceral metaphor and choreographic framework.
In collaboration with director Tim Richardson, astrophysical data is rendered into large-scale digital projections—shifting visual fields that echo cycles of transformation. Dancers are immersed within these simulations, creating a feedback loop of allegory and sensation. The score by Concrete Husband deepens the emotional terrain through layered electronic textures.

Birth + Carnage explores how cosmic and human systems reflect one another—tracing a bridge between the vastness of the universe and the depths of human connection.

Marla Phelan is a choreographer and performer across stage, film, fashion, and immersive installations. She merges physical rigor with emotional depth through interdisciplinary storytelling. Phelan premiered work at Lincoln Center, The Joyce Theater, and Juilliard, and has been featured in Nowness, VMagazine, and NewYork Magazine.

Dec 22-23, 2025 (The Club)

Christmas in Nickyland
Curated and Hosted by Nicky Paraiso
Just in time for the holidays, La MaMa presents Nicky Paraiso as the master of ceremonies for the ultimate holiday cabaret at La MaMa. Each night there will be a holy host of characters singing, dancing, gender-bending, and merry making, all to get you into the East Village spirit of the season.
 
Nicky Paraiso is an actor, curator, singer, musician, writer, solo performance artist. He has been a fixture of the NY downtown performance scene for the last four decades. He is Director of Programming for The Club at La MaMa, and Curator for the annual La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival. He has worked as a performer with vanguard artists Jeff Weiss & Richard C. Martinez, Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble, Anne Bogart, Laurie Carlos, Jessica Hagedorn, Robbie McCauley, among many others. 

La MaMa’s ongoing series continue, including La MaMa Kids, Coffeehouse Chronicles, Poetry Electric and Experiments Play Readings. 

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