Booth McGowan’s THE IGUANA BECOMES MARCO To Have World Premiere At La MaMa

A chance encounter with a mysterious iguana sets off a thrilling chain of events in Booth McGowan's new play, The Iguana Becomes Marco. The world premiere runs April 1-5 at The Community Arts Space at La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, with McGowan directing. The production is produced by Booth McGowan and Lisa Long Adler.

The play previously received two workshop productions in Manhattan and Brooklyn in 2025. "This play feels more than it thinks; it crawls, it screams, it whispers," said McGowan. "It becomes you, whether you're ready or not."

The Iguana Becomes Marco charts the psychological and physical unraveling of Marco, a recent college graduate whose encounter with a mysterious Iguana during a friends' trip to his uncle and aunt's house in Florida sets off a spiraling transformation. As a gristled Chief Detective attempts to crack the case, with questionable assistance from his inept subordinate Maximilian, the lines between human and animal, self and other, begin to blur.

At once unsettling and darkly comic, the play explores ego, addiction, sexuality, gender, violence, and youth. It plunges audiences into a hallucinatory landscape where identity sheds its skin and something primal takes hold.

The cast features Bobby Cole, Lucinda Dunham, Jason Hoover, Booth McGowan, Marco Quesada, and Luke Wisniewski.

The creative/production team includes Forest Entsminger (set), Bryce Harnick (lighting), Maddie Rubin-Charlesworth (costumes, props, graphic design), Jessie Wayburn (Iguana costume), Lars Fisk and Georges Mefleh (music), Avni Kumra (video art), and Valentina Zazzali (stage management).