Dance, Mask Work and Puppet Making Highlight LA MAMA KIDS Season
By: BroadwayWorld JR Oct. 10, 2017
La MaMa's wildly popular family series LA MAMA KIDS returns this season with a line-up of Family Friendly productions and workshops from artists, including a show by Heather Henson and Ty Defoe in February; Jane Catherine Shaw back with a new puppet performance in September; Winter Wonderland, a site-specific holiday performance in December; an adaptation of Don Quixote by Loco 7 Dance Puppet Theatre, directed by Federico Restrepo in April; Perry Yung and Slant Performance Group's Family Play Date in June as well as workshops throughout the season by artists such as Potri Ranka Manis and CultureHub.
La MaMa Kids is a series of creative workshops and performances for the young and the young at heart. Master artists from La MaMa perform family friendly shows and teach theatre crafts in workshops that encourage imaginative play and hands-on learning. Children and adults learn the basics of storytelling, dance, mask, puppet-making, and more! Fun for the whole family!
This La MaMa Kids season we invited young artists to offer or create illustrations for our Kids flyer. The first round of flyers features work by Sasa Yungwho is a 9th grader in the Visual Art Studio at La Guardia HS for Music & Art and Performing Arts. While at Manhattan School for Children/PS 333 she was a member of the Junior National Honor Society, studied at Rhode Island School of Design summer programs, and read her poetry at La MaMa Kids and La MaMa Moves, as well as for a CultureHub telematic exchange with Nipissing First Nation artists in the Aanmitaagzi Company. Once Upon a time, she danced at Dance Theater Workshop, Mt. Holyoke and Smith Colleges. She primarily works with anime-based aesthetics in ink, pencil and watercolor.
THE SEASON:
Saturday, October 14, 2017 at 2pm
Akmani | Meeting Through Story, Puppetry, & Dance
The Downstairs
Distance Workshop with Ping Chong + Company, CultureHub & Alaska Native Heritage Center; with Gary Upay'aq Beaver (Central Yup'ik), Ryan Conarro, Justin Perkins
This special distance connection gives young people an experience of storytelling forms fromthe wider world beyond New York City! NYC youth meet Ping Chong + Company artists from the La MaMa production ALAXSXA | ALASKA, and connect with diverse artists and young people from Alaska Native Heritage Center in Anchorage. "Akmani" in Yup'ik means "over there across a great distance"; youths in this session will explore puppetry and indigenous drum and dance as means for fostering mutual understanding. For children 7 & up.
Alaska Native Heritage Center artists share traditional storytelling approaches from Anchorage. In New York, Yup'ik artist Gary Upay'aq Beaver shares his ancient dance form, and puppeteers Ryan Conarro and Justin Perkins offer playful approaches to puppetry--all inspired by ALAXSXA | ALASKA. CultureHub provides the connection - a center for art and technology connecting communities around the world. www.culturehub.org
ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
Gary Upay'aq Beaver (Central Yup'ik) was born in Bethel, Alaska and raised in his family's village of Kasigluk.
Ryan Conarro is a performance maker, teaching artist, and facilitator of community engagement. He is Collaborator in Residence and Education and Community Projects Associate at Ping Chong + Company.
Justin Perkins is a New York based puppet artist and performer.
The Alaska Native Heritage Center continues to find innovative ways to fulfill our mission of sharing, perpetuating and preserving our unique Alaska Native cultures, languages, traditions and values through celebration and education.
CultureHub is a center for art and technology that connects communities around the world, through live performances, exhibitions, web-based presentations, livestreams, and education programs. www.culturehub.org
Ping Chong + Company produces theatrical works ranging from intimate oral history projects to grand scale cinematic multidisciplinary productions addressing the important cultural and civic issues of our times, reaching the widest audiences with the greatest level of artistic innovation and social integrity.
Saturday, November 18, 2017 at 11am
Creativity for Kids | Connect Through Play
Ellen Stewart Lobby
Art brings meaning and inspiration to the way we experience the world around us. Children are naturally predisposed to the Arts with their rich imaginations and love for storytelling.
As a teaching artist, Leah Lawrence offers drama classes that enable children to strengthen their performance skills and their ability to work collaboratively in a group. To quote Antonin Artaud, "the actor is the athlete of the heart" and therefore learns to be vulnerable and authentic with fellow actors and in front of an audience. The benefit of exposing children to acting at a young age is the increased confidence they feel in expressing their own unique voice and presenting it. In order to nurture creative and innovative minds, drama classes can provide the space for children to enter a state of play, the bedrock of the creative process. This is not competitive play to win but instead collaborative play to create.
In this LaMaMa kids workshop, we will play theater games, sing, move, and act out stories in a safe and fun environment. As it is the week of Thanksgiving, all of our creative games and exercises will focus on the theme of giving thanks.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
Leah Lawrence is a professional actor and singer-songwriter with credits off-Broadway, national television and two released albums of her own music, available on Itunes, Amazon & Spotify: "Folk by Foulke, Volume 1" & "Everywhere To Go: Folk by Foulke V.2" Most recently, she composed and performed music in Jean Genet's The Maids at LaMaMa in the Spring of 2017. Leah has been a teaching artist for twenty years. In Chicago, she taught in over thirty public schools with Whirlwind Performance Company. Since moving back to NYC in 1999, Leah has taught drama at New York City and Westchester schools including The Chapin School, Convent of the Sacred Heart, The Brearley School, Columbia Prep, Pound Ridge Elementary School, Bedford Village Elementary, and Rippowam Cisqua. Education: MFA in Acting, Columbia University; BA, Colorado College. Certified Yoga instructor. Certified Synapsing teacher. Leah is a coach and facilitator at Green meets Blue, LLC.
Saturday, December 16, 2017 at 11am
Winter Wonderland Performance and After Party
The Downstairs
La MaMa Family will weave their magic and excitement for La MaMa's End of Year celebration event - a fun-filled immersive performance by La MaMa resident artists. Site-specific performances interweave throughout the Annex building, each piece inspired by the theme of 'Winter Wonderland'. Embracing puppetry, storytelling, dance, music and theatre, this is a unique holiday event for the whole family, all ages encouraged!
This event will be followed by a La MaMa Kids end of year celebration.
Saturday, January 27, 2018 at 11am
Framed: The Mother Goose Chronicles
The Downstairs
Join us for a new children's puppet piece created by La MaMa Resident Artist Jane Catherine Shaw.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Jane Catherine Shaw is a longstanding La MaMa resident artist. She interweaves imaginative characters and stories to make one exciting piece of theatre for young audiences. Selected works include original pieces: Thirst: Memory of Water, The Lone Runner, Bed of Light, Universe Expanding, Folktales of Asia and Africa, and Follow the Wind: Tales From The New World. She is the curator of La MaMa Puppet Slam.
For the first time in La MaMa's 55 year history its landmark building at 74 E. 4th Street is being fully renovated and restored. Ultimately all four buildings of La MaMa's New York campus will undergo ambitious renovations. This project re-imagines the organizations reach. La MaMa is committed to ensuring future artists and audiences will continue to have a home here in New York City. The first phase of this comprehensive multi-year capital project begins this year at 74 East 4th Street, the company's first permanent home, which houses the First Floor Theatre and Club venues. The 56th Season will take place in The Ellen Stewart Theatre, The Downstairs and the newly created Lounge space all located at 66 East 4th Street.
Ellen Stewart PRESENTS. To celebrate the publication of the new book, Ellen Stewart PRESENTS by Cindy Rosenthal, La MaMa presents an exhibit this fall showing a collection of posters from the last fifty years of the theater complex at its 66 East 4th Street location. The Exhibit captures the irreverence and the aesthetic of the Off-Off-Broadway power house over its first five decades and will fascinate anyone interested in the history of Off-Off-Broadway, the cultural history of New York City, or visual culture from the '60s to the present. October 18 - December 31, 2017
LA MAMA MOVES! The Company's 13th annual dance festival features multiple generations of choreographers from different backgrounds, whose work deals with the day-to-day political, social, and ecological challenges facing our world. This season LA MAMA MOVES highlights the freshly-experienced narratives of emerging queer and trans choreographers of color. May 2018
La MaMa's COFFEEHOUSE CHRONICLES, the Saturday afternoon educational performance series exploring the history and development of Off-Off Broadway, continues this season with topics including: Maria Irene Fornes, Charles Ludlam, Mario Montez, Jeff Weiss, Kenneth Bernard, Tom O'Horgan and the history of La MaMa's theatres at 74A East 4th Street.
CULTUREHUB the art and technology incubator, founded by La MaMa and Seoul Institute of the Arts, return with their CoLab series, an intensive educational summer program offered to local teens. As well as ARTCADE CON, an interactive exhibit of independent video game art; and distance workshops.
LA MAMA SQUIRTS. Returning for a 6th year, a collection of the brashest new voices of the queer stage peek into the future of underground, revolutionary queer art-making. Feb. 15 - 25, 2018
POETRY ELECTRIC La MaMa's popular poetry reading series will return this season with timely words and solo performances from women and other artists who support the vision of the Women's March and its focus on equality, justice, diversity, inclusion, and acceptance.
La MaMa's ongoing EXPERIMENTS PLAY READING SERIES, returns this season. Titled "Parts for Meryl Streep," this the season is focuses on playwrights whose work features a dynamic leading character worthy of the "best actress of her generation." Nasser will select work based on the themes Meryl has championed throughout her career: empathy, diversity and activism. Artists invited to participate include: Justin VivIan Bond, Alan Cumming, Erin Markey, Jill Pangallo, Michael Schulman, and ReGina Taylor.
LA MAMA ARCHIVES. La MaMa has received a generous grant of $100,000 from the National Historic Records and Publications Commission. This funding will support a collaborative project to expand access to archival video footage that document the work performed on La MaMa stages in the 1970's. La MaMa continues its Archive Open Houses on the first Thursday of each month allowing audiences to tour the La MaMa Archives beginning on October 5th from 5:30 - 7pm.The digital collection can be accessed at catalog.lamama.org.
La MaMa's 56th season also includes new works by: Alessandro Sciarroni (part of Crossing the Line Festival), Karole Armitage, Dario D'Ambrosi, Pioneers Go East Collective, Tony Whitfield, Kinetic Light, Jane Comfort, Romana Soutus , Theodora Skipitares and more. For more information about La MaMa's 56th season, visit lamama.org.
La MaMa continues its popular Experimental Theatre Club Memberships, offering $10 Tickets to all shows and other perks to members for the full season. Memberships start at $56.
La MaMa is dedicated to the artist and all aspects of the theatre. The organization has a worldwide reputation for producing daring performance works that defy form and transcend barriers of ethnic and cultural identity. Founded in 1961 by award-winning theatre pioneer Ellen Stewart, La MaMa has presented more than 5,000 productions by 150,000 artists from more than 70 nations. A recipient of more than 30 Obie Awards and dozens of Drama Desk, Bessie, and Villager Awards, La MaMa has helped launch the careers of countless artists, many of whom have made important contributions to American and international arts milieus.
Our 56th season reflects the urgency of reaffirming human interconnectedness. Our stages will embrace diversity in every form and present artists that persevere with bold self-expression despite social, economic, and political struggle.
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