La Mama Experimental Theatre Club

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La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, New York, avant-garde theatre group formed in 1961 and originally known as the Café La Mama, from the basement room under an Italian restaurant where new and uncommercial plays by young playwrights were presented for a week's run. After two moves the group settled in its own premises and took its present name, supporting a permanent company formed in 1964. The seminal rock musical Hair was staged in 1967. Further experiments led to the merging of classical forms of music with rock genres, employing also such skills as tap-dancing and acrobatics. In 1973 financial stringencies forced the company to stop working full-time and its members formed a pool from which performers could be elected for specific projects. La Mama then became an international movement, with off-shoots in Britain, Europe, Australia, Canada, and South America, all founded by people who at one time worked with the group in New York. La Mama also produced such experimental groups as Mabou Mines, which (taking its name from a disused coal mine in Nova Scotia) began work in 1970, preparing by Collective Creation productions which the participants described as Animations or Collaborations, the former, such as Red Horse Animation (1971), being non-literary presentations using images of animals as metaphors for human conditions. La Mama also housed the productions of Chaikin's Open Theater.

La Mama Experimental Theatre Club (New York). Founded in Greenwich Village in 1962 by Ellen Stewart, the group is the city's oldest, most durable, and least compromising experimental theatre. The performance space originally was a combination boutique and theatre, but in 1970 moved to its current location on East 4th Street where in its three theatres it has presented hundreds of events ranging from theatre to poetry readings, dance, and performance art. In addition to its own productions, Café La MaMa (as it is more popularly known as) has sponsored avant‐garde companies from around the world, such as Jerzy Grotowski's Polish Lab Theatre, and produced early works by Sam Shepard, Lanford Wilson, Harold Pinter, Andrei Serban, Megan Terry, Rochelle Owens, and many others. The group also tours extensively. Ellen STEWART (b. 1920?) was born in Alexandria, Louisiana, of Cajun ancestry, came to New York in the 1950s, and worked as an elevator operator and clothing designer before opening her boutique that turned into a theatre.