The Mother Theater in 2021 (photo Ajay Suresh via Wikimedia)
Following its renovation, the MaMa Theater hopes to stay true to its origins while renewing avant-garde history.
The renovation of the avant-garde theater La MaMa consecrates the last survivor of the experimental theater movement born in the coffee houses of Greenwich Village in the early 1960s. Still at 74 East Fourth Street, joined by three other sites, the 150-year-old building, which was crumbling when it was purchased in 1961, has just celebrated its renovation.
Beyond the work of architects who make good use of minimal space, these emphasize the use of…
The renovation of the avant-garde theater La MaMa consecrates the last survivor of the experimental theater movement born in the coffee houses of Greenwich Village in the early 1960s. Still at 74 East Fourth Street, joined by three other sites, the 150-year-old building, which was crumbling when it was purchased in 1961, has just celebrated its renovation.
Beyond the work of the architects who make good use of minimal space, they emphasize the use of cutting-edge technologies, capable of welcoming a curious public as well as the faithful for decades. The theatrical management explains that these new technologies make possible a “global” welcome – better still, they invite these audiences to collaborative exchanges, to a kind of co-creation. This is how La MaMa hopes to remain faithful to its origins while renewing the history of the avant-garde. To assess the chances of success of the bet, a brief history of La MaMa is necessary.
Designating itself as “experimental”, La MaMa proposed to “making space a magical place”. The initiative came from Ellen Stewart, an African-American seamstress who moved her models at night to leave room for the imagination of strangers who wanted to try their hand at acting. Until her death in 2011, Ellen was the theatre’s “mom”; his intuition and his initiative were decisive. The beginnings were not easy, but the thirst for the new, typical of the time, gradually attracted curious people, who often became participants. Among the actors who played there during its first two decades were Al Pacino, Robert de Niro, Harvey Keitel, F. Murray Abraham, Olympia Dukakis, Richard Dreyfuss, Bette Midler, Diane Lane and Nick Nolte. It played plays by Sam Shepard, Lanford Wilson, Harvey Fierstein, María Irene Fornés and Adrienne Kennedy. Other occasional contributors to this “magical place” were Robert Wilson, Richard Foreman, Joseph Chaikin and Meredith Monk, as well as musicians Philip Glass, Elizabeth Swados and Stephen Schwartz.
More difficult were the relations with the theatrical establishment. The installed actors were unionized; they resented the arrival of young enthusiasts, ready to take to the stage for little or no money. For their part, the critics focused on Broadway, where “legitimate theater” was performed and whose seriousness was guaranteed by paid professionals (this is one of the origins of the designation off-off Broadway : Paid and unionized comedians can volunteer to act as off, but they must not participate in productions in halls with less than one hundred and fifty seats). However, we somehow continued to present new releases every week; actors could make themselves known or become spectators again, authors could perfect their vision and discuss it with their audience, and of course fashion and atmosphere designers took advantage of the sometimes tiny café rooms that opened up to their imagination.
This round of experimentation could not last. Ellen realized the need to attract the attention of an audience beyond the walls of the New York avant-garde. We might be avant-garde and enjoy the magic of space, if we did not want to remain ephemeral, we had to find public recognition. The initiative came again from Ellen, who decided to leave with her company for Europe, where there was an avant-garde tradition. It was a bet; there was no pre-arranged itinerary, no guaranteed funding, no fixed commitments and no return tickets! But the Old World was ready to welcome these American adventurers in search of magical space, at a political moment favorable to their new ideas, and this time the press critics, themselves on the lookout for the new, condescended notice the defiance they carried. And, as Ellen Stewart expected, there was a rebound effect among American critics, first in small newspapers (underground press) read by a youth attracted by the rumor of an avant-garde in the Village. The experiment was finally launched, capable of coping with the vagaries of the decades to come.
Fifty years later, Ellen Stewart still animated her theater, which could produce up to seven hundred performances a year because, foresight, she had invested in real estate in her neighborhood. Ten years before her death, she had named a successor, Mia Yoo, a woman of Korean origin who had grown up within the institution. The latter presided over the enterprise when the theater was renovated, its financing ensured and, above all, when a new project began to take shape. Unable to exercise the decision-making authority that the founder had, Mia Yoo opted for a more cooperative and decentralized style. But, as soon as she was appointed, she embarked on a new project, called Culture Hub, which is realized in the facilities of new technologies. Indeed, without referring to the founding odyssey that carried Ellen Stewart and her companions to Europe to find recognition, her successor seeks to regenerate an avant-garde project that was in danger of being frozen by success. While La MaMa’s project was to restore the magic of space, the space put into play by Mia Yoo and her companions is less and less material and more and more digital. It remains to be seen what this new experience will look like.
2023-07-28 07:40:13
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