Exhibit: A Poster History of La MaMa’s Downtown Community
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club is excited to announce ‘A Poster History of La MaMa’s Downtown Community’ — an upcoming exhibit that explores the history of the off-off-Broadway theatre movement through a selection of original posters from La MaMa’s Archives!
This exhibit documents the history of downtown theater, the changing aesthetic vernaculars of theatrical posters, and the transformation of print technologies over the past 55 years. It includes posters from every decade since La MaMa’s founding in 1961, including the hand-painted boards that announced La MaMa’s inaugural season (1961-1962) and the digital print created for the theater’s 50th anniversary in 2011.
Many of these materials are featured in Cindy Rosenthal’s forthcoming book, Ellen Stewart Presents: Fifty Years of La Mama Experimental Theatre (University of Michigan Press, 2017). In conjunction with the exhibit, La MaMa will host a series of public programs, all of which are free and open to the public.
La MaMa Archive
Established in the early 1970’s, La MaMa Archives collects, preserves, and exhibits records of permanent historical value relating to La MaMa and the Off-Off Broadway movement. In doing so, it draws on a deep vein of in-house institutional memory, the passionate community of artists whose work has found a home on La MaMa stages, and a diversity of scholars, educators and international artists with whom we regularly collaborate.
Special Event
November 13, 2017
A celebration of the publication of Ellen Stewart Presents: Fifty Years of La MaMa Experimental Theatre,
a new book by Cindy Rosenthal
November 13, 2017 | 6:00-8:00pm
Join La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club for a celebration of the publication of Cindy Rosenthal’s Ellen Stewart Presents: Fifty Years of La MaMa Experimental Theatre (University of Michigan Press, October 2017), featuring a reading by the author, an open Q+A, and refreshments. This new book traces a history of La MaMa through its poster collections, and sheds light on the history of the avant-garde, the East Village, and the international community of artists that have found a home at La MaMa over the past half-century. This book highlights materials featured in the concurrent poster exhibit in the lobby of La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theater. Free of charge and open to all.
This program was funded in part by a Humanities New York Action Grant.