Puppetry has been an integral part of La MaMa’s programming since 1962, throughout their history, La MaMa has presented many notable puppet artists. In 2004, they introduced the La MaMa Puppet Series, a biannual festival showcasing new contemporary puppet theatre.
The 2024 lineup includes:
Jump Start: Presentation of Works in Progress
October 24-27, 2024
The Downstairs
Puppet artists get a chance to showcase their works in progress in the La MaMa Puppet Series. Featuring works-in-progress from Loco7 Dance Puppet Theatre, Double Image Theater Lab, Foreshadow and Monica Lerch.
LOVO
Teatro Lafauna
October 25-27, 2024
The Club
LOVO places a view on the conservation and protection of biodiversity, analyzing the process of disappearance of an animal species as if it were the extinction of a love. It proposes a vision on the consequences of the destruction that the human being generates in the Nature, the changes that take place in the habitats that it shares with other animals and that also demonstrate the vulnerability and fragility of the human life. We dive into the bowels of another living being as if we were doing it in his own soul, in a biography or in the deepest and darkest of the heart.
La MaMa Kids: Petit Mondrian
Created, directed and with puppets by Edwin Salas Acosta
October 26-27, 2024
Community Arts Space
Petit Mondrian is a dance-theatre piece in which an Afro-Latiné boy walking through a museum with his mother becomes obsessed with a red, blue and yellow painting by the French painter Piet Mondrian. It is with those colors and square shapes that he creates his fantasy world which allows him to escape his fear of a monster featured in the traditional Latin American lullaby, “Sleep Little One.” This 20-minute performance will include 10-minutes of free play at the end in which young people can explore the space and artistic vernaculars of the piece in a self-directed way.
The Scarecrow
By Kessto Kreatures
Created, directed and performed by Anthony Michael Stokes
October 31-November 3, 2024
Ellen Stewart Theatre
Through its innovative use of puppetry, powerful storytelling and culturally relevant music, The Scarecrow aims to captivate audiences, provoke thought and inspire change. This production serves as a testament to the transformative power of imagination, history and the human spirit. A soundscape of emotion-music is used as a narrative tool and plays a pivotal role in The Scarecrow, amplifying the emotional depth of the story. At the heart of The Scarecrow lies the redemption and self-discovery of the protagonist. Through his journey, the Scarecrow realizes his true purpose and the impact he can make in the world. His transformation from a simple cornfield scarecrow to a courageous leader echoes the universal theme of embracing one's true self and finding the strength to make a difference.
Secrets History Remembers
By Evolve Puppets
October 31-November 3, 2024
The Club
A witty, high-energy vaudeville act with a seven-foot-tall doll as its stage. Will an obsessive need for safety and a fear of “the other” break us? Secrets History Remembers is a visual feast that examines our culture of fear with humor, insight and inventive puppetry.
Kindred Widows
By Claudine Rivest
November 1-3, 2024
The Downstairs
Kindred Widows paints a dreamlike portrait of a family that is both terrifying and banal. Through the story of Amanda, who was mute during the last 18 years of her life, this work examines how memory is passed along between women of different generations. Drifting between reality and imagination, the dining room table serves as a theatre where the past resurfaces. As the violin plays, fragments of life, loaded with secrets, flow into each other and overlap with everyday gestures. Rooted in a personal narrative tinged with dark humor, this wordless creation invites us to enter the elusive universe of memory.
The People vs. Nature
By Lone Wolf Tribe
November 7-17, 2024
Ellen Stewart Theatre
With only hours to live, a death-row inmate fights to free a chimpanzee from medical captivity. In solitary confinement he reenacts a court trial based on true events, litigating the value of some lives over others. For writer/director/performer Kevin Augustine, his own death & life story becomes part of the show as audience members are invited into community onstage, helping bring his primate puppets to life.
OUT
By UnterWasser Company
November 8-10, 2024
The Club
OUT is a visual, multidisciplinary show, an original training tale told through the imaginative language of puppetry, a poem for adults, which can also be seen by children. An initiatory journey that leads the protagonist out of the house, a metaphor for certainties, to put him in relation with the world and with its inevitable contrasts. The poetic language of the different techniques used transports the audience into a dream dimension, transmitting its universal message through the use of archetypes.
La MaMa Kids: Woods
By Puzzle Theatre
November 9-10, 2024
Community Arts Space
A green leaf that grows on a dead branch, pieces of wood that come together to form strange creatures, some hostile, some comical… A curious world that surprises, amazes and inspires.
Puppet Slam
Curated by Jane Catherine Shaw
November 12-14, 2024
The Club
La MaMa Puppet Slam returns this year with new short works of genius! These condensed works of puppetry are original, compelling, brilliant, witty, tragic, funny, stunning, startling, ironic, exotic, political, lyrical, musical, beautiful, intellectual, experimental, wild...and always demonstrate genius in a matter of minutes!
