La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club

La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club (sometimes abbreviated as La MaMa E.T.C.) is an Off-Off-Broadway theater founded in 1961 by African-American theatre director, producer, and fashion designer Ellen Stewart. Located in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City, the theater began in the basement boutique where Stewart sold her fashion designs. Stewart turned the space into a theater at night, focusing on the work of young playwrights.

Stewart started La MaMa as a theatre dedicated to the playwright and primarily producing new plays, including works by Paul Foster, Jean-Claude van Itallie, Lanford Wilson, Sam Shepard, Adrienne Kennedy, Harvey Fierstein, and Rochelle Owens. La MaMa also became an international ambassador for Off-Off-Broadway theatre by touring downtown theatre abroad during the 1960s.

La MaMa is the only theatre of the 1960s Off-Off-Broadway movement's four core theatres that continues to thrive today. The other three Off-Off-Broadway theatres that composed this core included Joe Cino's Caffe Cino, Al Carmines' Judson Poets Theatre, and Ralph Cook's Theatre Genesis. More than any other Off-Off-Broadway producer, Stewart reached out beyond the East Village, impelling rather than following new trends in theatre and performance.

To the present, La MaMa's mission is dedicated to "the people who make art, and it is to them that we give our support with free theatre and rehearsal space, lights, sound, props, platforms, and whatever else we have that they can use to create their work. We want them to feel free to explore their ideas, and translate them into a theatrical language that can communicate to any person in any part of the world."

Ellen Stewart is the spirit of La MaMa; she is its guardian, janitor, fundraiser, press agent, tour manager, conceptual leader—she is the guts of the place. To understand this theatre one must first know Ellen Stewart.

Stewart worked as a fashion designer at Saks Fifth Avenue before starting the theatre. Stewart was inspired by her mentor, "Papa Abraham Diamonds", who owned a fabric shop on the Lower East Side. Diamonds told Stewart that everyone needs both a "pushcart to serve others" and their own personal pushcart. Stewart had a revelation about this advice during a trip she took to Morocco and decided to open a boutique for her fashion designs that would also serve as a theatre for her foster brother, playwright Fred Lights, and his fellow playwright Paul Foster. On October 18, 1961, Stewart paid the fifty-five dollar rent on a tenement basement at 321 East Ninth Street to start her boutique and theater.

As opposed to Caffe Cino, which was focused on creating a specific atmosphere or clientele, La MaMa's primary focus was on the playwright. Stewart was interested in the people behind the work, and often didn't even read the plays. She relied on what she called "beeps", or "clicks", a hunch or feeling she got when meeting people and deciding whether or not to produce work with them.

In the early years, Stewart housed and fed playwrights and directors whenever possible. She acted as a mother; Jean-Claude van Itallie remembers his first meeting with Stewart: