La Mama Experimental Theatre - A Lasting Bridge Between Cultures: The Dialogue with the European Theater in the Years 1961-1975

This book focuses on the role of La MaMa Experimental Theatre within Avant-garde theatre during the Sixties and Seventies.

This study investigates the involvement of the Off-Off Broadway circuit in the Avant-garde experimentations both in the US (New York specifically) and in Europe. This exploration shows the two-way influence - between Europe and the US - testified by documents gathered in years of archival research. In this relevant artistic exchange, La MaMa (and Ellen Stewart as its founder and artistic director) emerges as a key element. La MaMa's companies brought to Europe the American culture and the New York underground culture, while their members learnt European training techniques by attending workshops or taking part in the researches of Eugenio Barba, Jerzy Grotowski and Peter Brook, and brought their principles back to the US. This book goes through a chronological path that presents some key cases of collaboration between the above mentioned European masters and some La MaMa's artists and companies: Tom O'Horgan and La MaMa Repertory Troupe, the Open Theatre, Andrei Serban and The Great Jones Repertory Company, La MaMa Plexus.

This book will be of great interest to students and scholars in theatre and performance studies.