Like a good play, the renovation of a building in Manhattan’s East Village for La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club grabs our attention by both revealing layers of meaning and adding new ones.
Erected in 1873 for the German-American orchestral society Aschenbroedel Verein and dolled up about 20 years later by the Gesangverein Schillerbund singing guild, the four-story building at 74 East 4th Street became La MaMa’s home when the group’s late founder, Ellen Stewart, bought it in 1967 after presenting avant-garde performances for six years in the basement of a nearby tenement on East 9th Street. Over the years, Stewart, an African-American pioneer of off-off-Broadway theater, turned the first and second floors of 74 East 4th Street into a pair of 99-seat performance spaces and lived upstairs while converting a nearby building into a 295-seat theater. Stewart eventually created a collection of buildings in the neighborhood housing an art gallery, an archive, and studio and rehearsal spaces.
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