La MaMa Experimental Theatre is a world-renowned cultural organization led by founder Ellen Stewart. For 44 years La MaMa has passionately pursued its original mission to develop, nurture, support, produce and present new and original performance work by artists of all nations and cultures.

Since La MaMa's doors first opened in 1961, their primary dedication has been to new works. Many of the best plays and playwrights of the 60's and 70's have come from La MaMa's lower East Side stages and workshops. The face of Theatre as we now know it on Broadway and beyond was influenced by and infused with the spirit and work of La MaMa artists. To date La MaMa has presented over 1000 original scores on their stages. Creative risk-taking, experimentation, and challenging artistic boundaries have always been the focus of the work created and performed at La MaMa. La Mama envisions art as a universal language. Cultural pluralism and ethnic diversity have been inherent in the work created at La MaMa. To sustain this global vision, La Mama has become one of this country's foremost presenters of international performance and calls artists from over seventy nations part of the La MaMa family.

La MaMa has been honored with over thirty Obie Awards, dozens of Drama Desk Awards, Bessie Awards and Villager Awards. La MaMa has an incredible roster of theatre, movie and multi-media luminaries for whom La MaMa was an early artistic home.

La MaMa began as a tiny basement theatre dedicated to the playwright and all aspects of the theatre. In the past 44 years, La MaMa has grown into an arts complex of national and international celebrity. La MaMa houses three theaters, "The First Floor Theatre", "The Club" and "The Annex", an art gallery, a 6-story rehearsal/studio building, and a extensive archive documenting the history of off-off Broadway theatre.

The First Floor theater is a small, intermediate space in which plays that are in a developmental stage are created. The large theatre, the La MaMa Annex, had it's official opening on October 18, 1974. The Annex has near perfect acoustics and has become a world-class venue. Because of its flexible design, companies can construct their world within its walls. It is a chameleon space that changes to suit the art that it embraces. The Annex has been a "port of entry" for artists from around the world. It is a spiritual place where artists can work without fear. The Club, La MaMa's cabaret space, gives voice to established and emerging multi-disciplinary performance artists.