La MaMa to Present New Richard Foreman Play

La MaMa E.T.C. has announced details of its upcoming 63rd season, which will include the world premiere of Suppose Beautiful Madeline Harvey, a new play written by experimental theater legend Richard Foreman. It is slated to play La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theatre December 12-22.

Foreman is famous for his simultaneously stark and otherworldly aesthetic, as well as his near-total control over every aspect of the stage. Previous plays have heavily featured non-sequitur lines punctuated by jarring light and sound cues. TheaterMania’s review of his last off-Broadway play, Old-Fashioned Prostitutes (A True Romance), advised audiences, “If you get bored with the action of the play, you can always amuse yourself by playing scavenger hunt with the scenery.”

Suppose Beautiful Madeline Harvey is produced by Object Collection and will feature a cast of eight, a live band, and the voice of Richard Foreman. While written by Foreman, it is adapted and directed by Kara Feely, with music by Travis Just. The play is about a woman who is not certain whether or not she exists.

The La MaMa season will also include the previously reported return of Belarus Free Theater (September 21-October 13), a puppet rock opera from the Czechoslovak American Marionette Theatre (November 21-October 8), the Under the Radar Festival (January 2025), and a new work from exiled Russian director Dmitry Krymov (March 7-23).

The Trojan Women Project will present Sur, based Ursula Le Guin’s short story about a crew of South American women on an expedition to the South Pole years before its “discovery” by a male crew. It is scheduled for March 27-April 6.

Also, Daniel Irizarry and Robert Lyons (the collaborators behind My Onliness) reunite with One-Eighth Theater for Classdismissed.edu, a world premiere play set in an “education factory.” When he’s not delivering memorably over-the-top performances onstage, Irizarry is a lecturer at MIT.

You can browse La MaMa’s complete 2024-25 season here.