Founded in 1961 by Ellen Stewart, La MaMa is a home for artists of all identities, races, ages, and cultures. At La MaMa, artists are provided the space, support, and creative freedom to explore new forms of expression and to make new work.
La MaMa builds audiences that are integral to the creative process. Our local and global community members who gather in our physical, digital, and hybrid spaces to see new work, are often the first audience for that work. The audience response helps to shape the evolution of the piece for the artist, and is an essential part of the creative ecosystem that La MaMa nurtures.
La MaMa believes art is a force for change. Violence, discrimination, and systemic racism will not stop without a unified resistance. La MaMa is committed to battling bigotry and intolerance in all its forms, and to providing inclusive spaces for our local, national, and global community.

Kayla Farrish/Decent Structures Arts is an emerging company combining filmmaking, storytelling, dance theater performance, and soundscore. The work aspires to liberate and reimagine spaces and life for BIPOC folks and marginalized community with urgency, humanity, and radical imagination. She has been commissioned by various spaces including Gibney Dance, Louis Armstrong House Museum, Danspace Project, Pepatian, Little Island, Harlem Stage, Blacklight/The Clarice among others. She creates works in live performance, theater, site-specific, film, and hybrids. Some of these works of heart: Black Bodies Sonata, The New Frontier: My dear America, On the Sunny Side/Inside the Laughing Barrell, Roster, December 8th, Martyr’s Fiction, and others. She collaborates with musicians, filmmakers, and theaters as a choreographer, director, and filmmaker. Her work recently has been presented at The Clarice, Fusebox Festival, Lincoln Center, Park Avenue Armory, Symphony Space, and National Sawdust. She has been awarded Sundance Uprise Grant for Emerging BIPOC Directors, Bessie Awards for NYLA’s Motherboard Suite and Gibney's December 8th was one of the New York Times‘ Top 2021 Dance Performances - Roster and Breakout Star. She is a recipient of the Harkness Promise Award for 2022. In addition, she has been a freelance performing artist since 2013. During 2022, she was a Rehearsal Director for Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More and adjunct faculty for NYU Tisch Dance.