Off-Off-Broadway pioneer Ellen Stewart dies

[January 14, 2011]  NEW YORK (AP) -- The founder and director of the Off-Off-Broadway pioneering group La MaMa Experimental Theater Club has died. Ellen Stewart was 91.

Theater spokesman Sam Rudy says Stewart died Thursday at New York's Beth Israel Hospital after an extended illness.

During Stewart's 49-year tenure, La MaMa presented 3,000 productions and earned countless cultural awards.

Stewart started La MaMa in 1961 when she rented a tiny basement in Manhattan for $55 a month to provide her brother and his playwright friends a space to showcase their plays. Already nicknamed Mama, an actor suggested La MaMa as the name for her theater.

She was the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" in 1985 and nurtured works in dozens of countries.

[Associated Press]

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