A special event in honor of ELLEN STEWART, The MaMa of the Avant-Garde who passed away on Jan. 13, 2011.

A tribute to remember and celebrate Ellen Stewart, founder and artistic director of New York´s legendary Café La MaMa , considered one of the temples of the international theatrical avant-garde. Over the course of fifty years, she influenced artists everywhere with her passion and creativity. A tireless traveler, she was very attached to the Festival, where she had presented her shows on several occasions, and to Spoleto, which she had chosen as her elective home and where in 1990 she founded the La MaMa Umbria International Artistic Residency, still active today as a Study Center and residency in the field of theater arts.

The event will be attended by several guests from the Italian and foreign world of entertainment, and representatives of the institutions, to pay tribute to her and remember her extraordinary life in the theater. Original video documents, excerpted from both the Archives of La MaMa Theater in New York and theHistorical Archivesof the Festival dei 2 Mondi, and the documentary La MaMa dell´Avanguardia by Moreno Cerquetelli and Paolo Liberati will be shown.

Many artists and friends of La MaMa will contribute to the evening, from different parts of the world, to offer testimonies and moments of performance in his honor, among them: Andrei Serban, Elizabeth Swados, Israel Horovitz, Judith Malina, Duk Yoo, Joel Zwick, Giorgio Barberio Corsetti, Dario D´Ambrosi, Claudia Ruspoli, Frank Carucci, David Diamond, Tobias Biancone, Johnathan Hart Makwaia, Federico Restrepo, Denise Greber, Maureen Fleming, Chris Odo, Yukio Tsuji, Sara Galassini, Allison Hiroto, Jean Guy Le Cat, Petar Todorov, Stefano Zazzera, Rolando Macrini, Alexandros, Peter Case, Cecile Guidote Alvarez, Axel Tangerding, Erica Builder, Zisan Ugurlu, George Drance, Billy Clark, Randy Gener, Virlana Tkacz, Theodora Skipitares, Lois Weaver, Peggy Shaw, Jeffrey Isaac, Piersandra Di Matteo, Giulia Palladini, Marisa Buffone, Daniel Banks, Adam McKinney, Osvaldo Rodriguez, Michael Arian, Michael Gorman, Cindy Rosenthal, George Kuser, Arthur Adair, Jan Klug, Marko Zoranovic, Jing-Jyi Wu, Flaka Goranci, Dubravka Vrgoč, and others.

A number of artists from this year´s festival fringe event, La MaMa Spoleto Open, created with the direct involvement of La MaMa Theater, will also perform.

Directing the evening will be to by Mia Yoo, current artistic director of La MaMa Theatre in New York, and Andrea Paciotto, director and coordinator of the La MaMa Center in Italy

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