Nicky Paraiso News

Today (April 15) in live streaming: R+H goes live with Kyle Selig, Tiler Peck turns it out with Shereen Pimentel, the cast of SCTV reunites on Stars in the House and so much more!

La MaMa's 58th Season continues to celebrate the centennial of La MaMa's celebrated founder, the late Ellen Stewart with the announcement of its Winter/Spring lineup in its 58th season. The season features dozens of artists, playwrights, choreographers, directors, and award-winning theater companies and composers, including Elizabeth Swados, Anne Bogart, Noche Flamencia, Culture Hub, Hideki Noda/Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre, Nick Payne, En Garde Arts, Split Britches, and more.

On Monday, September 16, 2019, The New York Innovative Theatre Foundation announced the 2019 recipients at the annual Off-Off-Broadway IT Awards. For the past 15 years, the It Awards have celebrated the vibrant and creative indie theatre community under the dedicated leadership of Executive Directors Shay Gines and Nick Micozzi who are stepping down and at the ceremony introduced new leadership for the organization: Cat Parker, Artistic Director of Articulate Theatre Company; Ariel Estrada, Producing Artistic Director of Leviathan Lab Projects; and Jazmyn Arroyo, Co-Founding Artistic Director of Step 1 Theatre Project will join Akia Squiteri, Artistic Director of Rising Sun Performance Company as Directors of the organization.

On Monday, September 16, 2019, The New York Innovative Theatre Foundation announced the 2019 recipients at the annual Off-Off-Broadway IT Awards. For the past 15 years, the It Awards have celebrated the vibrant and creative indie theatre community under the dedicated leadership of Executive Directors Shay Gines and Nick Micozzi who are stepping down and at the ceremony introduced new leadership for the organization: Cat Parker, Artistic Director of Articulate Theatre Company; Ariel Estrada, Producing Artistic Director of Leviathan Lab Projects; and Jazmyn Arroyo, Co-Founding Artistic Director of Step 1 Theatre Project will join Akia Squiteri, Artistic Director of Rising Sun Performance Company as Directors of the organization.

Celebrate 15 years of the New York Innovative Theatre Foundation and their dedication to Off-Off Broadway by joining them when they present the 2019 New York Innovative Theatre Awards on Monday, September 16, 2019 at 7:00 pm. The ceremony will take place at the Centennial Memorial Theatre at 120 West 14th Street, NYC. Tickets to the ceremony are $29 each and can be purchased at www.nyitawards.com/shop.  

The NY Dance and Performance Awards, The Bessies, New York City's premier dance awards honoring outstanding creative work in the field, announced today that Obie and Bessie Award winner Justin Vivian Bond, hailed by The New Yorker as “the best cabaret artist of their generation,' will host the 2019 awards ceremony. The performers and award presenters were also revealed.

La MaMa announces its 58th season, featuring more than twenty world and US premieres, and dozens of artists, playwrights, choreographers, directors, award-winning theater companies and composers, including Philip Glass, Andrei Serban, Estelle Parsons, Germaine Acogny, Evan Yionoulis, Theodora Skipitares, Anne Bogart, Charlotte Brathwaite and many more.

The NY Dance and Performance Awards, The Bessies, New York City's premier dance awards honoring outstanding creative work in the field, announced today the recipients of two special awards.

The NY Dance and Performance Awards, The Bessies, New York City's premier dance awards honoring outstanding creative work in the field, celebrates a landmark 35th anniversary this year. Today, the nominees for the 2019 Bessie Awards, along with the recipients of the 2019 Juried Bessie Award and 2019 Outstanding Breakout Choreographer Award, were announced and celebrated at the Bessies press conference. (The list of nominations follows.)

Ma-Yi Theater Company is presenting the Off-Broadway world premiere of FRUITING BODIES by Asian-American playwright Sam Chanse, with Shelley Butler at the helm. The cast of FRUITING BODIES features Kimiye Corwin (Noises Off, Henry VI), Emma Kikue (God Said This, Up the Hill), Jeffrey Omura (House Rules, Hamlet) and Thom Sesma (Superhero, Sweeney Todd).

Who am I? Who are you?  Who are we?  Struggling for a stable identity and steadiness in an unsteady world where barriers are falling away and rising at the same time, the international lineup in the 2019 La MaMa Moves! dance festival—Yin Mei, Bobbi Jene Smith, Dan Safer, Hari Krishnan, Gruppo Nanou, Sin Cha Hong, Jesca Prudencio, Mia Habib, and Colleen Thomas—challenge such issues with unique urgency and originality. Their responses, alternately brightly witty, dead-on serious, and/or dark-humored, emerge from their singular historic and current cultural perspectives. 

La MaMa is proud to present the world premiere of now my hand is ready for my heart: intimate histories, the newest work from Nicky Paraiso, an award-winning 40-year veteran of the New York City performance community. In a deep exploration of an artist's life, Paraiso investigates aging, identity, sexuality, class and race. Directed by MacArthur Fellow John Jesurun, now my hand is ready for my heart: intimate histories is also a multi-disciplinary celebration of an artistic community as it grows older and continues to make work, both individually and with each other.

LA MAMA continues its 57th season this Winter and Spring with a roster of singular artists from around the globe as they present new works, both USA and World Premieres alike, on such topics as social inequality, immigration, racism and homophobia, it has been announced by Mia Yoo, La MaMa's Artistic Director.

Motivated to speak out as midterm elections approach, artists and community members will unite for an immediate Call to Action weekend of performances, including the latest protest piece from legendary performance artist and activist, Karen Finley, in the Downstairs Theatre at La MaMa (66 E. 4 St. in NYC) in the East Village, from October 26 - Oct. 28, 2018.

The night remained forever young at this year's Bessies, what with live performances, videos, tearful and grinning thank you's, hugs and cheers for the new slew of winners, and a costume sashay thrown into wild mix of celebration that took place tonight, October 8, at the NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts.  As a prelude to the goings-on inside, impromptu dance performances, including Simone Forti's "Huddle," took place outside.  Ayodele Casel and Shernita Anderson hosted the evening.

Glasses clinked and cheers crowded the air as this year's 43 Bessie nominees were announced and celebrated today, July 11, at a cocktail party/press conference at Gibney 280, along with the winners of 2018 Juried Bessie Award and the 2018 NY Dance and Performance Award for Outstanding "Breakout" Choreographer.  (See attached for list of selected nominees)

On the heels of having won the 2018 Regional Theater Tony Award, LA MAMA Experimental Theatre Club (ETC) announces its 57th season of productions, according to Mia Yoo, the company's artistic director. The season includes over 50 U.S., NYC and world premiere productions.

Now about to turn thirteen, La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival, the ever-evolving spring fling of dance that exuberantly commandeers the various theaters of La MaMa each year, takes on yet another challenge in 2018. This year's festival showcases nine artists who take the road less travelled, daring to speak out in new and forceful ways about issues that trouble and inspire them: race, gender, religion, exclusion, each using the body to voice concerns in ways words cannot. Eleven companies, nine performances, including five premieres are on the boards. New this year will be two offsite events: panel discussions about artists and cultural identity, and screenings of rarely-seen films. The 2018 festival runs May 10-June 3.

Series of One is a platform for provocative, challenging solo performances, curated by Nicky Paraiso presented at La MaMa during the 56th season. These courageous artists exemplify La MaMa's mission by continuing to create adventurous and engaging art which allows audiences to experience the dynamism of a single performer-no distractions.

Pleasure Seekers is LIVE! Variety Cabaret Show with an array of Downtown's most intriguing cultural Diva's with some sexy antics,lots of laughs and for sure some glamour fan action. Come and hear songs and stories from Heather's many days and nights in the NYC underground and beyond.