La Mama Theatre (Melbourne)
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| Address | 205 Faraday St, Carlton, Victoria Melbourne Australia |
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| Opened | 1967 |
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| lamama.com.au | |
La Mama Theatre is a not-for-profit theatre in Carlton, Melbourne. It has been nationally and internationally acknowledged as a crucible for cutting edge, contemporary theatre since 1967. Valued by artists and audiences alike, La Mama is treasured for its continued advocacy of those seeking to explore beyond mainstream theatre. La Mama produces work by theatre makers of all backgrounds and encouraging works that deconstruct and critique form, content and social issues. Described by its founder Betty Burstall as “essentially a playwright’s theatre, a place where new ideas, new ways of expression can be tried out, a place were you can hear what people are thinking and feeling”, La Mama is the home of alternative and experimental local theatre.
The theatre, an initiative of founder Betty Burstall, was inspired by the "off-off-Broadway" theatre scene in New York City. Betty and her husband, film maker Tim Burstall, had just returned from a trip to New York and wanted to re-create the vibrancy and immediacy of the small theatres there. La Mama was modelled after the similarly named New York venue La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club.
"I got the idea for La Mama when we went to New York in the sixties. We were poor. It was impossible to go to the theatre – even to see a film was expensive – but there were these places where you paid fifty cents for a cup of coffee and you saw a performance, and if you felt like it you put some money in a hat for the actors. I saw some awful stuff and some good stuff. It was very immediate and exciting and when I came back to Melbourne I wanted to keep going, but there didn't exist such a place. So I talked around a bit, to a few actors and writers and directors, sounding them out about doing their own stuff, Australian stuff, for nothing ... I decided on Carlton because in 1967 it was a lively, tatty area with an Italian atmosphere and plenty of students ..." (Betty Burstall)
At a time when the production of Australian plays was almost non-existent (and financially risky), La Mama's non-for-profit organisation provided the venue for the performance of new experimental Australian theatre works. The first play performed at La Mama was a work by a new Australian writer Jack Hibberd, entitled Three Old Friends (1967), whose most successful play Dimboola opened there in 1969. The production of Australian works at La Mama soon became a staple, and within the first two years of its life twenty-five new Australian plays had premiered there.
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