La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club is an East Village, Manhattan performing-arts institution founded in 1961 by Ellen Stewart, who began the venture in the basement of a boutique where she sold fashion designs before turning it into a home for emerging playwrights. It became the only surviving venue of the four core spaces from the 1960s Off-Off-Broadway movement, producing early work by Sam Shepard, Lanford Wilson, and Adrienne Kennedy, and launching the musical 'Hair.' Today La MaMa operates multiple East Village spaces, including the Ellen Stewart Theatre and the Downstairs Theatre, hosting more than one hundred productions a year alongside residencies, festivals, and community programs.