For almost 40 years, La MaMa has consistently presented exciting, often radical, plays in a forum that nurtures and encourages the artist. In addition, La MaMa has produced a number of actors, musicians, directors, and visual artists who have become popular and respected names in their respective fields.
Born in 1920 in Alexandria, Louisiana (some sources say Chicago, Illinois), Stewart is notoriously reticent about her personal background. Most sources state that she is descended from Geechees, the slaves who settled along the Ogeechee River in Georgia. Stewart has said that some of her descendants were involved in vaudeville and burlesque. After her parents divorced, when she was young, Stewart spent her childhood traveling between her father, a tailor, in Louisiana and her mother, a teacher, in Detroit. Interested in theater from an early age, she remembers playing with a miniature theater that she and her foster brother Fred Lights made from shoeboxes, using spool people as actors. Stewart has noted that she received little formal education.
Before moving to New York, Stewart worked in Detroit and managed Boss Slim's nightclub in Chicago, where she booked artists such as Billie Holiday and Cab Calloway.
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