La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club presents Ready for Company and Other Family Tales by writer/performer Kim Ima this November 6–23 at The Downstairs 66 East 4th Street New York NY 10003. Tickets are $30 and $25 for students and seniors (includes fees). Ten tickets to every performance are $10 each first-come first-served – in advance online only. For more information and to purchase tickets please visit https://www.lamama.org/ready-for-company/.
Ready For Company and Other Family Tales is a one-woman play about family and legacy. An inheritance of stories and unfinished quests from this Jewish-Japanese-American family tree.
With a complicated family history Kim excavates meaning from small remembered moments inherited souvenirs the oft-repeated family tales (as well as silent secrets) left for her to unpack. Told with music movement and “show-and-tell” objects this one-woman journey of nostalgia and discovery portrays with humor the beautiful and enigmatic paths of immigration – and what we choose to carry forward.
Refreshments will be served!
...I want to tell you something about my mother....and my grandma Rosie...and my pop and... and and...Camp. That camp. The one we don't like to talk about camp.
Camp camp camp camp camp.
Camp.
And cake. We also need cake.
Kim Ima is a performer writer and longtime member of La MaMa's Great Jones Rep. Company credits include playing Cassandra in La MaMa's groundbreaking production of The Trojan Women directed by Andrei Serban and composed by Elizabeth Swados and more recently performing as a guest artist with Monica Bill Barnes & Company in Lunch Dances at the NYPL and Sur a devised theater piece adapted from the short story by Ursula K. Le Guin in the Ellen Stewart Theatre in April 2025. Kim is a founding member of The Trojan Women Project and was the owner of The Treats Truck a Vendy Award winning food truck in NYC and The Treats Truck Stop a bakery cafe in Carroll Gardens Brooklyn. She is the author of the cookbook The Treats Truck Baking Book published by HarperCollins.
Production Credits
Writer/performer: Kim Ima
Director: Megan Paradis Hanley
Dramaturg: Kendall Cornell
Set Design: Mary Olin Geiger
Lighting: Federico Restrepo
Costumes: Gabriel Berry
Sound Design: Leonie Bell
Bios
Kim Ima (Writer/Performer) is a performer baker and writer who loves helping make things especially theater projects live performances of all kinds and community events. Kim was the owner of The Treats Truck a Vendy Award winning food truck in NYC and The Treats Truck Stop a bakery cafe in Carroll Gardens Brooklyn. She is the author of the cookbook The Treats Truck Baking Book published by HarperCollins.
Theater credits include Cassandra in La MaMa's The Trojan Women directed by Andrei Serban and composed by Elizabeth Swados; The Interlude a play presented by La MaMa about Kim's American-born Japanese American father and his time in an American concentration camp during WWII and Sur a devised theater piece adapted from the short story by beloved science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin in the Ellen Stewart Theatre in April 2025. Kim is a founding member of The Trojan Women Project and helped lead The Trojan Women Project Festival in 2019. Other credits include performing in Lunch Dances with Monica Bill Barnes & Company at the NYPL The Seven Deadly Sins directed by Anne Bogart at The New York City Opera with the SITI Company A Midsummer Night's Dream with the National Asian American Theatre Company and a zoom/soap opera-style The Cherry Orchard directed by Rachel Murdy. Kim's piece Camp: A mostly overdue homework assignment was a part of SMUSH Gallery's Disaster Theater in 2023. Upcoming projects: We Are So Happy You Are Here a part of the Creatures project at La MaMa and Ready For Company and Other Family Tales her solo show in La MaMa's Downstairs Theatre Nov 6-23rd.
Megan Paradis Hanley (Director)’s cake of choice is carrot or anything with cream cheese frosting really. Recent directing credits include Sur with the Trojan Women Project (La MaMa) Fish Migration Songs and To New Drowsy with Big Green Theater (LMCC) There Will Be Monsters with Superhero Clubhouse (HERE & Salo Farm) and Collarbone by Jen Abrams (Movement Research). Megan is a Core Member of Superhero Clubhouse and a SITI Company Associate Artist
Leonie Bell (Sound Designer) is a German-American theater artist and sound designer from Berlin based in New York. She produces much of her work through her free-form theater company LOCAL GRANDMA. In NYC she has presented work at Target Margin Theater Performance Space NY BAM The Whitney Museum The Brick Center for Performance Research and other venues. Recent sound credits: SchmidtSmithSchmidt (The Brick) Arrow of Time (by Allyson Dwyer) Lunch with Sonia (La MaMa Experimental Club) Phase One: The Underbrush (New Phase Collective) Sing Goddess! (HERE Arts) Women Screaming (The Tank). Sound design awards: 2023 “Mix it Up” Sound Designer of the Year (Young Howze Theatre Awards) Indie Shorts Awards Cannes 2021 (Phosphor) La MaMa DesignFest 2020. www.leoniebell.org
Kendall Cornell (Dramaturg) is a New York-based clown and theatre artist. At the helm of the all-women clown troupe Clowns Ex Machina Kendall has created directed and performed in the full-length shows The Bad’Uns: Clown Acts of Contagion (“an opus of clowning mastery”); Oil of Olé!; Clowns Full-Tilt: A Musing on Aesthetics; Clown Axioms: a gory romantic tale (told by clowns); Clowns By Dead Reckoning (a semi-sophisticated cabaret) and the troupe’s debut production Not Just for Shock Value. Kendall has been profiled in The New York Times The Wall Street Journal Backstage Spectacle Journal for the Circus Arts Attitude Dance Magazine and elsewhere. She has a background in acting and modern dance and has studied clown with David Shiner Chris Bayes and Philippe Gaulier among others. Kendall teaches clown workshops for women and she recently organized a panel discussion on “Clowning While Female” for Howlround TV.
Federico Restrepo (Lighting Designer) has designed lighting for theatre productions in New York as well as abroad since moving to New York in 1999. In addition he is the Artistic Director of Loco7 Dance Puppet Theatre with his company he has created and performed a number of original pieces and toured internationally over the past thirty plus years. He is a resident puppet designer choreographer performer and director at La MaMa as well as the Producing Director of La MaMa Puppet Festival a bi-annual event. www.loco7.org
Gabriel Berry (Costume Designer) arrived in New York City early in 1979. Within a few months she met Ellen Stewart made her New York debut designing costumes for Charles Ludlam's The Enchanted Pig and became the costume designer in residence at La MaMa E.T.C. Specializing in the creation of new work she has designed premieres of the works of dozens of artists including John Adams Samuel Beckett Anne Bogart Charles Ludlam Caryl Churchill Lucinda Childs Christopher Durang Ethyl Eichelberger and Richard Foreman Brandon Jacob Jenkins Tayler Mac and Maria Irene Fornes on numerous projects including Sarita Mud and The Danube.
Mary Olin Geiger (Set Designer) is an interdisciplinary artist with a background in theatrical design sculpture and socially-engaged art. Her work has been seen in venues such as Irondale Center The Tank Incubator Arts Project Harlem Stage Vineyard Theater and Open Stage Harrisburg among others. Her collaborative mixed-media projects have been produced and shown at art museums festivals artist residencies local organizations and public or unconventional spaces such as farms parks downtown storefronts and the shores of a human-made lake. In her projects she uses context- and site-specific methods to seek overlooked histories hidden spectacular worlds and people who are passionate about their own webs of unique knowledge. She is a member and co-founder of Valley Traction Performance Collective in Pennsylvania. Learn more at mogeiger.com.
About La MaMa
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club is dedicated to the artist and all aspects of the theatre. La MaMa's 64th Season LA MAMA NOW focuses on creating solidarity and building community exploring ways to build connections for cross-sector coalition and invite artists activists organizers and community members into the creative process.
La MaMa has been honored with 30+ Obie Awards dozens of Drama Desk Bessie Awards Villager Awards the 2018 Regional Theatre Tony Award and most recently a 2023 New York Drama Critics’ Circle Special Citation. We are a creative home to artists and resident companies from around the world many of whom have made lasting contributions to the arts including Blue Man Group Bette Midler Ping Chong Jackie Curtis Robert De Niro André De Shields Adrienne Kennedy Cole Escola Bridget Everett Harvey Fierstein Diane Lane Charles Ludlam Tom Eyen Spiderwoman Theater Tadeusz Kantor Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman Meredith Monk David and Amy Sedaris Stephanie Hsu Julie Taymor Kazuo Ohno Tom O'Horgan Andrei Serban Liz Swados and Andy Warhol. La MaMa's vision of nurturing new artists and new work from all nations cultures races and identities remains as strong today as it was when Ellen Stewart first opened the doors in 1961.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, 66 E 4th St, New York, NY 10003, United States
