Kim Ima’s One-Woman Show at La MaMa
Ready For Company and Other Family Tales is Kim Ima’s one-woman play about family and legacy, an inheritance of stories and unfinished quests from this Jewish/Japanese/American family tree.
Ready for Company and Other Family Tales
Thursday, November 6 through Sunday, November 23
The Downstairs – 66 E. 4th Street (between Bowery and 2nd Avenue)
Admission: $30 | $25 seniors and students
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club presents Ready for Company and Other Family Tales by writer/performer Kim Ima this November 6 through 23 at The Downstairs.
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, Ima 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 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!
For more information and to purchase tickets, please visit La MaMa’s website.
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
“...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.”
About Kim Ima
Kim Ima is a performer, writer, and longtime member of La MaMa's Great Jones Rep. Theater credits include playing Cassandra in La MaMa's groundbreaking production of The Trojan Women directed by Andrei Serban and composed by Elizabeth Swados; The Interlude, a play presented by La MaMa about Ima’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. Ima performed as a guest artist with Monica Bill Barnes & Company in Lunch Dances at the NYPL.
A founding member of The Trojan Women Project, Ima 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. To learn more, please visit her website.
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.
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Charlie Chaplin’s Confidante in spotlight off-broadway
Off-Broadway play about Toraichi Kono, Charlie Chaplin’s majordomo and confidante who was arrested for espionage during World War II
My Man Kono
Now through Sunday, March 9
A.R.T./New York Mezzanine Theatre – 502 W. 53rd Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues)
Admission: $77 | $66 Seniors | $39 Students (prices include fees)
Pan Asian Repertory Theatre presents the world premiere of My Man Kono, a play by LA-based writer and producer Philip W. Chung directed by Jeff Liu, an Artistic Producer for the Ojai Playwrights Conference.
In the heyday of silent films, Japanese émigré Toraichi Kono, in pursuit of the American Dream, becomes a loyal confidante of film star Charlie Chaplin. But at the dawn of WWII, he is swept up in anti-Japanese hysteria and accused of espionage. Conlan Ledwith portrays the silent screen star with Brian Lee Huynh as his man Kono.
“It’s a fascinating and distinctively American story about a figure from our cultural history we should know better,” writes Zachary Stewart in his review of the biographical off-Broadway production on theatermania.com.
Remembering Executive Order 9066
This Wednesday, February 19 Pan Asian Rep is celebrating the AANHPI community on AANHPI Affinity Night/Day of Remembrance. The evening is in recognition of the 83rd anniversary of Executive Order 9066, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s directive issued February 19, 1942, authorizing the forced relocation and incarceration of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens, in remote internment camps. Pan Asian Rep is offering a special discount to theatergoers on February 19. Enter code AANHPI at checkout for $55 tickets.
To purchase tickets, please visit panasianrep.org.
Conlan Ledwith (left) as Charlie Chaplin and Brian Lee Huynh as Toraichi Kono in My Man Kono. Photo: ©Russ Rowland
Performance Schedule
Tuesdays through Saturdays at 7:00 p.m.
Saturdays and Sundays at 2:30 p.m.
The run time is approximately two hours including an intermission.
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