An affectionate and richly illustrated history of one of Australia's most influential experimental theatres.

Founded by Betty Burstall in a tiny Carlton building in 1967, La Mama became a home for playwrights, performers, political agitators and artists who wanted to make theatre beyond the conventions of established institutions. Inspired by New York's Off-Off-Broadway movement, it helped foster a distinctly Australian experimental theatre culture, where artistic freedom frequently mattered more than commercial viability or good manners.

Liz Jones, Betty Burstall and Helen Garner reconstruct La Mama's early decades through conversation, recollection, archival photographs, production histories and the voices of those who inhabited its remarkably small space. The book captures a period when theatre was as much a form of political participation as artistic production, with performances challenging censorship, conventional spectatorship, gender expectations and the boundaries between performers and audiences. Productions could be confrontational, absurd, intimate or gloriously disastrous, sometimes all at once.

Beyond its significance as a theatre history, this is a fascinating document of Melbourne's cultural life and the communities that made independent artistic practice possible. 

McPhee Gribble / Penguin Books, 1988. Illustrated paperback with extensive black-and-white archival photographs. Good vintage condition, with some light age-related wear.