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  EVENTS

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EXPERIMENTS IN DIGITAL STORYTELLING

BALLS in the Park

La MaMa
74 E 4th Street
New York, NY 10012

October 23, 2025
7pm ET
Tickets: $30

Paul Foster’s BALLS returns to La MaMa for one night only 61 years after its premiere in 1964. The short play, originally staged with two ping pong balls swinging like pendulums on a stage, was re-created as a digital installation by CultureHub and the Great Jones Repertory Company in 2019 with Paul's blessing.

This October, we bring you BALLS in the Park, a screening of the digital version with immersive sound. Grab a lawn chair or a blanket and purchase a picnic basket for this special theatrical event. 

BALLS in the Park will be presented in The Club at La MaMa as a part of Creatures, a two-week inhabitation of 74A E 4th Street with installations, short works/performances, workshops, meals, vigils, processions, and conversations about liminal beings as they manifest across cultures. Creatures convenes artists, scientists, scholars, and theologians from across the globe to consider non-human protagonists as prophets of compassion in an era of great ecological precarity.

Your ticket to BALLS in the Park will include access to all installations in Creatures and Terraria, a performance installation by Tom Lee and Averly Sheltraw that links artists in Chicago & New York via livestream through handmade puppet terrariums at 7pm. BALLS in the Park will begin at 7:30, with an opening night reception to follow.

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CREDITS for BALLS in the Park
Playwright: Paul Foster
Director/Set Design: Arthur Adair
Creative Producers: Billy Clark, Mattie Barber-Bockelman
Sound Design: John King
Creative Coding: Oren Shoham
Creative Technologist: Sangmin Chae
Technical Director: DeAndra Anthony
Recorded Voices:
Jon DeVries (“Commodore” Wilkinson)
Charley Hayward (Beau Beau)
Onni Johnson (Miss McCuthcheon)
Billy Clark (Bus Driver)
Sara Galassini & John Maria Gutierrez (Young Lovers)
Valois Mickens (The Woman Who Had No Shadow)
Chris Wild (The Military Commander)
Yuna Clark (Nasty Brat)

More about Balls:  On a foggy night in a cemetery, the waves have washed away the land, claiming all the graves except for two. From these graves, two unlikely companions' voices emerge amidst the sounds of the sea, a military march, and a player piano. They battle with their pasts and contend with what looms just beyond.

Paul Foster’s Balls premiered at Café La MaMa, then at 82 2nd Avenue, on November 3, 1964, and went on to Caffe Cino, 31 Cornelia Street, later that month. The action of the original production consisted of two ping pong balls floating and swaying like pendulums in and out of a spotlight.

Paul Foster (playwright) is a founding member and the first president of La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club. He is a recipient of the Guggenheim, Rockefeller, NEA, NY Arts Council, British Arts Council, Theater Heute, Irish Universitis Awards. He has written 22 plays, 6 television scripts, and 5 films. There are nine editions in print of his works by 6 publishers in as many languages. He has been, and continues to be, performed in regionals, Broadway, the West End and just about every major theater on both sides of the Atlantic.

Explore reviews of the original production of Balls here.