Ellen Stewart, the founder and director of La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York, has been awarded the Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz Prize.

The award is granted annually by the Polish Centre of the International Theatre Institute I.T.I for outstanding achievements in the promotion of Polish theatre throughout the world.

Ellen Stewart founded La MaMa in 1961 and has since brought to her venue innovative and avant-garde performances by companies from around the world, representing a wide-range of cultural traditions.

She has invited many Polish groups, including Grotowski’ Laboratory, Kantor’s Cricot 2, Gardzienice, Wierszalin and, most recently, a youth company from Sejny, north-eastern Poland.

A ten-performance season of ‘Sejny Chronicles’ concluded at La MaMa last night.

Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, the patron of the I.T.I. Polish Centre Award, better known as Witkacy (1885-1939), was the avant-garde playwright and painter. His major dramas are The Mother, The Shoemakers and The Madman and the Nun. (mk)