Ellen Stewart, 91, Founder of La MaMa and Off-Off-Broadway Titan

Originally a dress designer, Stewart – as an African-American woman in the early 1960s, no less – created and ran for five decades an experimental theater center that became as influential as Joe Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival. Harvey Fierstein, one person on an astonishing list of La MaMa alumni, has said, “Eighty percent of what is now considered the American theater originated at La MaMa.”