The Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre presents "Once There was a Village," a puppet opera adaptation of Yuri Kapralov's book about the lives of immigrants in the East Village and Alphabet City in the 1960s and 1970s.

The story:

The play follows generational cycles of immigration, during which a tenement "village" rises out of the tidal marsh just north of New Amsterdam. Native Americans who find food and refuge in the swamp are displaced -- or worse -- by Dutch settlers, whose farms are swallowed in turn by shipyards, ironworks, tobacco factories, sweatshops and tenements. Newcomers escaping the nightmares of pogroms, famine and war bring their dreams to this slice of the New World, another frontier village that in its own time is burned and ripped apart by cultural conflict.

Music by the Hungry Marching Band. It's a three week run, January 25 - February 11, at La MaMa. Thursdays through Sundays at 7:30 pm with a Sunday matinee at 2:30. Tickets are $20 plus $2.50 convenience charge.

(via NewYorkology)