Ella, Marilyn, and the Mocambo

Ella, Marilyn, and the Mocambo is a 10-minute puppet performance inspired by the true story of how famed Hollywood movie star Marilyn Monroe used her celebrity to help legendary jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald secure a career-defining engagement at Hollywood's Mocambo nightclub in 1955. Through handcrafted imagery and speculative storytelling, the piece imagines the conversations, tensions, and competing perspectives surrounding a pivotal moment in entertainment history. Rooted in historical events but free to imagine what history left undocumented, the performance explores race, beauty, allyship, celebrity, and the friendship between two extraordinary women who recognized one another's humanity and talent when much of the world only saw how they looked.