Tom Walker & John Martello HD Original air date 10-15-15

• Report rights infringement
• published: 10 Oct 2015
• views: 96

The Living Theatre is an American theatre company founded in 1947 and based in New York City. It is the oldest experimental theatre group in the United States.[citation needed] For most of its history it was led by its founders, actress Judith Malina and painter/poet Julian Beck; after Beck's death in 1985, company member Hanon Reznikov became co-director with Malina.[1] After Malina's death in 2015, her responsibilities were taken over by the anarchist company. The Living Theatre has toured extensively throughout the world, often in non-traditional venues such as streets and prisons. It has greatly influenced other American experimental theatre companies, notably The Open Theater (founded by former Living Theatre member Joseph Chaikin) and Bread and Puppet Theater.[7] The Living Theatre's productions have won four Obie Awards: The Connection (1959), The Brig (1963 and 2007), and Frankenstein (1968). Though its prominence and resources have diminished considerably in recent decades, The Living Theatre continues to produce new plays in New Y In 2006, The Living Theatre signed a 10-year lease on the 3,500-square-foot (330 m2) basement of a new residential building under construction at 21 Clinton Street, between Houston and Stanton Streets on Manhattan's Lower East Side. The Clinton Street theater is the company's first permanent home since the closing of The Living Theatre on Third Street at Avenue C in 1993. The company moved into the completed space in early 2007 and opened in April 2007 with a revival of The Brig by Kenneth H. Brown,[8] first presented at The Living Theatre at 14th Street and Sixth Avenue in 1963. The re-staging, directed by Judith Malina won Obie Awards for In 2010, the company presented Red Noir, adapted and directed by Judith Malina. In 2011, the company presented "Korach", by Judith Malina, and a revival of "Seven Meditations on Political Sado-Masochism", directed by Judith Malina and Tom Walker. Also in 2011, the company created "The Plot Is The Revolution", starring Judith Malina and Silvia Calderoni, a co-production with the Italian group, Motus.In 2012, the company presented "The History of the World", written and directed by Judith Malina. In 2013, the company presented "Here We Are", written and directed by Judith Malina. The company also vacated its Clinton St. space. In 2014, Judith Malina's play No Place to Hide premiered at the Clemente Soto Velez Center on the Lower East Side. The production later took to the streets of New York for Underground Zero Festival, and traveled to Burning Man in a legendary theatre festival. No Place to Hide is the current production that is being performed. Judith Malina was writing Venus and Mars when she died in April 2015. A production of Venus in Mars is in the works. From its conception, The Living Theatre was dedicated to transforming the organization of power within society from a competitive, hierarchical structure to cooperative and communal expression. The troupe attempts to do so by counteracting complacency in the audience through direct spectacle. They oppose the commercial orientation of Broadway productions and have contributed to the off-Broadway theater movement in New York City, staging poetic dramas. The primary text for The Living Theatre is The Theater and Its Double, an anthology of essays written by Antonin Artaud, the French playwright. It was published in France in 1937 and by the Grove Press in the U.S. in 1958. This work deeply influenced Julian Beck, a bisexual painter of abstract expressionist works. The troupe reflects Artaud's influence by staging multimedia plays designed to exhibit his metaphysical Theatre of Cruelty. In these performances, the actors attempt to dissolve the "fourth wall" between them and the spectators. • The Brig • Antigone (Adaptation) • Frankenstein • Paradise Now • The Living Book of the Living Theatre (1971)