The Living Theater 1969

"The Living Theater Company performs two segments from their work "Mysteries and Smaller Pieces": "The Brig Dollar" and "The Plague." The excerpts are introduced by founder-directors Julian Beck and Judith Malina, who discuss the goals of the work and the ideas of their group with arts critic Jack Kroll. This performance was recorded in 1969."

The story of The Living Theatre is also the story of the emergence of a New York avant-garde in the 1950s and the resulting counterculture of the 1960s. The company was a kind of theatrical tribe, creating and staging plays collectively, living communally, and cultivating an atmosphere of sexual openness and adventure. And what a cast of characters passes through these pages: Tennessee Williams, Frank O'Hara, Anais Nin, James Agee, Allen Ginsberg and the Beats, Jackson Pollock and the Abstract Expressionists, Dorothy Day, John Ashbery, Peggy Guggenheim, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Alan Hovhaness, and Maya Deren, among many others. Tytell has captured the mood and the artistic and political challenges of one of the most dynamic eras in American cultural history, and The Living Theatre should be read by everyone who shares a passion for the arts and knows the sacrifices that passion, at times, demands.

The Company's American tour, after a visit to Europe, is recounted here providing a compelling view of the U.S. in 1969 through the eyes of American exiles returned.

The Enormous Despair is a record, in diary form, of the year 1968, when, after an extended tour of Europe, The Living Theatre returned to tour the United States.

24-31 May 1969, Willard Hall, Wakefield Street, Adelaide.

A dynamic exploration of eight radical theater collectives from the 1960s and 70s, and their influence on contemporary performance