The Living Theater Performance

Conversation with Judith Malina, Julian Beck. The Living Theater Company performs two segments from their "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. The Living Theater was a well-known repertory company in the late 40s and through the 60s. For a time it had its own theater in New York City. Their work was radical, experimental, and confrontational, long before those characteristics were at all common or accepted by the theater public.

Scripts, Photos, Director's Notes, Musical Scores, Set Designs and More, From a Remarkably Fertile Period in the Half-Century-Long History of the Most Important Radical Theatre Ensemble in American (Or World) History. Book jacket.

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.

This anthology of plays includes introductory sections which acquaint readers with the process of reading a playscript. There are also notes which provide background on both the play and playwright.

Avant-Garde Performance and the Limits of Criticism looks at the American avant-garde during the Cold War period, focusing on the interrelated questions of performance practices, cultural resistance, and the politics of criticism and scholarship in the U.S. counterculture. This groundbreaking book examines the role of the scholar and critic in the cultural struggles of radical artists and reveals how avant-garde performance identifies the very limits of critical consideration. It also explores the popularization of the avant-garde: how formerly subversive art is eventually discovered by the mass media, is gobbled up by the marketplace, and finds its way onto the syllabi of college and university courses. This book is a timely and significant book that will appeal to those interested in avant-garde literary criticism, theater history, and performance studies.

As cofounder of the internationally-known, highly-controversial radical political troupe, The Living Theater, author Judith Malina is one of the leading female countercultural figures of the 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond. inFULL MOON STAGES: PERSONAL NOTES FROM 50 YEARS OF THE LIVING THEATRE, she creates an intimate memoir in a unique format with a collection of personal notes written on every full moon for 50 years from 1964 to 2014. These never-before-published personal notes reveal Malina's most private thoughts and inform the reader on what The Living Theatre was performing as they wound their way from New York City to Italy, France, Belgium, Germany and Brazil in a nomadic series of notable performances of such underground classics as The Brig, The Connection, andParadise Now. Malina is relentless in her commitment to the full moon schedule, writing regardless of her current life circumstance. Notes issue forth from hotels, trainseven prison, offering a light on the consequences of holding true to her code of the theatrical expression of her pacifist-anarchist principles. The format of the book is well-suited for modern readers interested in history of the counterculture. In addition, the book includes 50+ rare historical photos from Living Theatre performances and intimate

"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."

Illuminates the historical and aesthetic relationship of print to avant-garde performance