Judith

1968 · 76921 — Paris: N.p ca. 1968. First edition. 17 1/2 x 22 1/2 inches. Small piece from lower left corner absent. One pinhole burn reminiscent of a burning pot seed as was common at the time bit of edge crimping. A very good copy. First edition correct size: a reprint was done at a later date with smaller dimensions. The Living Theater was the brainchild of Judith Malina and Julian Beck who met in 1943 and decided that theater must move into the political sphere a place it had rarely ventured into in the United States. They staged a few plays in their apartment but the big breakthrough came in 1951 when Julian inherited 6000$ enabling their small group to rent Cherry Lane Theater on Commerce St. in the West Village. Here they staged a number of plays by writers such as Gertrude Stein Joh Ashbery and Kenneth Rexroth. By 1953 they lost the lease but by then they had attracted the attention and friendship of many luminaries of the Beat Generation such as poets John Ashbery Frank O’Hara Jackson MacLow Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso; writers Paul Goodman Tennessee Williams Joseph Campbell and Jack Kerouac; painters Larry Rivers Jackson Pollock Willem de Kooning and Ray Johnson; dancers Merce Cunningham James Waring and Remy Charlip; musicians John Cage Lou Harrison David Tudor and Alan Hovhaness. Soon they had another venue and staged many political plays and garnered a lot of critical acclaim. And during this time Julian and Judith participated in many protests and were often arrested. They were part of the General Strike for Peace against the nuclear testing. Judith spent a month in the Women’s House of Detention with Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day for failing to take cover during air raid drills in 1957. Malina went on to have quite a successful career in Hollywood."The culmination of this late 60’s period was Paradise Now a four to five hour collective creation with a great deal of audience participation. The play consisted of rituals visions and actions moving up an ideal ladder to paradise. Between each rung on the ladder space was given for the audience to react/participate. The play was often the scene of mass participation much nudity utopian discourse arguments and sometimes arrests since the last action of the play was to take the theater into the streets. The play opened in July 1968 at the Avignon Festival in France. Judith and Julian had participated in the occupation of the Odeon Theater in Paris in May. The festival asked the company to substitute another play due to the controversy and sensation of the event. The company refused and left the festival†Living Theater. They returned soon after Paradise Now and have been in continued existence since that time all the while cleaving closely to Beck’s battle cry of "All for the Beautiful Non- Violent Anarchist Revolution.†N.p unknown