In Memory Judith Malina 1926–2015 Because We Are Crazy from Richard Schechner All perform their tragic play, There struts Hamlet, there is Lear, That’s Ophelia, that Cordelia; Yet they, should the last scene be there, The great stage curtain about to drop, If worthy their prominent part in the play, Do not break up their lines to weep. They know that Hamlet and Lear are gay; Gaiety transfiguring all that dread. — William Butler Yeats, “Lapis Lazuli” (1938) Fierce, yet compassionate; opinionated, yet happy to listen and engage; impassioned, yet imbued with reason; political, yet open to ideas not her own; sure of her ends, yet Talmudic in arguing the means to those ends; small of stature, yet grand in effect; regal, not haughty. Judith Malina! She cut through fogs of shillyshally. She knew — or gave the impression that she knew — where she came from, where she was, and where she was going. Judith lived a long, often difficult life in the (Living) theatre. She lived that life in partner- ship with Julian Beck, then with Hanon Reznikov and Julian, then after Julian’s death in 1985, with Hanon until his death in 2008. These were her closest work-and-love partners. But Judith was also — most ardently and totally — in loving symbiosis with the Living Theatre from (at least) her 21st birthday, 4 June 1947, when she wrote in her diary: “[...] the earliest plans for the Living Theatre, the most important work of my life, for which I am now preparing” (1984:1). Attacked, imprisoned, beleaguered, dismissed or savaged by (some) critics, artists, scholars, and journalists, Judith suffered. But she was also celebrated. She was exalted and lionized by both her acolytes and the academy. She encouraged everyone around her with untiring energy and optimism — qualities that never failed her in public. Why then did she title her account of the Living’s return from Europe in 1968 The Enormous Despair? She took the phrase from a letter Martin Buber sent Julian and her in 1961 telling them that he could not endorse the General Strike for Peace because “I dread the enor- mous despair that must be the consequence of the inevitable failure” (in Malina 1972:57). But failure never deterred Judith. She knew in her bones that every peak stands over an abyss; that the revolution she espoused was forever on the horizon; that people she trusted would betray her, not viciously but by their very ordinary humanity — which was never enough for Judith. She dreamt, strove, pushed, failed, and succeeded: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better” (Beckett 1983:7). TDR: The Drama Review 59:3 (T227) Fall 2015. ©2015 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 7 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DRAM_e_00468 by guest on 03 October 2021 From the very beginning, Malina and the Living Theatre’s work called out contradictory responses. In a 1962 article, the first ofTDR ’s many about the Living Theatre, Charles L. Mee, Jr., not yet a major playwright, wrote about the Living’s 1961 reprise of William Carlos Williams’s Many Loves: “The acting was abysmal. Well, not altogether abysmal. There is cer- tainly more talent at the Living Theatre than most critics have allowed. But, as a repertory company, they’re incompetent” (1962:197). In contrast, William Carlos Williams wrote in a let- ter to Malina in 1951 after attending Gertrude Stein’s Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights: I’m walking in a dream, the aftermath of what I saw at your Cherry Lane Theatre last evening [...]. I want to tell you everything at once: about the excellently chosen cast, the evenness of their performance, the way they kept the interest up among them as well as the integrity of their individual performances (I was thrilled!) but there was something else that overshadowed all that. It concerned the stage itself, the overall conception of the play as something elevated, as pure entertainment, as something so well sustained, so far above the level of commercial theatre that I tremble to think it might fade and disappear [...]. You are young and, apparently, incorruptible. (in Malina 1984:197) Both opinions are true. Mee explains why: The Living Theatre is New York’s only true repertory company; consequently it is the only theatre in New York that has its own style. [...] Quite obviously my attitude towards the Living Theatre is ambivalent. [...] It is a perplexing theatre, a disturbing theatre, a theatre that will not be denied attention. There are no other theatres in America like it; and this preeminent fact is intriguing, and invites approval. Whatever you say about the Becks can be only partially true. (1962:194, 203–04) Every time the Living Theatre located to what Judith hoped would be an abiding home for their repertory — not just one play at a time, but an extended season of maturing works — someone shut down the theatre. Citing fire and building code violations, New York City authorities closed three venues. The IRS shut down another. The final theatre — or ought I write “most recent”? — on Clinton Street in New York’s Lower East Side, was lost in 2013 for lack of rent. But Judith never took no for an answer. The Living Theatre rose again and again from its ashes. And yet Judith, so politically and artistically anchored, so sure of her ideals, was for years physically adrift. After the IRS seized the 14th Street theatre in 1963, the Living fled to Europe, return- ing in 1968 with three new works in a new style: Paradise Now, Frankenstein, and Mysteries and Smaller Pieces. These toured along with a luminous production of Antigone, translated by, directed by, and starring Judith Malina in the title role. From 31 August 1968 to 1 April 1969 Judith — always the epicenter — guided the Living as it toured America coast-to-coast, arousing many youths and some not-so-young, infuriating authorities, precipitating and leading street actions, protests, meetings, and myriad other political-aesthetic activities. The Enormous Despair details how she was every day deeply involved with a broad spectrum of people and groups: the Black Panthers, the Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers, Eric Bentley, Robert Brustein, Allen Ginsburg, Timothy Leary, Abbie Hoffman, and Jerry Rubin...and many more, a roll call of rad- ical America in the late 1960s. Earlier, her comrades and mentors included Erwin Piscator, Valeska Gert, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, and Maya Deren. Throughout her long life, Judith kept in touch with political activists and artists. She always found time to meet young people. She thrilled all with her energy and intellect. The daughter of a rabbi, she never stopped teaching Talmud, Malina-edition. Judith lived totally engaged, enraged, loving, arguing, sustain- ing, and leading. When on April Fools Day 1969 the Living boarded the SS Europa for Europe, the start of a decades-long sojourn, Judith attempted to put her American experience in perspective: In Memory 8 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DRAM_e_00468 by guest on 03 October 2021 And all the time at sea we try to find a retrospect on the American scene. And some cohe- sive picture about what’s happening in the United States. No Man’s Land: The turn towards violence. The seething of the black revolution. The turn towards “ecstasy” as a form of “depolarization” for the discouraged. The ambivalence of the man on the street. The toughening of the cops. The tightening of the media. The extreme sensitivity to the political content of everything: clothes, foods, architecture, ads, songs. [...] The grass roots burning with fire and static. (1972:236–237) Once in the Old World, the Living dispersed into cells that took off throughout Europe and to Latin America, India, and the USA. Then in 2007, Judith returned to New York for good, settling into the theatre on Clinton Street. She lived in an apartment upstairs. From her head- quarters, Judith directed and exhorted. On one level, she was an indefatigably public person, putting herself out there in the service of both her theatre and the ideas it enacted and embod- ied. When she spoke, her restless, tightly knit body and oh so articulate hands punctuated and underlined her passionate ideas. But she was not only a public person; she wrote lovingly of her children, her husbands, her close circle of intimates. A beauty in youth, a firebrand always, in old age Judith suffered the slings and arrows of decrepitude. In 2013, in her 80s and needing care, Judith moved to the Lillian Booth Actors Home in Englewood, New Jersey, her last address. Never despondent, she kept working to the very end. Throughout her extraordinarily long life in art, Judith directed and performed tragedies — who can forget her Antigone? — as well as tragedy’s antithesis: wildly anarchic works such as Paradise Now and incandescent collages such as Frankenstein and Mysteries and Smaller Pieces. These, along with her directorial masterpieces — Jack Gelber’s The Connection and Kenneth H. Brown’s The Brig — are, in my opinion, the Living’s most radical, theatre- and life-changing works. Under Judith’s intrepid leadership and fierce determination, the Living enacted its pol- itics, embodying and proclaiming its paradoxical brand of anarchy. An anarchy with a center, a leadership team — Judith and Julian. Then Judith occupied the apex of the Judith-Julian-Hanon triad; then the Judith-Hanon team; and finally, the Judith-Brad Burgess years. Judith had her private moments, as we all do, but she lived mostly with the actuality of a collective.