Judith Malina’s Voracious Body, Mind and Spirit

Abstract

Rosenthal argues that legendary avant-garde performer and codirector of the Living Theatre, Judith Malina (1926-2015), never focused on an Aristotelian through-line in her theatre art, nor on the ‘peak and decline’ narrative associated with older people in their later years. Malina’s alternative path resembled a ‘life course’ trajectory, more in line with Brecht’s Epic Theatre, and with ideas suggested by theorists such as Margaret Morgenroth Gullete and Elinor Fuchs.

This essay tracks Malina’s two years at the Lillian Booth Actors Home in Englewood, New Jersey, where she attempted to stage fellow residents in an original, devised work, The Triumph of Time. The theme of this unproduced piece reflects Malina’s perspective - humans become wiser and should be more valuable to society as they age. In her day-to-day resistance to ‘incarceration’ at the Actors Home and in the performance work that took her outside its walls, Malina challenged the rules for and expectations about older people until the end of her long life.

Antigone was a role icon for Malina; she saw herself as one who stood up against oppression and authority figures at all costs. Malina played Antigone in her own adaptation of Brecht’s version of Sophocles’ play from age 40 into her late fifties. Performances in her eighties include Maudie and Jane, where she stripped naked on stage and The Plot is the Revolution, where she recounted how she performed Antigone and engaged the audience in a ‘theatre of the scream’.

Notes

1 Piscator established The Dramatic Workshop in 1940 in New York City. Malina’s first day at The Workshop was 5 February 1945; she was 19. She enrolled as an actor but shifted her focus to directing. Malina’s time at The Dramatic Workshop ended in 1947. She stated that Piscator’s teachings and example inspired her to dedicate her life to making revolutionary, political theatre.

2 Motus is a much lauded, iconoclastic Italian political theatre collective; several of their recent performances provocatively, explosively interrogate Antigone.

3 Skipitares’ innovative theatre-making spans almost four decades. She is known for unique puppet creations and choreography and startling, evocative set designs (Skipitares 2009).