THE LIVING THEATRE: HISTORY, THEATRICS, AND POLITICS

THE LIVING THEATRE: HISTORY, THEATRICS, AND POLITICS by TERRELL W, MARRS, B,A, A THESIS IN THEATRE ARTS Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS Approved May, 1984 4(^ ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am deeply indebted to Dr. George W, Sorensen for his direction of this thesis and to committee member Dr. Clifford Ashby for his helpful criticism. Special thanks are due my wife, Sherri, without whose editing, typing, and other invaluable assistance this endeavor would never have been completed. 11 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 11 LIST OF FIGURES iv I. INTRODUCTION 1 II. HISTORY 7 Background Cherry Lane Theatre Broadway and lOOth Street Theatre (The Studio) 14th Street Theatre Europe The American Tour Europe Brazil: Legacy of Cain United States: Legacy of Cain Italy III. THEATRICS AND POLITICS 7 17 19 23 37 69 71 74 80 86 90 Cherry Lane Theatre: Searching for Poetic Form Broadway and lOOth Street (The Loft): Altering the Actor/Audience Relationship 14th Street Theatre: Investigating Improvisation Europe Brazil: Legacy of Cain: Reaching the People United States: Legacy of Cain: Living the Collective Ideal Italy: Prometheus; Returning to Theatres IV. CONCLUSION 91 98 102 117 142 150 154 160 A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BOOKS CONSULTED 165 A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ARTICLES CONSULTED 168 APPENDICES 171 111 LIST OF FIGURES 1. Map to Paradise 55 2. Characteristics of Orthodox and Confrontation Theatre IV 138 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Theatre troups have been an integral part of theatre life for centuries. During the sixteenth, seventeenth^ and eighteenth centuries, itinerant commedia dell'arte troupes travelled western Europe; William Shakespeare's Globe had its own permanent group of actors; Moliere wrote for his own troupe; Constantin Stanislavski and Bertolt Brecht worked with their own permanent groups early in the twentieth century. Each of these groups affected the style and substance of the theatre of its time. In the same way, a few theatre groups of the avant-garde theatre have become greatly influential on contemporary theatre as a whole; The Living Theatre, The Open Theatre, Growtowski's Polish Laboratory Theatre, and The Performance Group are all names which come to mind in this respect. Each of these groups has developed methods or techniques which have been adapted to or adopted by the popular theatre of the twentieth century. However, there is one contemporary group whose name seems to appear in every discussion or examination of avant-garde theatre groups and their contributions to today's theatre in general—The Living Theatre, One of the primary reasons that this group stands at the forefront of theatrical innovation is its long life as an entity under the direction of Julian Beck and Judith Malina. The majority of books and articles concerning the Becks and The Living Theatre that were published in the early 1970s were written by those who were closely associated with the company and/or adhered to their revolutionary goals, i,e,, Pierre Biner (The Living Theatre, 1972), Renfreu Neff (The Living Theatre: USA, 1970), Aldo Rostagno (We, The Living Theatre, 1970), Michael Smith (Theatre Trip, 1970), Richard Schechner (numerous articles in The Tulane Drama Review), and Karen Malpede Taylor (People's Theatre in Amerika, 1972), Many critics who wrote about The Living Theatre and its productions (particularly on the American tour in 1968) were biased against any and all attempts to break the actor/audience barrier and the actor's presentation of self, Walter Kerr and Eric Bentley are two of many who reacted so negatively to the audience confrontation , Recent books that have dealt with the avant-garde theatre have devoted chapters to The Living Theatre but have not allowed enough space to deal with the group's long history and innovations adequately, i.e., Theodore Shank (American Alternative Theatre, 1982), Christopher Innes (Holy Theatre; Ritual and the Avant Garde, 1981), and Arthur Sainer (The Radical Theatre Notebook, 1975). Finding pertinent information from the Becks themselves is a gargantuan task; one must sift through mounds of political and social ideology and rhetoric before anything of theatrical importance surfaces, i.e., Judith Malina's The Enormous Despair (1972) and Julian Beck's The Life of the Theatre (1972). A dissertation was Note that footnotes referring to The Life of the Theatre make no page references; the work is unpaginated and section numbers indicate the textual location of quoted material. written on The Living Theatre by Jack Wright in 1968 before the finish of The Living Theatre's American tour; therefore, it is limited in scope. Experimentation with life, politics, and theatre has been the hallmark of Julian Beck and Judith Malina since The Living Theatre was formed. The Becks have rejected the comforts and security that most people seek in favor of the life of revolutionary nomads. They have rejected any form of government in the belief that people should be totally free and that the people's freedom would lead to paradise. They have rejected traditional theatre with what they perceived as its fakery, convinced that honesty in the theatre could effect a change in people and that those who were transformed could change the political structures and ultimately improve life. Beck expressed The Living Theatre's philosophy when he stated: "Life, revolution, and theatre are words for the same thing: an unconditional NO to the present society," 2 The dedication that the Becks have shown in their commitment to social and theatrical experimentation is uncommon in theatre history. Although the Becks were politically conscious from the inception of The Living Theatre, the integration of their political convictions and their plays did not coincide with their first productions. The early innovations of the Becks were theatrically motivated, but this soon gave way (because of the Becks' obsession with a non-violent revolution) to innovations that were politically motivated. It was not until The Brig, twelve years after the first production of The Living Theatre, that they integrated political activism, social experimentation, and 2 , Theodore Shank, American Alternative Theatre (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1982), p. 3. theatrical exploration. In the process of exploring the boundaries of theatre, The Living Theatre employed techniques that "comprise a catalogue of nearly all the techniques associated with the alternative theatre in Europe and America." 3 The group has not been responsible for every avant-garde development that has influenced popular theatre, but The Living Theatre "explored more of these modes than any other company." 4 Of great significance is The Living Theatre's experimentation with the principles of Antonin Artaud. There is no doubt that Artaud's theories have had a decided impact on contemporary theatre. The Becks were the first Americans to read, understand, and incorporate Artaudian principles into their production. The Becks found a means to incorpor- ate the abstruse vision of Artaud into a concrete form, making what many thought were the ravings of a madman into comprehensible principles adaptable to modern theatre. The Living Theatre must be accounted for in a study of contemporary theatre primarily due to the impact of its barrier-breaking productions of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. The'founders of The Living Theatre, Julian Beck and Judith Malina, dedicated their lives to the destruction of limits placed on man, whether those limits were political, social, religious, or artistic. The Living Theatre's continuous "storming of the barricades" inevitably took the company to areas where theatre had never -trod before—or, as many thought, beyond the bounds of theatre itself. 3 The Living Theatre allowed those in the theatre to Ibid., p. 36. ^Ibid. perceive its boundaries and to decide for themselves if they wanted to go as far as The Living Theatre had or perhaps even to cross over those boundaries. It is even possible that the limits have been extended so far that there is no longer a need to test further the extent of the boundaries. In order to understand how The Living Theatre arrived at its present state of politically-motivated innovation, it is necessary to follow the development of the group from the earliest days of its mentors, Julian Beck and Judith Malina. The historical chapter of this thesis establishes a background and perspective for the theatrical and political chapter. With an historical perspective of the political and theatrical commitments of the Becks, it is possible to follow with a sense of continuity their political and theatrical development. The rather exhaustive treatment of the unscripted plays , Mysteries and Smaller Pieces, Frankenstein, and Paradise Now , has been undertaken in the history chapter in order to acquaint the reader with the techniques employed in them that will be discussed in the theatrics and politics section. The development of the theatrical and political aspects of The Living Theatre have not always been chronologically simultaneous; frequently, the focus of the group has been on one area or the other, but because of the influence of politics on the innovator and innovation, the areas must be considered together. The theatrics and politics chapter attempts to show how the Becks integrated their political convictions into the theatre and how their innovations were motivated by political convictions. The history of The Living Theatre which follows details the artistic and political background of its founders, Julian Beck and Judith Malina. The Becks' history of political involvement is estab- lished, and significant plays in The Living Theatre's development are described. The history also shows the influence and support of the avant-garde artistic community for The Living Theatre, CHAPTER II HISTORY "I can understand my life only as a process of becoming, , . . trying to unfold petal by petal." Julian Beck Background The story of The Living Theatre begins in 1943 in New York City with William Merchant's introduction of Julian Beck to Judith Malina. Julian was eighteen and Judith was seventeen; both were already stagestruck, and they were drawn together by mutual interests—painting, politics, and theatre. They became inseparable companions. William Glover in an interview in 1961: Beck told "From the time we met, it was immediately apparent that a driving passion, a madness had taken hold of both of us." Malina added, "We were obsessed [with our interests and each other.]" Beck was born in New York City on 31 May 1925, of middle-class Jewish parents. He grew up in the serene environs of Washington Heights on Manhattan's upper west side, "His father's family was from Sambor, William Glover, "The Living Theatre," Theatre Arts 36 (December 1961):64. 8 once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now a part of Poland, His 2 mother was first-generation German-American," His father, a dis- tributor of Volkswagen parts, and his mother, a schoolteacher member of a family which had been educators for generations, were devotees of the museums and Broadway, When Beck was a little boy, his mother dili- gently took him to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Frick, and to Eva Le Galienne's Civic Repertory Theatre on 14th Street. From the time he was four, Beck was spellbound—obsessed—with theatre. At the age of four I gave circus performances in the living room for the entertainment of my family. At six I was appearing in school plays, was taken to the opera and theatre, a Metropolitan performance of Hansel and Gretel, also Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland down at Le Galienne's Civic Repertory Theatre on 14th Street. At the age of seven I was writing screenplays, more school plays, planning shows to be done at home. The Invisible Man, witch doctor kind of things, puppet plays at the YMHA, movies every Saturday as the high point of the week except during winter months when I ingratiated myself at a neighborhood radio store where I was allowed to listen to the matinee broadcasts of the opera. Voracious reading of plays in high school and going to the theatre as often as possible. After I sold my assets, stamp collection, coin collection, microscope, I got a job in college five hours a day to have enough money to get back to New York, to go to the theatre on the weekend. Beck was never fond of school. In his introduction to The Brig, he describes what his education in Washington Heights had been like during his high school years: "legal trickery, spiritual debasement and systematic indoctrination of the spirit, which process is known as 2 Pierre Biner, The Living Theatre (New York: Horizon Press 1972), p. 19. 3 Julian Beck, "How to Close a Theatre," Tulane Drama Review 8 (Spring 1964):180-81. education," This concept of education ultimately resulted in Beck's abruptly terminating his formal education in 1942 by walking out of class during the middle of a lecture during his sophomore year at Yale. "I felt it was time to get on to the things that were important to m e — writing and painting." Judith Malina was born in Kiel, Germany, 4 June 1926, Her father, a passionate anti-Nazi rabbi, had perceived the likelihood of the impending genocide as early as 1927, and in 1928, when Judith was two, the family moved to America. Her mother, an actress who had quit the theatre before she was married, put Judith on stage for the first time when she was two years old. In the summer of 1944, Beck met poet Paul Goodman in Provincetown, where he was privileged to see the works of many avant-garde artists (Pollock, Motherwell, Rothko, Kline, and de Kooning). This experience made him realize that theatre was being left behind—these artists were "implying a life that the theatre didn't know existed, a level of consciousness and unconsciousness that rarely found itself onto the stage." 7 He and Malina were reading the works of Joyce, Pound, Lorca, Proust, Goodman, Cummings, Stein, Rilke, Cocteau, and many others. They realized "that there was some kind of sociological lag in 4 Julian Beck, "Storming the Barricades," in The Brig by Kenneth Brown (New York: Hill and Wang, 1965), p. 4. 5 Glover, "The Living Theatre," p. 54. 6 Biner, Living Theatre, p. 19. 7 Julian Beck, The Life of the Theatre; The Relation of the Artist to the Struggle of the People (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1972), 9. 10 o the development of the theatre." Julian Beck, the painter, met Peggy Guggenheim in New York City during 1945, Around her "gravitated the members of the Atlantic sur9 realist circle," Further, it was through her that he met the leading artists of the day, many of whom had fled to New York from Europe during the war. Beck exhibited at Peggy Guggenheim's gallery in 1945 along with his new-found friends Andre Breton and Marcel Duchamp (automatism), Jackson Pollock and William Baziotes (the New York School). Later, Beck affiliated himself with the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York. In the fall of 1945, Malina won a partial scholarship to the New York School Dramatic Workshop to study under Erwin Piscator, "a veteran of Germany's theatrical ferment of the 1920's who preached a theatre of 10 passionate political purpose." "She was the most conscientious student in attendance," meticulously recording Piscator's lectures. Even though the rapport between Malina and Piscator was not what she would have liked, he made an indelible impression on her both artistically and politically. After having been asked to write an essay on Piscator for World Theatre, Malina recorded in her diary, later titled The Enormous Despair; I can't write the Piscator piece, just because I have something to say. As far as Piscator goes I could never express myself to him, and now I can't express myself about him. My respect renders my Ibid. 9 Biner, Living Theatre, p. 20. 10 Glover, "The Living Theatre," p. 64. Biner, Living Theatre, p. 20. 11 style banal. I want only to praise him and am afraid to be critical. I tell myself that it is because I don't want to do him an injustice, but it may be that my schoolgirl fear of him, matched with my schoolgirl infatuation with him, makes me afraid, I don't want to displease him, or make daddy angry, •'-^ In Malina's notes on her direction of The Brig, she credits Piscator with being a main influence on her work. She calls him "a great man of modern theatre;" her respect is so great that she writes, "I must apply stricter rules to meet his standards." 13 Beck often attended classes with Malina—although he never formally enrolled—as Piscator laid out the theories and practices of the Epic Theatre. Between sessions, each worked at a variety of jobs. Beck designed window displays while Malina worked as a waitress and had small parts in some television plays. Although Malina was determined to become an actress when she started her studies at the Dramatic Workshop, it took only a few weeks under Piscator for her to realize she had as much interest in directing as acting. 14 Beck had always wanted to be a set designer. In 1946, there was no viable alternative to Broadway for an aspiring actress/ director or designer. merits of Broadway. Since 1943, Beck had begun to doubt the artistic He wrote later: I began to realize that the theatre such as it existed at the time, 1943, had no place for me. There wasn't a theatre I could work in that could be at all fulfilling. Judith was more tenacious. She 12 Judith 1972), p. 8, 13 Judith Brown (New York; 14 Biner, Malina, The Enormous Despair (New York; Random House, Malina, "Directing The Brig," in The Brig by Kenneth Hill and Wang, 1965), pp. 85-86. Living Theatre, p. 21. 12 insisted on working in the theatre and if there was no place to work then she would make a place to work. She told me about this. There was no hesitation; of course, we would make our own theatre. Little by little their destiny was mapped by various forces, the most important of which was their revolutionary anarchism. lutionary fervor had its seminal stages at an early age. Beck's revoHe wrote, "At the age of sixteen, with Geminitic alacrity, I changed from seeking conservative refinement and accomplishment to courting the flaming bride, incandescent revolution." One reason that Beck was so attracted to Malina was her cormnon interest in revolutionary politics. Many artists of the late forties were disillusioned with a world that had, in recent history, fought two world wars. The cold war with Russia was in its infancy and the shock waves of Hiroshima were reverberating around the world. "As a way out of the debilitating isolation and lack of nerve felt by people, . , , two revolutionary possibilities managed a tenuous attraction. They were anarchism and pacifism." 17 Beck's revolutionary zeal began to develop into philosophical anarchism as he read the works of Thoreau and Ghandi, but his anarchism did not find concrete form until 1948, when Malina gave him an article that was to change their lives. Beck quotes Malina's journal: I became an anarchist . . . by having read a single article that fell into my hands by chance. Emile Armand's piece on Individualist Anarchism, written for the Anarchist Encyclopedia, and I knew right away and showed it to Julian who picked up on it right away; •"•^Beck, "Close Theatre," p. 181, 16 Beck, "Barricades," p, 5. 17 Karen Malpede Taylor, People's Theatre in Amerika (New York Drama Book Specialists/Publishers, 1972), p. 207. 13 sometimes something that you have been feeling and thinking for a long time finds expression in a piece of writing.^8 These feelings and thoughts were forged into an operative theory under the direction of Paul Goodman and his understanding of philosophical and political anarchism. This was in turn sustained and fed "by the life- style of Greenwich Village and the free play it gave to a variety of sexual and social experiences." 19 Beck recounts this period of growth later in his Life of the Theatre: We talked about Anarchism, Marxism, Greek myths and metres, dreams and Freud, youthful talks, and walked in the woods along the Palisades, and went to the sea a lot, beach beauty. Perhaps our most profound understanding: that the 1940's were not the pinnacle of human achievement, and yet that in the 1940's was, dispersed, all the glory the world would ever contain. The problem of finding, assorting, reassembling matter, feeling, and being. A theatre for that.20 Another incident in 1949 had a decided impact on the Becks' goals. As Julian and Judith were walking in Taxco, Mexico, a beggar came up behind them to ask for money. When they turned around, they saw that the boy had no eyes, only "sockets with sores, running." 21 Beck gave the boy all the change he had in his pocket; then he and Judith fled. They tried to run away from the sight and memory of the blind boy. 18 Beck, Life of Theatre, 75, 19 Richard Schechner, Introduction to The Living Book of the Living Theatre, ed, by Gabrielle Mazzotta (Greenwich, Conn,; New York Graphic Society Ltd., 1971), unpaginated. 20 Beck, Life of Theatre, 9. 21 Ibid., 82. 14 but at the same time towards him, towards his millions of doubles. . . . Judith never let go of an understanding she had at the time: that our work must ultimately aim at wiping out his pain, his poverty, his sickness, . . . and their causes. The Taxco Oath.22 This catalytic period in the Becks' development became the foundation on which they would later build their life and their theatre. In 1946, Beck and Malina decided to make a theatre of their own; in early 1947 they chose the name "The Living Theatre." "It was to be a 'living' theatre, one that would emphasize contemporary plays per23 formed in such a manner as to move the spectators." Following the custom of the day, they sought the advice and support of famous people. 24 They had stationery printed and wrote letters asking advice "from all those people in the theatre who we respected." 25 A number of eminent artists, musicians, actors, dancers, writers, designers, poets, and directors complied—including Jean Cocteau, William Carlos Williams, Alfred Kreymborg, Aline Bernstein, e.e. cummings, Merce Cunningham, Kenneth Rexroth, and John Cage, among others—but the most important reply came from Robert Edmond Jones, who did more than give advice. invited Beck and Malina to come and see him. He The two ensuing meetings with Jones would have a lasting impact on the course The Living Theatre was to follow, Malina and Beck (carrying his portfolio of stage designs) went to see the respected designer to talk about the plays that they were planning to do. 99 After hearing the eager young couple relate their 23 Ibid. Biner, Living Theatre, p. 21. Schechner, Intro, to Living Book. Glover, "The Living Theatre," p. 64. 15 dreams of establishing a theatre, Jones told them that his first impression had been wrong—"he thought they were ready to change the theatre, he thought they already had the answers, but now he saw that they had 9fi merely formulated the questions," that the Becks had $6,000. Jones was further disappointed (Beck had inherited the money from an aunt.) He told them; I wish you had no money at all, because then you could create something, I tell you, nothing will come out of the large commercial theatres. You should not go into any theatre. You should have a room—make your sets out of scraps of paper, and that way you'll be able to drive through and find something.^7 He then offered them his own large studio, ever you want it. You can begin here." "It's at your disposal when- 28 Beck and Malina turned down the offer. It was not the advice that they had expected, nor was it the advice that they really wanted at the moment. It would take them several years to realize the wisdom of his advice. It was not until four years later, unable to locate a theatre in which to work that we decided to do some plays in our own living room and not charge a cent or spend a cent. It worked, he [R. E. Jones] was right. But we had not thoroly [sic] understood.^^ Jones' advice later set The Living Theatre's course for the future and steered them in their quest to establish a living theatre. With Beck's inheritance the young couple formed The Living Theatre Productions, Inc., in 1947, "Their manifesto said 9fi Biner, Living Theatre, p, 24. 27 Glover, "The Living Theatre," p, 64. 28 Biner, Living Theatre, p. 24. 29 Beck, Life of Theatre, 9. 16 \ 'There is no final way of staging a play, , . . liked by all. And no play will be We can only expect that our audience understand and enjoy our purpose, which is that of encouraging the modern poet to write for 30 the theatre, "' The Living Theatre's first theatre, a rented basement on Wooster Street, was a shadow of things to come. No sooner had they begun rehear- sals for their repertory of Japanese Noh dramas translated by Ezra Pound, medieval miracle plays, Strindberg's Spook Sonata and plays by Ibsen, than the police closed the theatre, believing that it was the front for a whorehouse, A distraught Beck wrote Pound, and the old poet replied, "How else cd a seeryas tee-ator suppot itself in N,Y,?" 31 The theatre was to have operated on subscriptions (they had already sold sixty), but the Wooster Street theatre never opened. In October, 1948, Julian Beck and Judith Malina were married. Beck writes, "I don't like to work alone, I adore collaboration, to join with someone and to do something; much more gratifying than working 32 alone. . . . Judith, If I am a compass, she is North," From 1948 until 1951, The Living Theatre was located at 789 West End Avenue—the Becks' apartment. The living room was used for gather- ings, talks, and readings—a practice that would later blossom in rented theatres. The first performance by The Living Theatre was given in the Becks' living room on 15 August 1951 and included four short plays; 30 Schechner, Intro, to Living Book, 31 Beck, "Barricades," p. 20. 32 Ibid., pp. 5-6. 17 Childish Jokes by Paul Goodman, Ladies' Voices by Gertrude Stein, He Who Says Yes and He Who Says No by Bertolt Brecht, and Federico Garcia Lorca's The Dialogue of the Mannequin and the Young Man. The bill was played to invited audiences (twenty per performance) for three weeks. The bill of plays, although light years from the Becks' attempts of the sixties, nevertheless clearly signalled the course that The Living Theatre was to take later; anarchism, improvisation, and experiments w i th 1anguage, Cherry Lane Theatre In March, 1951, Richard Gerson asked the Becks to stage his play. The Thirteenth God, a play based on the life of Alexander the Great, at the Cherry Lane Theatre, He gave them enough money for a two-week run, Malina made her directoral debut and played the female lead (Alexander's wife); Beck designed and made the sets and costumes. In July, 1951, one month before the opening of the four one-act plays at the Becks' apartment, the Becks signed a one-year lease on the Cherry Lane Theatre for an annual rent of $4,100. On 2 December 1951, The Living Theatre , chartered under a New York statute for the establishment of non-profit organizations, made their West End debut with Gertrude Stein's 1938 play. Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights. Stein's Faustus is a modern rendering of the Faust legend that deals with the conflict of good and evil. Following the premiere of The Living Theatre's first production, William Carlos Williams wrote them a letter; "I am walking in a dream, the aftermath of what I saw and heard at your Cherry Lane Theatre last evening. . . . It is so far above the level of commercial theatre that 18 'Z'7 I tremble to think it may fade and disappear," Only twenty-eight days after the opening of Faustus, an unsuccessful production of Kenneth Rexroth's verse play. Beyond the Mountains, opened. The play is Rexroth's adaptation of The Orestia and uses elements of Greek, Japanese, and Chinese theatres. Beck, in his direc- tion, tried to bring in formal elements to support the verse form. We used all kinds of artifice, masks, dances, as in Noh plays, [Tei Ko choreographed Noh dances to specially composed music] to express the inexpressible climaxes, sumptuous lighting, plain costumes, all black and white and golds, large squares of cloth tied with ropes; we spoke Rexroth's baroque verse clearly and attempted a kind of musical speech, perhaps too much Schumann and not enough Cage."^^ On 2 March 1952, The Living Theatre opened with its first critical success, An Evening of Bohemian Theatre, which included Picasso's Desire Trapped by the Tail, Stein's Ladies' Voices, and Sweeney Agonistes by T.S, Eliot. Off-Broadway had just begun to attract the critics' and public's attention; thus the Becks fed on success and fulfilled a dream—the establishment of a repertory system, placing Paul Goodman's Faustina on an alternating schedule with the other plays. Goodman's play, the modern verse adaptation of a Roman legend, deals with Faustina, the wife of Emperor Marcus Aurelius. The Living Theatre's production of Faustina, designed by Beck, had a symbolic set representing various organs of the body (heart, liver, etc.). The actress playing Faustina broke from the confines of the play at the end and approached the audience, saying, "We have enacted a brutal scene, the ritual murder of a young and handsome man; I have bathed in his 33 Schechner, Intro, to Living Book. 34 Beck, "Barricades," p. 13. 19 blood, and if you were a worthy audience, you'd have leaped to the stage and stopped the action," 35 The Living Theatre's last bill at the Cherry Lane consisted of Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi and The Heroes by John Ashbury. not planned for these shows to be the last bill. The Becks had After three perfor- mances, the New York City Fire Department ordered the closing of the theatre because of a violation of safety codes. The Becks thought that the theatre was closed for reasons other than infractions of fire regulations. It was rumored that, after having seen Ubu, the landlord turned them in to the fire department because they repeatedly used the word "shit." The Becks were without a theatre. The Cherry Lane marked an important evolutionary period in The Living Theatre's development. statements." 36 "At the Cherry Lane we made our initial None of the plays had deviated from the Becks' quest for a living theatre—a theatre for the poet, a theatre that would encourage new plays, and a theatre that "honestly" portrayed life. repertory theatre was fulfilled at the Cherry Lane. The dream of a Also, the meetings for readings and discussion that had started in the Becks' living room were formalized into a Monday night gathering. Artists and writers of all genres met at the theatre to read and discuss their works in progress, including such notables as John Cage and Dylan Thomas. Broadway and 100th Street Theatre (The Studio) It was almost two years before the Becks found another suitable 35 Ibid. 36 Beck, "Barricades," p. 14, 20 location for re-establishing The Living Theatre. During their two-year hiatus, the Becks worked at various jobs, attempting to save money so that they could open another theatre. The location they finally settled on was not a theatre but an inexpensive ($90 a month) third-floor loft at Broadway and 100th Street, By scavenging lumber from demolished houses in the neighborhood, piecing together a curtain made from the costumes of Ubu Roi, and furnishing the stage with discarded pieces of junk and gathering chairs from all over the city, a theatre was shaped. "The Studio," as the loft became known, offered them a place to rehearse and work; it gave them the freedom to work on a production until they thought it ready for an audience. The Living Theatre was doing what Robert Edmond Jones had suggested it do—creating theatre outside an established theatre facility. The Studio's premiere production was W. H. Auden's The Age of Anxiety which opened 18 March 1954, The production, which had been in rehearsal for over a year, played to small audiences, even though it incorporated a twelve-tone score by Jackson McLowe and had James Agee in the role of the Radio Announcer. After the Auden production came two prose plays: Strindberg's The Spook Sonata followed three months later by Jean Cocteau's Orpheus. Even though both productions were considered successful at the time by the Becks, they would later consider them "frail experiments." The two plays did, however, make the Becks aware of "the magic mystery, indeed the surreal quality, . . . close to horror, . . . they [the plays] made 21 something disquieting happen to the spectator's body as he watched," 37 These same qualities would reappear in many of The Living Theatre^'s mature works, most notably Frankenstein. The Idiot King, a gloomy morality play written in verse by Claude Fredericks, had a brief run after opening in December, 1954, and was followed by Tonight We Improvise. The Pirandello play, utilizing the play-within-a-play technique for the second time, ran continuously to full houses for four months. Phedre, which opened in May, 1955, was The Living Theatre's next production—their first performance of a play written before the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. Beck and Malina used their own translation for the production, which "was the first English-language performance of the Racine tragedy on a professional stage in New York." 38 For the production of this classic, the Becks invited Richard Edelman (who had also directed The Idiot King) to direct. 39 The play, staged very formally on a stark white set, was compared to an abstract 40 Japanese ballet by some of the critics. The run had to be extended twice. The last play done at the 100th Street and Broadway loft was Paul Goodman's The Young Disciple. Goodman's half-verse, half-prose play, an adaptation of the Gospel according to Saint Mark, deals with 37 Beck, "Barricades," p. 21. •7 Q Biner, Living Theatre, p. 36. 39 Excluding the collective creations of later years, Phedre and The Idiot King are the only two productions directed by anyone other than the Becks. 40 Biner, Living Theatre, p. 37. 22 the quest for wisdom and its ensuing problems. The play, choreographed by Merce Cunningham, was a shocker for the audience: They were disgusted, affronted, annoyed, terrified, awed, and excited. There was a scene in which a character vomits, and one in which someone creeps about on all fours in the darkness making night noises, strange husky grating and chirping sounds, and the audience panicked, and something was happening which whispered to us that it was important.^^ The Young Disciple, filled with presentiments of the Theatre of Cruelty, laid the groundwork for the Becks' discovery of Artaud in the summer of 1958, Again, their theatre was closed. In November, 1955, just a month after The Young Disciple had opened, the New York City Department of Buildings decreed that The Studio, into which sixty audience members were crowding nightly, exceeded the limits of safety. If the theatre were to remain open, they could allow no more than eighteen spectators per performance. Before leaving, the group presented a reading of William Carlos Williams' Many Loves. The play had been scheduled for production, but the restrictions placed on the theatre made this impossible. At 100th Street and Broadway, The Living Theatre had had an ideal situation. They were outside the controls of money—there was no pub- licity, no regular salaries, and no admission charge—only a voluntary contribution which was usually generous. "At One Hundredth Street we 42 set out to develop our craft." The result was beauty born of creativity rather than expensive and lavish surroundings and the ability to 41 Beck, "Barricades," p. 24. ^2 Ibid., p. 17. 23 make a great deal with very little. This experience was invaluable to the company later in Europe. 14th Street Theatre Without a theatre again, the Becks decided it was time to expand, They wanted to reach a wider audience and to implement a permanent repertory with a theatre school. Such accomplishments would require a great deal of space—something not readily available in New York City for a price that they thought they could afford. a new facility took almost two years. Finding and furnishing During the time that they were searching for a theatre, the Becks spent thirty days in jail for refusal to participate in a Civil Defense drill. It was also during this period that Mary Caroline Richards sent them a copy of her translation of The Theatre and Its Double by Antonin Artaud. "We opened it [the book] and read one line and quickly read it from start to finish, and then again 43 and again." In the book, "they glimpsed a theatre whose poetry was active and aggressive and which was the idea of a man locked up in an insane asylum." 44 Artaud's book stimulated their artistic development; they became radicals and saw "the future of theatre, . . . not in literature but in action," 45 The impact of Artaud's influence can still be seen in the work of The Living Theatre. In June, 1957, the Becks located a large, abandoned department store building. In October, a lease was signed for the building, but 43 44 Ibid., p. 24. 45 Schechner, Intro, to Living Book. Taylor, Amerika, p. 209. 24 they were not able to start on their theatre as quickly as they wished . It took five months to secure a permit from the authorities for their plans and another seven months to finish the remodelling. The plans for their new theatre, drawn up by Beck under the guidance of Paul Williams, a well-known architect, called for a 152-seat theatre with a lobby on the second floor; dressing rooms for thirty actors, offices, rehearsal studios, and classrooms on the third; and on the fourth floor, storage for costumes and scenery. The stage had no defined boundaries, only a space for sets on one side. The plans were not given to a contractor; all remodelling was done by volunteers. Actors, designers, artists, writers—one hundred of them, and most of them well-known—joined together and built the theatre. "A distin- guished architect later stated that it would have taken professionals ten times longer to achieve lesser results at forty times the cost." 46 The Becks were trying to build a theatre "in which the spectator is a dreamer and from which he emerges remembering it with partial understanding." 47 This idea accounts for the bizarre (for 1958) scheme for the interior design. The lobby was painted so brightly, the brick wall exposed, like the walls of a courtyard, the ceiling painted sky blue, a fountain [sculpted by David Weinrib] running as in a public square, and kiosks standing in the center, one for coffee, one for books. The lobby, a large, irregularly shaped room that had benches where audience and actors could mingle about and talk during intermission was the day room, the theatre was painted black, narrower and narrower stripes converging toward the stage, concentrating the focus, as if one were inside an old-fashioned Kodak, looking out through the lens, the eye of the dreamer in a dark room. The seats were 46 Biner, Living Theatre, p. 39, 47 Beck, "Barricades," p. 30, 25 painted in hazy gray, lavender, and sand, with oversize circus numbers on them in bright orange, lemon, and magenta—all this Williams' attempt to aid us to achieve an atmosphere for the ^ dreamers and their waking-up when they walked out into the lobby. On 13 January 1959, the 14th Street Theatre was inaugurated with Many Loves by William Carlos Williams. The play, which the Becks had wanted to do since their Cherry Lane days, used the play-within-a-play motif and has been described as a "poor man's Pirandello." Many Loves is composed of three short stories in verse that present various types of love and are unified in prose by a young playwright's production of the stories. The Living Theatre chose Many Loves to open the 14th Street Theatre because "it was a good risk. . . . And like so many of the plays we worked on, it was a palimpsest, with many layers of meaning, like the world, no one story but all happening at the same 50 time, speaking of things high and unreachable." After it was tem- porarily dropped. Many Loves became part of The Living Theatre's repertory. It was also one of the plays presented in Europe during The Living Theatre's 1961 tour. Another verse play, Paul Goodman's The Cave at Macpelah, opened 30 June 1959. The play uses as its basis the biblical story of Abraham and is set in an epic style. Despite the music by Ned Rorem and chore- ography by Merce Cunningham, the play experienced one of the shortest runs of any show done by The Living Theatre—only seven performances. Ibid., p. 31. Charles L. Mee, Jr., "The Beck's Living Theatre," Tulane Drama Review 7 (Winter 1962): 197. Beck, "Barricades," p. 25. Biner, Living Theatre, p. 45. 26 Audience rejection and the Becks' realization that they had not found a style for the play closed it. 51 The Connection In the spring of 1958, Jack Gelber, a young Chicago playwright, personally brought a script to the Becks because "he couldn't afford the postage." 52 After reading a few passages at random. Beck took the play to Malina and told her that they had to do it. The production that resulted. The Connection, catapulted The Living Theatre to international fame. The play provided the Becks with a perfect opportunity to apply their Artaudian principles, Artaud's theories provided them the guidance that they needed to create the classic of the contemporary theatre that resulted; these wedded their unique style and philosophies with a play. The Connection deals with a collection of junkies waiting for a fix. They have been assembled by an author/director/producer who is present with two cameramen and who thinks he will be able to make a powerful film. The junkies are waiting for Cowboy, their dealer, to show up with the "base" so they can begin. Among the addicts are four jazz musicians who intersperse their music with the dialogue. arrives and distributes the heroin. up, overdoses, and starts convulsing, Cowboy One of the junkies. Leach, shoots (During the run of the play, over fifty men in the audience fainted during this scene.) The director and one of the cameramen decide to try the dope to get a feel for the 52 Ibid., p. 46. 27 junkies' reality. The play ends with the cast questioning the audience members about the kind of fix they need and with the playing of a Charlie Parker record. The play progresses like a piece of jazz that is never concluded. For Judith, the play moves like a pendulum between two liberating forces—jazz and drugs. In effect, it was conceived as sequences of monologues and scraps of jazz. . . . The music . . , was not meant to be an accompaniment but one of the polarities. Although jazz men are often on drugs, jazz is at once a result of the drug and a superior—or another—drug,53 The play's subject matter and lack of a well-made play structure upset the newspaper critics, and, as a result, they panned the show, with one 54 critic calling the play "a farrago of dirt," The bad publicity that the critics engendered made it difficult to attract an audience for the play. In fact, the only thing that kept it going was the fact that it was playing in repertory with the popular Many Loves, Not until Kenneth Tynan of the New Yorker called the play "the first really interesting 55 new play to appear off-Broadway in a good long time," and Henry Hewes of the Saturday Review referred to it as "the most exciting new American play that off-Broadway has produced since the war" 56 did the play begin to attract audiences, and the play became the most popular play in The Living Theatre's repertory until The Brig. 53 Ibid., p, 47. 54 Louis Calta, "Connection Offered in Premiere Here," New York Times, 16 July 1959, p, 30, Kenneth Tynan, "Off Broadway: Drug on the Market," New Yorker (10 October 1959): p, 126, Henry Hewes, "Miracle on Fourteenth Street," Saturday Review (26 September 1959); p. 27. 28 Wanting to increase their repertory and having no new productions planned, The Living Theatre decided to revive Tonight We Improvise and run it with The Connection and Many Loves, It was during the run of these three plays that The Living Theatre was awarded three "Obies" from The Village Voice (one for best direction, one for best new play, and one for best performance of the year). It also won the Page One Award from the Newspaper Guild. The Marrying Maiden by Jackson MacLow and Ezra Pound's adaptation of Sophocles' Women of Trachis opened 22 June 1960 under the name The Theatre of Chance, The Marrying Maiden, with music composed by John Cage, was based on The Book of Changes (adapted from the I Ching). Dice Thrower determined the plot of the play by throwing dice. were planned activities for each number thrown. A There For example, if the Dice Thrower threw a seven, he pulled a card from the action pack and handed it to the actor who was to speak next. was turned off. If a five were thrown, the music Cage's theories of indeterminancy and chance used in the play allowed the actors a great freedom for improvisation. Each performance was different from the next, and the production was a notorious failure. We insisted on keeping the play in repertory for almost a year, usually playing it only once a week, usually to no more than ten or twenty persons. Not arrogance, but a stubborn belief that we needed the play, we the company, that it had some57 thing to teach us if only we could stick with it.-^ Women of Trachis, Marrying Maiden's companion piece, was also a dismal failure. . . , Beck later commented, "Twice I've really missed a play. 58 They were Beyond the Mountains and Women of Trachis." 57 Beck, "Barricades," p. 29. 58 Glover, "The Living Theatre," p. 63. This 29 play was included in the Theatre of Chance bill because of the role that fate (or chance) plays in Heracles' death. Stefan Brecht, Bertolt Brecht's son, was living in New York at the time as a writer and philosopher. He had seen Tonight We Improvise and The Connection and suggested his father's early play. In the Jungle of Cities, as the Becks' next production. Set in Chicago during the gangster era, the play depicts the savage battle waged between Shlink, a timber merchant, and George Garga, a librarian. The play was well-attended by a public which knew Brecht through The Threepenny Opera and Charles Laughton's production of Galileo, The cast enjoyed the positive public response to the play, and they appreciated as well the structure it provided in contrast to the uncertainty of The Marrying Maiden. 59 The production of The Connection opened Europe as a possibility r for The Living Theatre. Late in 1960, The Living Theatre received an invitation from France to appear at the Theatre des Nations festival in Paris the following year. The Becks were very excited about the pros- pect of performing in Europe, but they had what seemed to be an insurmountable problem. They would have to raise the money for the tour. The State Department was unsure about sponsoring a company with Many Loves, The Connection, and In the Jungle of Cities as representative of American theatre. A State Department official told Beck, "You ask me to help you get to Europe with one play about fairies, another about 59 Beck, "Barricades," p. 30. 30 junkies, and a third by a Commie. Do you think I'm nuts?" fin The State Department decided to sponsor, as the official American entry, a revival of Wilder's Skin of Our Teeth starring Helen Hayes. The art world came to The Living Theatre's rescue. A month be- fore their departure date, Larry Rivers sponsored an art auction that contained works by Franz Kline, Grace Hartigan, Richard Lippold, Robert Rauschenberg, Louise Nevelson, Jasper Johns, William de Kooning, and original drafts of Allen Ginsberg's "Kaddish." 61 A total of sixty-one writers and artists contributed to the auction that raised $20,500. The money (more than $40,000) was raised, and The Living Theatre, a company of twenty-six, toured Europe in the siommer of 1961. They were enthusiastically received by the European audiences, playing five weeks in Rome, Turin, Frankfurt, and Berlin, and performing for audiences numbering over 20,000 in Paris. The Living Theatre was awarded the Grand Prize by the Theatre des Nations (a feat that had never before been accomplished by an American group), the prize of the Universite du Theatre des Nations (awarded by its students), and the Drama Critics Award. Invitations from all over the world flooded in and arrangements were made for another tour the following summer. These tours helped build a base of support in Europe that would later prove invaluable during the years of self-imposed exile. After The Living Theatre's return from Europe, they premiered 60 John Emil Poggi, Theatre in America; The Impact of Economic Forces 1870-1967 (Ithaca, N.Y.; Cornell University Press, 1968), p. 179. 61 Stuart W. Little, Off-Broadway: The Prophetic Theatre 19611970 (New York: Random House, 1971), p, 288. 31 another Jack Gelber play in December, 1961, The Apple. Beck described it as "a nightmare play, laden with symbols, the kind that baffle you in , 62 dreams." The chaos that had worked so well in The Connection only seemed to obscure any messages that were in The Apple. There was the attempt to show that life and theatre are one and the same—the actors used their own names, a picture is painted onstage and the auctioned off to the audience, actors served themselves coffee from the onstage coffee shop and sold it to the audience, and firecrackers went off under the spectators' seats. The focus of the play switched from dream (at one point the actors turned into insects) to coffee shop reality to stage, which some audience members found incomprehensible and impossible to follow. With In the Jungle of Cities having been such a success and with Brecht's politics having so much personal meaning for the Becks, The Living Theatre's next production was Man Is Man. Galy Gay, the focal character in the play, is transformed from a naive Irish docker who wants to please everyone into the perfect soldier and military monster, Jeriah Jip. The show played simultaneously with the Masque Theatre's Man Is Man, and, although the Masque had a very "professional" cast and a slick show with its business carefully integrated and timed. The Living Theatre's production had a vitality and life that could not be touched by the Masque. Founder of The Open Theatre, Joseph Chaikin, who played Galy Gay, performed the alienation and artificial style of Brecht for a 69 Beck, "Barricades," p, 31. 6 T Lionel Abel, Metatheatre; A New View of Dramatic Form (New York: Hill and Wang, 1963), p. 133. 32 memorable performance. 64 At this time the Becks were having great financial difficulty. The repertory had to be dropped because there was not enough money to pay the large cast of Man is Man and the small casts of alternating plays. Ironically, the success of The Living Theatre aided its downfall The popularity of The Connection caused their audience to perceive them in a new light. It used to be when The Living Theatre got bad reviews that people would say. Oh The Living Theatre got bad reviews, let's go. But with success this happened less and less. We became a quasi-institution of which success was constantly expected. You can count on the fingers of your hands the time The Living"Theatre got a good review from a New York daily paper. Yet people began to expect us to get them,^5 The Brig The Living Theatre's greatest American triumph was to be the last production at the 14th Street Theatre; indeed. The Brig became the last production developed in the United States for fifteen years. The script is the dociomentation of one day's events in a Marine prison camp. Kenneth Brown, the author, had done time in a brig in Japan, and he meticulously recreated the life of the brig in his script, which he called "a concept for stage or film." 66 He included dimensions of the facility, rules to be obeyed, and punishments to be meted out for the smallest infractions of the rules. Malina in her direction and Beck in his designs copied, in every detail, the nightmare of the prison. 64 Richard Gilman, Common and Uncommon Masks; Writings on the Theatre 1961-1970 (New York: Random House, 1971), p. 51. Beck, "Close Theatre," p. 182. ^^Beck, "Barricades," p. 33. 33 The entire two hours became a carefully constructed ritual, one which rises at time to a frenetic, demented intensity as the men move in their monstrous rhythms of obedience, shouting their requests to cross the white line, dressing with frantic speed, being sent to the latrine according to a split-second abstract system, the whole thing shaping itself to a terrifying pattern of automaton-like ferocity." Even with the success of The Brig, The Living Theatre's finan^ cial troubles grew. Plunging deeper and deeper into debt, the Becks could only hope for some source of massive support. Con Ed turned off their lights. In July, 1963, They managed to pay their bill plus a $300 deposit, but they had to stage a demonstration before an official would turn on their lights for a weekend performance. owed $4,350 in back rent. In October, they The landlord, who had earlier obtained an eviction notice, delayed in serving it when Beck pledged him the furnishings and air-conditioning system. It was, however, the Internal Revenue Service that dealt the 14th Street Theatre its final blow. On 18 October 1963, the Internal Revenue Service seized the theatre for the $23,000, plus penalties and interest, owed the Federal government. The Becks argued for time, but no time was left. The Internal Revenue Service refused to allow a weekend performance so that the actors could be paid, which upset the company. The actors refused to leave the building because they knew they could not re-enter. The Internal Revenue Service agents left and told the company they could have the run of the building as long as no seals were broken. urday, The Living Theatre decided to give a performance. On Sat- The Internal Revenue Service had failed to seal an emergency exit to the theatre, so 67 Gilman, Masks, p. 288. 34 that giving a performance would not require breaking any seals. The officials returned before the performance and refused to let the audience enter, but the audience of forty spectators found ways to get in through windows and over the roof. Twenty-five people were arrested for 6ft "impeding federal officers in performance of their duties." At the trial, the Becks refused a lawyer, insisting on defending themselves, Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee were among the well- known persons who attested to the Beck's moral integrity. The couple never admitted any wrongdoing, maintaining that they had had no choice: in the matter; they would only concede that the taxes were delinquent. They were found guilty of nonpayment of taxes and impeding federal officers. The maximum sentence that Beck could have received was nine- teen years in prison and a $26,000 fine, and Malina faced a maximum of eight years and a $10,800 fine. Instead, the judge gave Beck sixty days and Malina thirty days to be served after they returned home from a Lon69 don production of The Brig, During the run of The Brig, a metaphor for a repressive society, the Internal Revenue Service shut down The Living Theatre, The Brig concerns itself with the punishment of those who fail to comply with regulations. The seizure of the theatre only created a greater estrange- ment between the Becks and any sphere of authority. ideas that the money system ("Mammon") was an enemy. It confirmed their "You realize that the only thing standing between you and the work you want to do is the 6ft Martin Gottfried, A Theatre Divided: The Postwar American Stage (Boston; Little, Brown and Company, 1967), p. 296. 69 Biner, Living Theatre, pp. 81-82. 35 money system. And it is not long before you realize that the entire 70 economy is strangling most of the creative efforts of all men," The theatre's confiscation marked a point of no return for The Living Theatre, It would never return to the confines of working in a theatre facility on a permanent basis, nor would it return to the production of plays that did not have a political message. It marked The Living Theatre's departure from the United States and the advent of its nomadic way of life. Theatre, The Becks felt the call of revolution for The Living "The work you do in the theatre becomes in all its parts an attempt to get men to do away with the whole system." 71 With the closing of the 14th Street Theatre, numerous articles were written concerning The Living Theatre's death at the hands of the government. The Tulane Drama Review devoted almost an entire issue (Spring 1964) to The Living Theatre and its closure, with many mourning the loss. Paul Baker, director of the Dallas Theatre Center, wrote; "The closing of The Living Theatre, after so many years of vital, excit72 ing productions, is a blow to all of us," Some, like Theodore Hoffman, were indifferent; "My verdict is; justifiable suicide, a prevalent, occasionally admirable, and sometimes necessary way of theatre life," 73 With almost everyone sounding the death knell, Malina, in an interview with Richard Schechner during The Living Theatre's sit-in protest of the •^^Beck, "Close Theatre," p. 181. 71. Ibid, ^^Paul Baker in "The Living Theatre and Larger Issues," Tulane Drama Review 8 (Spring 1964);194. ^•^Theodore Hoffman, "Who Killed What Theatre?," Tulane Drama Review 8 (Spring 1964):15. 36 Internal Revenue Service action, indicated a new direction for The Living Theatre, If help doesn't come through we are prepared to embark on an entirely differently financed theatre, a different kind of theatre, . . . A theatre not so dependent on constant fund-raising campaigns, I don't know how yet, or where. There is much interest in The Living Theatre in Europe. We have lots of plans.^^ There were a few who realized that Beck's tenacity would not allow the theatre to fold just because the Internal Revenue Service closed it down. Charles Mee, asked by the Tulane Drama Review to write an epitaph for The Living Theatre, expressed his view of the importance of The Living Theatre and its alleged death in this way: "This, then, is not an epitaph for The Living Theatre. But, if the Becks must move to Europe to keep their theatre alive, this is an epitaph for a good share of the living theatre in New York." 75 Beck and Malina realized that the $50,000 they needed to keep The Living Theatre open in New York would not be forthcoming and accepted a six-week engagement to play at the Mermaid Theatre in London. The Becks left the United States in the summer of 1964, along with twentyfour members of the company, including Jenny Hecht, Stephen Ben Israel, William Shari, James Anderson, Rufus Collins, Henry Howard, and John Harriman. The size of The Living Theatre's company has fluctuated constantly during its history. Company members and the various journalists 74 Richard Schechner, "Interviews with Judith Malina and Kenneth Brown," Tulane Drama Review 8 (Spring 1964):208. 75 Charles L. Mee, Jr., "Epitaph for The Living Theatre," Tulane Drama Review 8 (Spring 1964);221. 37 and biographers who have travelled with the group do not concur on the names and number of individuals who were part of the company at any given time. The confusion about the composition of the groups is partly due to the Becks' laissez-faire approach to theatre; if an actor failed to appear for a performance, another performer filled the part. More dis- crepancy is due to the fact that family members, friends, lovers, and various other hangers-on have often been included in enumerations of the group. The Living Theatre's size has ranged from seven (the size of the Becks' political action cell at the time The Living Theatre split at the Avignon Festival) to fifty-two (in Brazil), Before its departure. The Living Theatre produced The Brig under the name of Exile Productions at the Midway Theatre on 42nd Street. After it closed, the cast members, along with film directors Jonas and Adolfas Mekas, sneaked into the theatre and in a few hours made a film of The Brig at a cost of about $800. Of all the films that have been made of The Living Theatre's productions in Europe and America, The Brig is the Becks' favorite. They feel that it captures the spirit of the performance better than any other. 76 Europe In September, 1964, The Living Theatre opened at the Mermaid Theatre in London with The Brig. After the play had run for four weeks, the management suddenly cancelled the contract, which had two weeks more to run. The Becks were never given specific reasons for the cancellation 76 Biner, Living Theatre, p. 230. 38 and were convinced that the United States government had unofficially intervened. 77 In October, having no further engagements in England, The Living Theatre made its way to the Continent. Mysteries and Smaller Pieces It was at the American Center for Students and Artists in Paris that The Living Theatre created Mysteries and Smaller Pieces. In ex- change for a free rehearsal space, the group agreed to present an evening of entertainment. The Living Theatre was working on Franken- stein and The Maids at the time, but did not want to present any of the scenes in rehearsal, nor did they want to do The Brig, so they created what was later called "free theatre." Before the performance, the group met and agreed on a loose structure for the evening's show. Henry Howard, an original member of The Brig cast, improvised the first scene, which was reminiscent of The Brig. sung by Nona Howard, The second scene consisted of a raga The third scene was borrowed by Beck from a hap- pening staged by Nicola Cernovich, who had been The Living Theatre's lighting designer the last years they were in New York. The Chord and the Sound/Movement scenes were borrowed from the exercises developed by Joseph Chaikin and The Open Theatre. (Lee Worley, a Chaikin student, was in Paris and had just taught The Living Theatre some exercises developed by The Open Theatre.) The breathing scene, originated by Stephen Ben Israel, was derived from yoga exercises. The tableaux vivants scene was conceived by Beck when he saw some packing crates 77 Saul Gottlieb, "The Living Theatre in Exile; Mysteries, Frankenstein," Tulane Drama Review 10 (Summer 1966):138. 39 backstage at the American Center, and the plague scene was inspired by Artaud's essay, "The Theatre and the Plague." The "free theatre" lasted for more than three hours, eventually spilling out beyond the stage into the auditorium, the lobby, and the street. Part One of Mysteries consisted of five correlated scenes. The first scene, called "The Brig Dollar," began with an actor standing absolutely motionless down center stage with hands on hips, defiantly staring at the audience. After he held this position for several min- utes without saying a word, actors came running down the aisles of the auditorium to the stage as one actor shouted indecipherable orders. The actors began their programmed labor, turning into mechanical puppets. As this happened, another group of actors surrounded the audience and shouted all the words that appear on a one dollar bill. The group on- stage gathered into formation and executed a military drill while the actor down center continued to stare motionlessly at the audience. The chanting actors continued their diatribe from the one dollar bill. A long gibberish order was given, to which the automatons replied with a resounding "yes sir." A blackout closed the scene. "The Raga," scene two, was simply a long improvised raga sung by a woman to the accompaniment of a guitar in the darkened theatre. three, "Odiferie," began as the raga drew to a close. entered carrying sticks of incense at arm's length. Scene The company When the group had surrounded the audience and the smell of incense had permeated the space, the incense was extinguished. A single candle was lit onstage and a spotlight picked up Beck 40 sitting on the floor center stage to begin scene four, "Street Songs." He announced "Street Songs" by Jackson MacLow and intoned a series of slogans: "Stop the War in Viet Nam," , , . "Freedom Now," . . . "Change the World," . . . "Do It Now," . , , "Make It Work," . , . "Feed the Poor," . . , "Amnesty," These slogans were repeated over and over until the company and the audience joined in. The cast moved from the audi- torium to the stage, taking spectators with them to join together in a circle. The collective (audience and cast) held each other's shoulders in the circle as the action moved into "The Chord," They closed their eyes and gently swayed, breathing together a communal hum. This emana- tion swelled with intensity and gently faded. Scene six, "The Djdjdj," began as audience members returned to their seats. Several actors remained onstage and sat cross-legged near the footlights. The actors blew their noses to rid themselves of impur- ities and proceeded to perform a yoga breathing exercise. Part Two of Mysteries began with tableaux vivants. During the intermission which preceded the scene, a large box with four compartments was placed center stage. The footlights illuminated the box for four seconds as actors posed within the compartments, followed by threesecond blackouts during which the poses and/or actors were changed. This continued until all members of the company had participated in ten to twenty tableaux. In "Sound/Movement," the cast formed two lines, one facing the other. One actor improvised a gesture with a corresponding sound. The actor directed the sound/movement to an actor in the opposite line who 41 transformed them into another sound/movement, which this one in turn directed to another actor, who continued the process. When an actor finally achieved a sound/movement that seemed an appropriate end to the piece, the entire cast joined in and built it to a crescendo that ended the scene. "The Plague" concluded the piece by beginning a recreation of the plague described by Artaud. The thirty-minute scene invariably had the greatest impact on the audience as the cast portrayed the physical deterioration, madness, wailing, writhing and horrible images of sickness detailed by Artaud. When the company was "dead," several actors rose, zombie-like, and formed a pyramid-shaped pile of rigor-mortised bodies, after which they assumed the position of the motionless, staring actor of the first scene. A blackout signalled the end to "The Plague," This progression was followed for a period of time by a jazz concert that lasted until all of the spectators had left the theatre. However, after several of the musicians left the group in Europe, this portion was discontinued. Mysteries, produced with variations 265 times, caused a great controversy in Europe. At many performances the spectators chose sides (anti-Mysteries versus pro-Mysteries), which resulted in several fights. The play was banned in many areas due to its nudity and the refusal of the audience to be controlled by the authorities. One of the most scandalous incidents in the play to European audiences was the use of toilet paper (an object of shame) for the blowing of noses in "The 42 Djdjdj" scene. 78 After leaving Paris at the end of November, The Living Theatre travelled to Belgium, where a farmhouse was lent to them for the winter. They lived in Heist-sur-Mer on the Belgian coast until the end of February, 1965, Although they were in Heist-sur-Mer only a few months, the impact of this period on the company was inestimable. Renfreu Neff, chronicler of The Living Theatre's 1968 American tour, stresses the importance of the Heist-sur-Mer experience: Poverty, starvation and illness, the ravaging prelude to the European years—it was through the hardships and grimness of Heist that the amazing physical and psychological fortitude developed, and in its aftermath. The Living Theatre would be reborn as a total and unique communal entity. As The Brig had marked the turning point in its creative style and technique and had influenced its later productions. Heist would leave an indelible imprint on each individual. "^^ It was during The Living Theatre's stay at Heist-sur-Mer that the Becks went back to the United States to serve their prison sentences. Beck in Danbury Prison in Connecticut and Malina in the Passaic County Jail in New Jersey. While the Becks served their sentences, they worked on future projects, including The Maids. From prison via the postal ser- vice, Malina staged the play, and Beck designed it as the company rehearsed and constructed sets in Heist-sur-Mer. The Maids opened in Berlin on 26 February 1965, soon after the group's departure from Belgium. The Becks had been interested in doing a Genet play for many years and had gone to Genet's agent several months earlier in London. 78 Biner, Living Theatre, p. 89. ^^Renfreu Neff, The Living Theatre; USA (New York: The BobbsMerrill Company, 1970), p. 11. 43 After a cold reception by the agent, the Becks gave up any idea of performing Genet in the near future. Several weeks later. Genet himself called and agreed that they could do any play of his that they wanted. They chose The Maids, a play inspired by the true story of two sisters who butchered their employers. The Living Theatre's production of The Maids used Genet's first version of the play translated by Bernard Frechtman because, in Beck's words, "it is much more revolutionary than the other; the dimensions and ritual had been sharply reduced by Genet [in the second version]." 80 The Living Theatre used three actors to play the women's roles in accordance with Genet's original wishes. Beck considered The Maids "the most 'beautiful' production that we ever mounted. The costumes were so 'feminine,' so elegant, and everything had such a dazzling chic and 81 luxury about it," Although The Maids seemed "old-fashioned" to the Becks, it proved to be popular with the European audiences. Over the following three years. The Living Theatre produced The Maids eightyeight times in seven countries. Frankenstein The February opening of The Maids in Berlin was followed by the 25 September premiere of Frankenstein in Venice. Although Malina had been interested in the Frankenstein story for many years, there had never been the time or money for such an undertaking. In September, 1964, in a cellar in London, Malina shared with The Living Theatre Biner, Living Theatre, p. 108. Ibid., p. 110. 44 company her aspirations concerning the creation of a production using the Frankenstein theme as the source of inspiration. The Becks, along with several other members of the company, began to research whenever time and situation permitted. Many sources of the Frankenstein myth were used to create the play, the most obvious being Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein; A Modern Prometheus. Other sources that proved valuable were the Frankenstein movies, Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times and Fritz Lang's Metropolis. The group even used Golem, the mythological Jewish monster, as an inspiration. Eventually, the play began to take shape, with the company drawing from a wide range of sources to create supplementary themes contained in the play. Some of these sources include the tenets of Raja Yoga, Buddhism, and Hinduism, the Cabala, the Russian novel Anna Karenina, Sir Leon Bargrit's The Age of Automation, Power by Bertrand Russell, Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha, The Anarchists by I, L. Horowitz, Greek mythology, and the writings of Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Mao Tse-Tung, and Walt Whitman, The interval between the opening of The Maids and the opening of Frankenstein was 82 spent rehearsing in Germany and Italy. There are some critics who consider Frankenstein to be The Living Theatre's greatest work. All who write about the play generally agree that the production cannot be described, Renfreu Neff, in her book. The Living Theatre; USA, had this to say about the production; In the many years since its initial premiere, many writers have tried to verbalize the visual trip of Frankenstein. , . . It always makes for tedious reading (and a tedious writing process, as well) Ibid., p. Ill 45 when this is achieved with any systematic accuracy. Those who haven't seen it can't possibly imagine what it's all about; those who have seen it have taken a sensual trip and experienced a dramatic totality too visceral to be "victimized" by the limitations of literal delineation,^-^ Part of the difficulty of describing the performance of Frankenstein,^"^ according to Theodore Shank, is that the play is "non-linear" and "sometimes indecipherable." 85 The "skeleton key" and only written script for the production was published in the City Lights Journal under the title "The Frankenstein Poem" by Julian Beck, (It is included in Appendix A.) Frankenstein is divided into three acts, and the final version lasted about three hours. The company was constantly revising the play after its premiere in Venice, resulting in three major versions. The first production in Venice lasted almost six hours; the second version opened in the summer of 1966 at the Festival of Cassis and lasted five hours. The last version, which was used in the 1968 American tour, premiered in Dublin at the Olympic Theatre 3 October 1967. The first act of Frankenstein begins with a twenty-five minute meditation by fifteen actors seated cross-legged on the stage in front of a huge three-tiered iron structure of fifteen cubicles. A voice from one of the cubicles, designated as a control booth, announces that the 83 Neff, Living Theatre: USA, pp. 65-66, 84 This description of Frankenstein is extracted from accounts of performances in The Living Theatre by Pierre Biner; The Living Theatre; USA by Renfreu Neff; We, The Living Theatre by Aldo Rostagno; American Alternative Theatre by Theodore Shank; People's Theatre in Amerika by Karen Malpede Taylor; and "The Living Theatre in Exile" by Saul Gottlieb in the Tulane Drama Review (Summer 1966), 85 Theodore Shank, American Alternative Theatre (New York; Grove Press, Inc., 1982), p, 16. 46 the cast is engaged in a meditation, the purpose_of which is to levitate the person seated in the center cubicle. It is further announced that if the person levitates, the performance is over. After a three-minute countdown, the actors realize that the girl is not going to levitate and imprison her in a casket. One of the actors suddenly shouts "no!" and runs off with the others in pursuit. When he is captured, he is taken to the topmost tier of the set and hanged. Another actor breaks from the group and is hunted down and exterminated in a gas chamber. This defec- tion continues until only two actors are left, the others having been executed by such means as the electric chair, crucifixion, beheading, and firing squad. The stage is filled with bodies having suffered almost every imaginable means of execution when Dr. Frankenstein enters and uses the body parts from the victims to create his monster. He is only able to give life to his creation after help is tendered by Paracelsus, Sigmund Freud, and Norbert Weiner. When the electricity is turned on, the corpses on stage begin to quiver and shake and move into position to form a twenty-foot high creature swaying in silhouette on the metal skeletal structure. Two eyes blaze in the creature's head as the curtain closes on the first act. Act Two opens with the actors turning on flashlights in the dark as the creature's double (Rufus Collins) is revealed. An actor repre- senting the ego has his mummy-like bandages removed, and, freed, he travels through the various cubicles meeting the actors who represent the various faculties of the mind. As the ego makes his way to the top tier of the set, a network of lights inside plastic tubes are switched on, revealing the profile of a giant head encircling the three levels 47 of cubicles. As the ego meets the various faculties of the mind, the cubicles are lit to reveal the faculty represented, i,e,. Animal Instincts, Wisdom, Love, Intuition, Knowledge. As the lights change color, it is announced that the head is asleep, and the actors on all three levels of the structure mime a ship at sea and imitate the sounds of wind and waves. The creature wakes up after a shipwreck, and the various Zeus, dis- faculties transform into characters from Greek mythology. guised as a bull, seduces Europa (she is really Pasiphae disguised as Europa); Daedalus makes the labyrinth; Theseus slays the Minotaur; and Icarus falls to the ground and is crushed. After a blackout. Prince Gautama sees the suffering of the world despite his bride's attempt to veil his eyes; he renounces the world and becomes Buddah. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse make an appearance to signal that the creature, after suffering rejection by the world, will seek revenge. This is followed by a monologue by the creature taken directly from Mary Shelley's novel. After the monologue. Dr. Frankenstein realizes that the creature has disappeared and sends the police to find him. The creature strangles a policeman, and the last image seen in Act Two is Death riding an imaginary mount with policemen searching the auditorium for fugutives. Act Three opens with the iron structure having been turned into a prison and the audience being searched for victims. The fugitives are inducted into prison, the executioners become the victims, until all are prisoners, including Frankenstein. against the guards. Frankenstein incites a revolt During the melee, several guards are killed while Frankenstein sets a fire in which all the prisoners die. The creature is again formed in silhouette by the actors, who raise the creature's arms 48 in a gesture of peace and love as the curtain closes. After the creation of Frankenstein, The Living Theatre continued its nomadic way of life, traveling and sometimes living in its Volkswagen busses. Never staying in one place over a few weeks, barely making enough money to live, rehearsing anywhere they could find space, the company performed in almost every European country—including Communist Yugoslavia. Living a communal existence and trying to live as pure an anarchist life as possible. The Living Theatre burst the walls separating art and life. The next production, Antigone, was not presented until January, 1967, more than a year after Frankenstein. During that time The Living Theatre did "free theatre" for the second time. According to Beck, "Free Theatre means that anybody can do anything he wants to. It means R6 that 'anything that anyone does is perfect.'" The opportunity for Free Theatre came when The Living Theatre was invited to do a benefit performance for the Italian theatre magazine Sipario. The organizers of the benefit told the Becks that they could do anything they wanted to do. Although Beck was wary of the party atmosphere, he went along with a suggestion by Malina that the company do Free Theatre. In order that the spectators would know what was going on, the following message was mimeographed and distributed to the public: "This is Free Theatre. Free Theatre is invented by the actors as they play it. has never been rehearsed. fails. We have tried Free Theatre. 87 Nothing is ever the same." 86 Beck, Life of Theatre, 45. Free Theatre Sometimes it 87 Ibid. 49 The benefit took place in Milan at a small theatre in Palazzo Durini. The only predetermined actions that the members of The Living Theatre decided on were not to speak and to leave after one hour had passed. When it came time to perform, the company gathered on the stage and formed a compact unit in the midst of the inattentive crowd. Silence. We got very close together and did not move and did not speak, John Cage taught us to hear the silence, , , . The silence grew. The Italian eye sees everything a little bit like a potential photograph in a scandal magazine, they looked at us that way, . . . The guests got heavy, then angry. "Do something!" they screamed. They began to push, probe, grope, they began to play Free Theatre, They found our answer to their hysteria unbearable. Our response was motionless and silent. They got angrier, they began to fight. The police were on their way, we knew it, we split, the police arrived.°° After the Free Theatre, many people, even some of the Becks' sympathetic friends, were angry because The Living Theatre did not perform. Malina believed that the controversy ended up a positive aspect of the evening because it compelled people to ask, "What is a theatrical event?" Beck felt that the confrontation with the guests provoked anger because it was not what they expected. He felt that what The Living Theatre did was the only alternative to the party situation. 89 one of the most successful choices of my life." "It was The next time The Living Theatre did Free Theatre was more than two years later in Paradise Now. Antigone During The Living Theatre's first European tour in 1961, the flft 89 Ibid. Biner, Living Theatre, p. 143, 50 Becks purchased the Modellbuch of Brecht's Antigone which was published in 1951, The Modellbuch was Brecht's version of the Reinhardt Regiebuch, in which were Brecht's stage directions, the legends, and photographs of the original performance. Malina started her own translation of Brecht's Antigone as soon as the company got back to the United States. Beck, as early as 1964 in his introduction to The Brig, stated, "We would like to wrestle with Brecht's Antigone, his adaptation of Holderlin's lyric lines." Malina's translation of the play is as literal a rendering of Brecht as possible. In an interview with Lyon Phelp^, Malina said, "Where Brecht leaned heavily on the Hdlderlin poem, I have translated the poetry [Brecht's] verbatim." 91 In translating the passages that Brecht invented, Malina not only rendered it in the same free verse, but also attempted to keep the same poetic meter. The result is a six- layered adaptation, each enlarging the other in a way that the sections of a telescope progressively increase our vision. They are; the myth and the mysteries; the religious drama of Sophocles; Holderlin's poem of freedom; Brecht's adaptation of the poem into a human legend; Brecht's further revision towards a political poem, the Living Theatre version, which becomes a drama of pacifism and humor.^^ Malina revised her translation numerous times before she considered it acceptable, and the company rehearsed the play more than a year, with six months of intensive work before it premiered in Krefeld, Germany, 18 February 1967. 90 Beck, "Barricades," p. 15. 91 Lyon Phelps, "Brecht's Antigone at The Living Theatre," The Drama Review 12 (Fall 1967);126. ^^Ibid., pp. 125-26. 51 Even though the Malina translation is conventional, the production was definitely not conventional. Malina had the actors use the Brechtian device of stepping out of character to announce what was happening; this device alienated the audience and "excite[d] rapid changes, to cool the action to shift the audience and ourselves from hot to cold, with the hope that each temperature will agitate the other." 93 Where Malina's direction radically departed from Brecht was in the staging, which used no set, no costumes, no light changes, and no props. All twenty-two actors stayed on stage for the entire two and one-half hour performance as they continually transformed from characters to crowds to actors to props. The actors became the throne for Creon, a chair for Tiresias, Antigone's cell, and war machines. The body of Polyneices remained onstage during the entire performance, acting as a "magnetic pole" that governed the play's action and the audience's attention. The only sound used was that which could be made by the actors' bodies or voices, a device possibly rooted in the company's viewing Growtowski's The Constant Prince at the Theatre des Nations in Paris prior to their production of Antigone. Antigone's opening, borrowed from Frankenstein and Mysteries, had the actors starting the play with a prolonged silence. As the spec- tators entered the auditorium (which became Argos), the actors appeared onstage and began to stare at the audience. As the number of audience members increased, so proportionately did the number of actors onstage, until both sides were hostile and ready for action; then the audience 93 Ibid., p, 128, 52 were involved thematically in the action of the play. The audience became the enemy Argos and the stage became Thebes; Creon with a handclap sent troops into the auditorium to do battle. The people of Thebes fell on their faces as the improvised war machines made their way into Argos. With actors making sounds of bombs falling, sirens screaming, and people crying, the war resulting in the deaths of Polyneices and Eteocles was engaged. At the end of the play, Thebes was defeated by Argos (the audience), and the Thebans huddled in terror at the back of the stage, trembling in fear of the ensuing extermination by the Argives. Antigone, like Frankenstein, gave the critics the impossible task of describing the play. The impact of the play's staging and imagery made it difficult to describe. Lyon Phelps, after having seen the play in Europe, reported in his article on Antigone; cess, . . . "Such a pro- is impossible to describe in expository prose; the photo- graphs—soundless, motionless—must show as much as possible in these 94 confines about this extraordinary production." Antigone and Franken- stein became favorites of The Living Theatre's audiences on the American tour as well as in Europe. Antigone continued as a part of The Living Theatre's repertory until the group broke into cells in 1970. Paradise Now One reason for The Living Theatre's continual evolution of form and innovations is the Becks' dissatisfaction with existing theatrical forms. Their constant attempt to extend the boundaries of theatre and 94 Ibid., p. 131. 53 to present reality led to the creation of their most controversial play. Paradise Now, "We wanted to make a play that would no longer be enact- 95 ment but would be the act itself," The members of the company knew they wanted to do a play that would demonstrate to an audience how to get to Paradise and that they wanted to call the play Paradise Now, but they had no idea how to achieve that purpose and at the same time give the work political significance. What resulted was a union of these two concepts. All of the previous productions of The Living Theatre had shown the repressive nature of contemporary society. Rufus Collins, one of the original cast members of The Brig, stated in an interview prior to Paradise Now; "The company constantly knows poverty and opposition and the threat of extinction—so the plays are about the monstrousness we confront." 96 In January of 1968, while Mysteries, Frankenstein, and Antigone were being performed in loose repertory by The Living Theatre, Paradise Now was conceived. Development of the play's framework took place over the next six months, half of which were spent in Cefalu, Sicily, and the remainder of which were spent in Avignon, France. Paradise Now was a true collective creation, but its evolution from idea to actual performance was a process not without its difficulties. The first obstacle encountered in their Sisyphean labor was arriving at a common definition 95 Richard Judith Malina and 96 Michael pany, Inc. , 1969) / Schechner, "Containment Is the Enemy" (interview with Julian Beck), The Drama Review 13 (Spring 1969):25. Smith, Theatre Trip (New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Com, p. 79. 54 for Paradise—a difficult task, given the diversity of religious, political, social, and ethnic backgrounds of people who made up the company, "Some clung to the belief that it was an exclusively metaphysical reality. Both Judith and Julian, however, insisted on the necessity of political significance in the play. these two inclinations," 97 The result was a union , . , of The second major obstacle was the creation of a "map" to Paradise which the company would somehow reveal to the audience. The chart in Figure 1 (page 55) is the culmination of The Living Theatre's effort to map a path to Paradise, The play is a voyage from the many to the one and from the one to the many. , , . It is a voyage for the actors and the spectators. . , . The plot is The Revolution, , , . The voyage is charted. The Chart is the map. The Chart depicts a ladder of eight Rungs. Each Rung consists of a Rite, a Vision, and an Action which lead to the fulfillment of an aspect of The Revolution, . . , The awareness which issues from the experience of the Rite and the , , , experience of the Vision merge to precipitate the Action, . . , The Rites and Visions are performed by the actors, but the Actions are introduced by the actors and are performed by the public with the help of the actors, . , , The purpose of the play is to lead to a state of being in which nonviolent revolutionary action is possible.^° Like Frankenstein, Paradise Now drew heavily on the sources of the I Ching and Hassidic Cabalism and Tantric Yoga. The chart amalga- mated these tenets with ideas regarding the elements of Revolution, 99 color symbolism, and "Resistance to the Revolutionary Change" and how 97 Biner, Living Theatre, pp. 167-68. 98 Judith Malina and Julian Beck, Paradise Now (New York; Random House, 1971), pp. 5-6. 99 Ibid., p. 11. 55 o I w w •H C O N •H in O I a, o o •p a 03 0) u -p 03 (U cn H 0) •H cn c •H > •H J <u H (D C •H CQ <u 0) o cr D O in 56 to combat the resistance. The horizontal sections of the chart repre- sented the perceived relationship between the various aspects of their creation. The vertical rungs of the chart illustrated "a vertical ascent toward Permanent Revolution." The first two vertical columns relate to the I Ching oracles obtained by company member, Steve Thompson. The I Ching was consulted for each of the eight Rites, Actions, and Visions to "give the actors who study them the wisdom of the ancient Chinese sages to guide them . . . as they encounter . . . the unplanned events that certainly occur during the course of the voyage." The human figure at the left represents Adam Kadmon, the Cabala's microcosmic man. The Hebrew inscriptions begin at the feet and move upward, designating an attribute of God which corresponds to a part of the Body. The center column details the dialectic elements of Revolution and gives each Rung a Rite, a Vision, and an Action. the performance. This central column gives direction to The column to the right of center contains colors which progress from darkness to brightness, and which are "designed to unify the consciousness and associations of everyone present." 102 White light was used for each Rite, light of the stated Rung color for each Vision, and a combination of white light and the Rung color for each Action. The human figure on the right diagrams the ascension of the activating force, Kundalini, which is a central metaphor in Tantrism. In this representation, the lower rungs encompass the practice of Hatha, Raja, and Mantra Yoga; the body from the base of the spine to the brain is the location of the six Chakras, which embody the centers of physical and •"•^ Ibid., p. 5. Ibid., p. 8. Ibid., p. 9. 57 metaphysical power. Consciousness. Activation of all six Chakras results in Pure The second column from the right gives a name to each Rung of the production. The last column is described as "The Confron- tations ," which attempt to define and thereby understand the characteristics of the stumbling block at each Rung, and of the form of action that can overcome it. . . . The Resistance to the Revolutionary Change is treated as the obstacle. The energy form designated is an appropriate strategy for the actor to use to transform the obstacle. The section of the bodies contained within each Rung of the Chart provices a physical focus for the actors and audience to free of taboos so that they will be physically ready for the revolutionary action intended to follow the play. It was the idea of The Living Theatre that each of the three parts of the individual Rungs of the play would serve a distinct purpose: the Rites as "active symbols," the Visions as "dream images resulting from the Rites," and the Actions as a collaboratively improvised "release of energy." 104 And thus begins the play. Rung I: The Rung of Good and Evil Rite I; The Rite of Guerilla Theatre. As the audience arrives, the actors mingle with them, and, each choosing a spectator, they address the audience members with a two-minute repetition of each of five phrases; "I am not allowed to travel without a passport;" "I don't know how to stop the wars;" "You can't live if you don't have money;" "I'm not allowed to smoke marijuana;" "I'm not allowed to take my clothes •^^•^Ibid. , pp. 11-12. Biner, Living Theatre, p. 181. 58 off." Repetition of each phrase builds frustration within each actor about the arbitrary restrictions imposed by society. first four phrases culminates in "a collective scream. is the pre-revolutionary outcry, (Flashout,)" Each of the This scream The "I'm not allowed to take my clothes off" segment climaxes with the actors' removing all clothing except that legally required , Another Flashout follows their disrobing. Vision I; American Indian, The Vision of the Death and Resurrection of the The actors move from the darkening audience to the dimly-lit stage and gather in a circle to smoke a peace-pipe. They form totem poles which dissolve into piles of Indian bodies at the sound of gunshots. The Indians of the Vision represent Natural Man, who can live without the repressive trappings of contemporary society. Action I; New York City; (8,000,000 people are living in a state of emergency and don't know it.) urging the audience to "Act. From among the prone actors come voices Speak. Do whatever you want," 106 and relating the action to changing the repressive culture of modern-day New York City. The sparse text evolves into individual and/or collective exchanges with spectators. When spectator reaction begins to lag, the prone actors begin to beat out the rhythm of an Indian dance on the floor. A chant begins; If I could turn you on, If I could drive you out of your wretched mind. 105 Malina and Beck, Paradise Now, pp. 15-17. Ibid., p. 23. 59 If I could tell you, I would let you know. The chant leads to a dance of jubilation by the actors, who rise and move into the audience, chanting. A Flashout ends the action. Rung II: The Rung of Prayer Rite II; The Rite of Prayer. From their places throughout the audience, the actors address audience members, touching the things they encounter (hair, clothing, furniture, etc.) and pronouncing them all holy. In this manner they honor "the feeling of universal identifica- tion," 108 the sanctity of all things. A Flashout terminated the prayer ritual. Vision II; The Vision of the Discovery of the North Pole. While an actor recites from the audience a notation from a map for the British Trans-Arctic Expedition 1968-1969, a Pole is formed by five actors on a blue-lit stage. The Pole revolves and, with its physical and verbal messages, draws the scattered actors to it just as a magnet draws iron filings. it. The actors drawn to the Pole begin to revolve with The Pole begins to ask questions of the actors; 109 "How long will you live?" "What do you want?" the questions, they spin off from the Pole. "Where are you?" As the actors answer To clarify the answers given by the actors, the Pole asks two final questions. "What is this called?" is answered by the company, which replies by spelling out "ANARCHISM" with their bodies. Ibid., p. 26. The question, "What is anarchism?" is Ibid., p. 36 Ibid., p. 40. 60 answered as the actors again use their bodies to spell out the answer "PARADISE" while they chant the word "Now.""^"'"^ Action II; Bolivia; (In the hills of Bolivia a group of revolutionaries plots its strategy.) The text of this Action was frequently changed to take advantage of current headlines, such as the August, 1968, Soviet takeover of Czechoslavakia or the September, 1968, student demonstrations in Mexico City. The Action was The Living Theatre's invitation to each spectator to participate non-violently in man's struggle against repression by other men. The enactment of these scenes frequently led to commentary from audience members, which continued until the actors felt that the subject of non-violence in revolution was exhausted. Rung III; The Rung of Teaching Rite III: The Rite of Study. The performers, seated in a spiral pattern on the stage floor, began to perform a series of mudras, which are yoga gestures done with only the hands and arms. The mudras of the other performers were observed by each actor and used to develop a rhythm and communication within the scene. The purpose of the mudras is to generate energy to motivate the speaking of mantras. The concepts advanced by The Living Theatre in Paradise Now were all related to the freedoms which would be inherent with the advent of the Revolution that Paradise Now advocated: "to be free | to eat | of money | to do the work you love | to love, etc," The scripted and improvised mantras of the members of the company were received, digested, and reacted to by each •"••^^Ibid., p. 42. Ibid., p. 57. 61 performer until the group determined that further mantras were unnecessary; they froze in their last mudras. Vision III; The Vision of the Creation of Life. Enveloped in green light, individual performers began to move stiffly, blindly, aimlessly about the stage. When contact was made between two actors, they adhered and moved together. When a "cell" of five people was formed, the unit became organic, the five parts moving fluidly together in relation to the other members of the "cell," Their undulating movement and the sea sounds they made grew into a jubilant cry in a circle of upraised hands. In addition to the beginning of life metaphor, "also symbolized here are the helplessness of the individual when alone, and his capability of developing astonishing, joyful creativity when allied with others." 112 Action III; Here and Now; (There is a group of people who want to change the world,) "The Text for this scene varies with the location. Information is researched ahead of time on the actual social and political situation in that locality and the Text altered in accordance with what seems appropriate." 113 Appropriate information included the size of the police force, the number of prisoners in local jails, and the numbers and kinds of workers in the area. Performers drew a verbal picture of local conditions and urged the spectators to form cells of five members (the number recommended by Bakunin 114 ) to continue the 112 Biner, Living Theatre, p, 194. Malina and Beck, Paradise Now, p. 62. Ibid., p. 63. 62 work of the Revolution after the performance was completed. Rung IV; The Rung of the Way Rite IV; The Rite of Universal Intercourse, Accompanied by a low hum, the actors formed a pile of bodies in the center of the stage. They embraced, "caressing, moving, undulating, loving. the touch barrier." 115 They are breaking Pairs of actors in any combination of sexes who feel drawn to each other withdraw from the group and seat themselves in the maithuna position—one partner cross-legged on the floor, the other partner facing the first and encircling the partner's waist with his/her legs and the partner's shoulders with his/her arms. Even though the sexual organs are in contact, there is virtually no movement or sound, 116 "It is a form of deep physical absorption and communication." Even- tually, the pairs may return to the community engaged in mutual physical exploration. They may return to the maithuna with the same partner or with new ones. Vision IV; The Vision of Apokatastasis. of actors form from the body pile. victim. Lit by red light, pairs One is the executioner, the other a Miming a gun with his hand, each executioner shoots his victim; the victim falls, only to rise again and take his original position; he is shot again. taneously. All of the pairs repeat this action twenty times, simul- After twenty re-enactments of the executions, the victims address the executioners with the litany from The Rite of Prayer; "holy ," The executioners answer with phrases from The Rite of Guerilla 115 ll^Tl_ J Ibid., p. 74. Ibid. 63 Theatre, i.e., "I am not allowed to take my clothes off." falling, and rising continue. The shooting, The executioners are finally overcome by the love of the victims and cease their violence, responding instead with the words of The Rite of Prayer. Executioners and victims embrace. "It is the vision of APOKATASTASIS, the reversal, the turning of the demonic forces, the transformation of the demonic forces into the celestial." 117 Action IV; Jerusalem; (There is a group of victims who have become victors and are now becoming executioners. do?) What do the pacifists The actors lead the audience into a second Rite of Universal Intercourse with a short dialogue about the Arab-Israeli conflict. declare, "Fuck the Jews. Fuck the Arabs. Fuck means peace." 118 They "In the Rite of Universal Intercourse the division between actor and spectator becomes an image for the disappearance of the division between Arab and Jew." Rung V; The Rung of Redemption Rite V; The Rite of the Mysterious Voyage. As participants in The Rite of Universal Intercourse begin to disperse, one performer remains in the center. He makes a sound to signify the beginning of a trance-like state in which he will contend with the forces of evil. The cast gathers around him, and without touching him, through only their breathing, moving, and making sounds with him, they support him in his voyage. The voyaging performer and the supporting community draw •^•'•^Ibid. , p. 77. •^•'•^Ibid. , p. 79. Ibid., p. 80. 64 strength from the communal effort to overcome the forces of darkness. Vision V; The Vision of the Integration of the Races. Milling about onstage in an orange light, the actors develop an air of hostility and contempt toward each other. They divide into two opposing factions, making epithets of the names pairs of actors call each other; Jew/Christian; black/white; young/old; short/tall. Turning on the audience, the performers direct their hostility and name-calling to specific audience members. The terms of denigration gradually change into ridiculous terms of affection, delivered gently and with humor. The friendly name- calling extends to an I/Thou identification; however, at times the performers indicate the spectators as I and themselves as Thou. This emphasizes the relationship of all people. Action V; Paris; (Time Future; The Non-Violent Anarchist Revolution. ) A brief section of dialogue inspired by the Paris uprisings in May, 1968, is a prelude to a performer-led improvisation involving the audience. The combined group is to enact the revolution of the future, the peaceful revolution of Action. It was during this segment of the play that audience members often burned money as a protest of the status quo. The Living Theatre members encouraged them, advocating "production and distribution of all that people need without the use of coercive bribery, violence, or hated labor." 120 Rung VI: The Rung of Love Rite VI: The Rite of Opposite Forces. 120^, .. Q^ Ibid., p. 96. One performer separates 65 from the group and lies down center stage to become the "Subject of the Rite." Totally relaxed, the performer is acted upon by the other actors, who work singly or in groups. Some of their attention is positive: caressing, kissing, massaging, stroking. tive: shaking, shouting, striking. Some of the attention is nega- All of the group's ministrations are a dual effort to distract and strengthen the Subject's concentration. The energy that they expend in their assaults is collected by the Subject, helping him to "adhere to his center." Finally this collected energy is released "into a state of transcendent energy and transformation. (Flashout.)" 121 Later referred to as the "Mat Piece" by The Living Theatre, this Rite appeared in many performances and demonstrations subsequent to Paradise Now. Vision VI; The Vision of the Magic Love Zap. the mood while the actors form a pentagon. Yellow light sets "The actors who compose the five walls of the Pentagon assume the fierce attitudes of the stone guardian statues of certain Eastern temples and of the gargoyles which protect so many Western churches." 122 Inside this figure, more company members form a statue of Mammon flanked by four priests. group looms over a sacrificial victim. The imposing The High Priest signals the temple doors to open and the priests advance on the victim, brandishing knives. Their sacrificial strokes "are magically deflected by the victim's rising toward them offering his throat." The killing strokes become gestures of benediction as the walls of the pentagon disintegrate. "It is the Vision of the Non-Violent Conquest of the Pentagon." ^^•""Ibid., p. 105. Ibid., p. 109. 123 "''^"^Ibid. 66 Action VI; Capetown/Birmingham; (The Blacks are confronting the Whites with revolution. How do they overcome?) Again the performers lead the audience to enact a phase of the revolution in the future. They invite the audience to deal with the problem of the non-violent revolutionary confronted with violent retaliation by reactionary forces. Rung VII: The Rung of Heaven and Earth Rite VII; The Rite of New Possibilities. Vision VII; The Vision of the Landing on Mars. Although origin- ally intended to be performed as two separate segments. Rite VII and Vision VII were consolidated into one piece when "the company noticed . . . that the sounds [of the aural piece] weren't audible to the audience, who were preoccupied with producing a semblance of African music." 124 The action takes place in "the darkness of outer space." In the piece, a group of five actors form a spaceship which voyages from the back of the theatre to the playing areas. Other performers scat- tered through the theatre represent various planets, and one performer represents a distant galaxy. All performers wear or carry lights. planet Mars approaches the spaceship from the rear of the stage. meet and merge, then spin off. The They They represent encounters with the unknown. Action VII; Hanoi/Saigon; (A group of people are living in an anarchist society. What are they doing?) To represent the freedom obtained by the Revolution, the performers "seek a high place in the •'•^'^Biner, Living Theatre, p. 209. 67 125 theatre's architecture from which to take off." They fling them- selves from the perch into the net made by the double row of actors waiting below with arms interlaced. The company chants, "BREATHE . . . -I o c BREATHE . . . BREATHE . . .FLY" launching. as individuals prepare themselves for Audience members are encouraged to participate. The exer- cise reflects the trust necessary between people to make the revolution successful. Rung VIII: The Rung of God and Man Rite VIII; The Rite of I and Thou. The performers move to center stage from their positions at the end of Rung VII, chanting "Aum." The image of death permeates the rite; the performers play death, rebirth, death. Rebirth occurs when two actors make contact and are regenerated by the life force which sparks between them. Vision VIII; The Vision of Undoing the Myth of Eden. pany forms a Tree of Knowldege. The com- Beginning with "I am not allowed to take my clothes off," they briefly recapitulate "significant text and/or action created by the actors and/or public during the preceding Rungs." 127 Then the Tree dissolves and some performers carry audience members toward the exits on their shoulders; other performers are carried out by audience members. Action VIII; The Street. Lights crossfade in the acting area 125 Malina and Beck, Paradise Now, p. 122. ^^^Ibid., p. 125. Ibid., p. 137. 68 and auditorium as actors and spectators exit. The performers urge the audience to action with the text; The street. Free the theatre. The theatre of.the street. Free the street. How the Rite of I and Thou and the Vision of Undoing the Myth of Eden lead to the Permanent Revolution. The theatre is in the street. Free the street. Begin.-'•2® The street belongs to the people. Almost the whole of 1968 until the opening of Paradise Now had been spent in intensive research and rehearsal in order to ready the production for the Avignon Festival. Then, after only three perfor- mances of the show, political pressure and pressure from the press in Avignon caused the mayor of the city to request The Living Theatre to substitute Antigone or Mysteries for Paradise Now during the remainder of the festival. 129 The Becks suggested playing Paradise Now with some changes, but the mayor was adamant; there were to be no more performances of Paradise Now during the festival. The free performances of the show which The Living Theatre proposed to give were expressly forbidden. Without agreeing to discontinue performances of Paradise Now, the Becks retired to consult the rest of the company about the city's request. The next evening, a statement from The Living Theatre was read publicly by Julian Beck. The statement announced The Living Theatre's intention to withdraw from the festival. Until their departure for the American tour, arranged by Radical 1 9ft Ibid., pp. 139-40. 129 Biner, Living Theatre, p. 214. 69 Theatre Repertory, The Living Theatre marked time by giving performances of Paradise Now in Ollioules and Geneva. On 31 August 1968, they sailed on the S.S. Aurelia to break their self-imposed American exile. During the voyage, they gave one performance of Mysteries and Smaller Pieces. On 9 September 1968, The Living Theatre returned to the land of its origin. The American Tour The American tour opened a week later at Yale School of Drama in New Haven, Connecticut, with the first performance of Paradise Now. The New Haven police, having been apprised of the trouble which accompanied the European performances of Paradise Now, were waiting when that first performance moved into the street. Beck, Malina, Pierre Devis, Nona Howard, Jenny Hecht, and five audience members were arrested and charged with indecent exposure. The Living Theatre women were also charged with obstructing an officer. All charges except Malina's obstructing an officer charge were later dismissed. The New Haven engagement also included a backstage encounter with militants who advocated violent revolution. This confrontation should have given the group insight in- to the change in the political atmosphere and attitudes of American young people, but it was long after this encounter that The Living Theatre finally came to grips with the fundamental change in the American student-aged population. This inability to deal with the change in political attitudes in America and the encounters with the law set the tone of the entire American tour. The Living Theatre played to full houses in New York at Brooklyn 70 Academy of Music and seemed destined to repeat their success at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. However, The Living Theatre felt that some of the university's students and faculty were attempting to use them to start a violent demonstration over the issue of an A.W.O.L, soldier protesting the Viet Nam war who had obtained "sanctuary" in the student center. An expected police raid during the first performance of Paradise Now failed to materialize, but subsequent scheduled performances were cancelled after the first performance. In Philadelphia, Beck, Stephen Ben Israel, and Hans Schano were arrested at the end of the final performance of Paradise Now, All charges but one were eventually dropped; Beck was fined five dollars for inciting a n o t . 130 The Living Theatre had been so well-attended on the east coast and across the Midwest that they were unprepared for their reception in Berkley, California, Unrest had been building for several months on the campus, and a month-long series of demonstrations erupted into a tear-gas confrontation with police on the afternoon of the opening performance of Paradise Now. The Living Theatre made scant effort to avert the confrontation or to adapt that first performance of Paradise Now to the current situation and conditions that existed in Berkley; thus, the desired rapport between cast and audience was nonexistent. Rather, the spectators exhibited ill-disguised animosity toward the performers. The first performance ground to a halt during the Fifth Rung. 131 The Living Theatre fared little better in Los Angeles at the University of Southern California, Their seven-performance run was cancelled after 1T1 ^•^^Neff, Living Theatre; USA, pp. 101-105. Ibid., p. 168. 71 five performances. The Living Theatre arrived in San Francisco to find that Nourse Auditorium, in which they had been scheduled to perform, was closed to them. They accepted an offer from the Haight communes' Straight Theatre to give free performances of Antigone and Frankenstein. When the group reneged on that agreement in order to do its run of paid performances at Nourse Auditorium, they lost a great deal of goodwill in the Haight community. At Nourse, "Paradise attract[ed] its most serious attention from the fire marshall." 132 Following the California fiasco. The Living Theatre returned to the east coast for a short run in Boston and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music before their departure. The six-month tour had drained The Living Theatre company physically, emotionally, and artistically. The final two-week run of the tour, however, was the most financially successful period of the tour. But even the financial success could not make up for the effects of the stress on Beck; he collapsed in the dressing room after the final performance of Frankenstein and remained secluded in his mother's New York apartment under medical care until the group's departure for Europe. 133 Europe The triumphs and defeats of the American tour were over. Living Theatre returned to Europe. The After they performed in France for six weeks and in London for one month, it was decided that the company would go to Morocco for a few months to perform and to create a new 1 "^9 Ibid., p. 186. 133 Ibid., p. 225. 72 work. The new play planned was to be called The City Absolute, Satura- tion City, and Penetration City. The plan was to go to a city, town, or village and stay there from two to six weeks, depending on the size of the location, and to perform plays wherever people would gather; in the streets, markets, plazas, stores, subways, schoolyards, or parks. The purpose of the play would be, as Beck wrote, "to change the vibrations of the city. To flash out consciousness on the street. To accustom people to action, to begin by leading people into action within the plays." The company worked on the play but did not seem to be able to accomplish anything. The United States tour had so changed them that they could no longer view themselves and their mission as they once had. They realized that The Living Theatre had become an institution and that as an institution they were being assimilated by society. The students at Avignon and in the United States had told them it was happening, but the company as a collective failed to see it until the work on City Absolute began to flounder. During this difficult period in which the company could not find focus. Beck wrote; "We know that neither the ideas for The City Absolute nor their execution can be realized if we don't change ourselves." 135 The company left Morocco in September, 1969, travelled to Spain, and from Spain went to Italy. On board the Cristoforo Colombo en route from Malaga, Spain, to Palermo, Italy, the company met and decided that The Living Theatre would have to undergo another "transmutation" in 134 135 Beck, Life of Theatre, p. 117. Ibid. 73 order to survive and to communicate effectively their political message, They would have to decentralize and diversify in order to remain a viable anarchist company capable of instigating a pacifist revolution. The final decision came in December, 1969, at the end of The Living Theatre's Italian tour: "to dissolve and re-form, as cells, to 1 "^6 meet our own needs and the needs of the time." The company made the decision to divide into four cells and take the theatre to the street. On 11 January 1970, in Berlin's Akademie der Kunste, The Living Theatre performed Mysteries for the final time. Pierre Biner remembers the performance and its significance; "The body pile was heavier than usual. Twenty-one corpses. die correctly. In the furnace, in the grave. It was important to 137 In order to be reborn." In March, 1970, the media received The Living Theatre Action Declaration, which explained the company's position and plans. (Appendix B) Following this declaration, the Becks and five other members of the company comprising the political cell moved to Paris. Headquarters were set up in Croissy-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris, where the concept of The Legacy of Cain was born. The Cain cycle, an extension of The City Absolute, was developed out of the cell's need to clarify The Living Theatre's theories of anarchism and suppression and to communicate those ideas to the bourgeoisie. It was conceived as a 150-play cycle for the working class to be played in the street and designed to develop a new political, sexual, social, and spiritual awareness in its audiences. 1-^^Ibid. Biner, Living Theatre, p. 225. 74 The Becks and the political action cell began to work with university students in Vincennes to develop some political plays. Death by Metro, a short (less than one minute) play designed to protest the raising of the Metro prices by ninety percent in two years, was the result of several days of collective creation. The play quickly resul- ted in the arrest and beating of Beck and several students. This inci- dent made the Becks realize that they would need to go some place that would not only allow them to work with the people, but would also offer a great variety of economic, social, racial and political life. The question of where to go was answered in the spring of 1970 when a group of artists from Brazil invited The Living Theatre cell to help "in the struggle for liberation in a land in which they described the situation as 'desperate.'" 138 As a result of this invitation. The Living Theatre's political action cell moved to Brazil in the summer of 1970. Brazil; Legacy of Cain Once in Brazil, the company began work on the Cain cycle collectively with the people (favellados) who lived in the slums (favelas) of Sao Paulo. The cell also began holding classes at a local univer- sity, teaching the students techniques for collective creation. With the students, they began to develop experimental pilot projects with street plays to learn what the reaction of the people would be and what problems would arise. As the projects evolved, it was determined that the cell would create the plays with the Brazilians and later adapt •'•^^Paul Ryder Ryan, "The Living Theatre in Brazil," The Drama Review 15 (Summer 1971);28. 75 those plays to the country and culture of the people for whom they were playing. One of the plays developed in Sao Paulo included Visions, Rites and Transformations (1970). Performed in the favela Embo with the per- mission of the mayor, the play gathered an audience of about two thousand in the city square. The play began with the performers and approx- imately fifty students from the university forming long processions on different streets leading to the central square of Embo. As the pro- cession wound its way slowly down the streets, the participants did a "rhythmic whip-lash" while staring at the people with the look of "I and Thou." 139 After having arrived at the square, the performers took up positions around the square and began performing six different plays using the themes of the State, Money, Property, Love, War, and Death. The plays used no dialogue and were done in a ritualistic style using gesture as the primary means of communication. Near the end of the play, the performers were tied with ropes and chains, unable to continue unless someone untied them. Eventually the audience freed the perfor- mers and the entire group (performers and spectators) joined in a "musical Chord of Liberation." 140 The Living Theatre cell and the university students created several short plays which were taken to farming communities and mill towns in the area, where they were played in the streets. The players focussed on the proletariat's throwing off the chains of slavery imposed 139 Refer to Paradise Now description in this chapter. 140 Ryan, "Brazil," p. 24. 76 by the bourgeoisie and the ensuing paradise of a non-violent anarchist community. The next major play, Favela Project #1; Christmas Cake for the Hot Hole and Cold Hole, was performed in Embo without government permission. The play consisted of thirteen actions designed to lead the people into revolution. The first action, an opening procession of the performers singing "What Do the People Want?" led into the next action, in which six stories were told about the agents of oppression. Three witnessed the company being blindfolded. Action Actions Four and Five occurred simultaneously: the favellados, who had been tape recorded at an earlier date, spoke about the hardships of living in poverty as the performers removed their blindfolds and began to inspect carefully the world around them. The objective was to demonstrate the contrast of the reality of the favellados' situation with the possibilities of liberation. Action Six utilized a repetitive chant, "My life is 1 hour for 50 centavos. My life is 2 hours for 1 cruzeiro, . . . My life is 40 years for 87,600 cruzeiros" to achieve a trance-like state during which the performers would mystically spin as if they were participants in a Cabalistic ritual. This action was followed by those representing masters and slaves signing a contract (Action Seven) and by the masters and slaves being bound together and gagged (Action Eight). In Action Nine, Death read the contracts between man and the six areas of oppression (State, Money, Property, Love, Death, and War). Taylor, Amerika, p. 231. 77 A narrator told the spectators a story about the future in Action Ten. The story dealt with the inability of those who had the knowledge of liberation to effect a revolution because they had been bound and gagged by society. The Rite of Liberation, Action Eleven, fol- lowed with the spectators removing the gags and bindings of the performers. In Action Twelve, the performers and spectators joined together in the cutting and eating of a giant cake. The last action was to take place one week later with the return of the performers. At that time, political discussions would be contin- ued with the hope that the people would break the bonds of the master/ slave relationship. In the spring of 1971, The Living Theatre decided to move to Ouro Preto after having worked in some of the favelas around Rio de Janiero. One reason the group wanted to move to Ouro Perto, a mining town of about 40,000 in the state of Minas Gerias, was the opportunity to teach in the public schools. For several years The Living Theatre had wanted to work with children, and when offered the job of teaching physical education, they quickly accepted it. After taking the job, they were asked by the teachers of the school to work with the students in creating a Mother's Day play. Ten Dreams About Mother, developed improvisationally with the students, dealt with the master/slave relationship between children and their mothers. Due to the sensitive nature of the mother/child relation- ship, the company created a dreamlike atmosphere so that no one would be offended. The Living Theatre performers narrated the stories as the 78 children acted them out. The company also began to teach classes at L'Ecole Amerigo Rene Giannetti de Saremenha (near Ouro Preto) to elementary, junior high, and high school students. While at the school, A Critical Examination of Six Dreams on the Subject of Mammon was collectively created with about forty-five students of the school. No written records of the play or its performance have been published. The Brazilian experiment came to an end with the arrest of the collective in July, 1971. The arrests began on 1 July with a raid on The Living Theatre's house and the subsequent arrest of thirteen members of the company. Later that day (1 July), five members were arrested on the street, released the following day, and re-arrested. Although the company was charged with possession of marijuana, the Becks believed that the group's theatrical/political activity had spurred the arrests. They were convinced of this because the arrests coincided with the opening of the Winter Festival in Ouro Preto. 142 The Living Theatre had been invited to premiere a new work but did not have the opportunity to perform because they were in prison. Even though The Living Theatre was imprisoned, the group continued its theatrical activity. While in prison, the company received per- mission to perform for the prisoners a play created especially for the occasion. Prison Play No. 1. The play opened with two lines of per- formers entering an auditorium containing about one hundred prisoners. This chain gang walked the "whiplash walk," then parted and surrounded "'•^^Ryan, "Brazil," pp. 21-22. 79 the audience. After the last three lashes and the final screams, the performers stood at attention and faced the audience in silence. Then the performers clapped rhythmically while moving to a performance space reserved in the middle of the auditorium. The performers formed a circle in the performance space and began the Chord. According to Echnaton (a group member for five years) in a letter written to the cell members who had escaped the Brazilian authorities, "After the Chord we do the breathing Lion, Lee's piece and The Plague." 143 When the body pile of The Plague had ended, the performers were given a rousing ovation by the prisoners for their honest performance. "Many prisoners identified parts of the play with the tortures that man, and especially men who are imprisoned by the Laws of the State have to suffer." 144 Three members of the group, Andrew Nadelson, Stephen Ben Israel, and Mary Mary managed to avoid arrest with the others; they returned to the United States to solicit aid for the release of the remainder of the company. As soon as The Living Theatre's plight was known, artists and writers from around the world came to the company's defense. Numbered among the benefactors were Allen Ginsberg, Alexander Calder, Jean-Luc Goddard, Jean-Louis Barrault, Susan Sontag, Jean Genet, James Baldwin, and Jean-Paul Sartre. International pressure to free The Living Theatre mounted until the group was released and deported in September, 1971. 143 144 Ibid., p. 24. Ibid., p. 26. 80 United States; Legacy of Cain After The Living Theatre's release from prison and deportation, the collective, including members from other cells, came together in Brooklyn where they rented a house and began to adapt their Brazilian work for American audiences. While the company continued to develop the Cain cycle. Beck went to San Francisco for several months in order to have his book The Life of the Theatre published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti's publishing company. The group was still trying to live outside of the economic structure; to survive, they had to resort to the raising of money through workshops and lectures, which slowed their progress on the Cain cycle. The Living Theatre created one major work in Brooklyn, Seven Meditations on Political Sado-Masochism (1973), and began work on another. The Money Tower (1975). Created for the academic community. Seven Meditations veered away from The Living Theatre's attempt to take the theatre to the working class. Malina described the play as "a 'study piece' on the 'manifestation of sado-masochist syndrome in various 145 aspects of our lives.'" The play, using essentially the same ideas and themes as their work in Brazil, showed the performers symbolically enslaved and tortured by such bases of enslavement as violence and money (a demonstration of the master-slave structure) and liberated by the audience when the spectators untied them. In early 1974, The Living Theatre received a grant from the Mellon Foundation to produce theatre in Pittsburgh. After relocating. Shank, Alternative Theatre, p. 26. 81 the company began collectively creating plays with the coal miners and steel mill workers for inclusion in the Cain cycle. The grant allowed them time to learn about and instigate food collectives, day care centers, and free schools, while continuing to work on the plays. The Living Theatre felt it was beginning to live to a greater degree than ever before as the true anarchist collective community that it envisioned for the world. One of the plays developed in Pittsburgh was The Legacy of Cain: The House of Property: Garden Play Number 1: Turning the Earth; A Ceremony for Spring Planting in Five Ritual Acts (1975). The play dealt with "property, that is, with land, and its reclamation by the people of 146 a community to use for growing vegetables." The company opened the 147 play by enacting the "postures of a world of masters and slaves," and then joined together in a ritual suggested by the Omaha Indians in which the actors put pebbles in their mouths, symbolizing dead earth, and spat them out, representing the freedom from the master/slave structure. The spitting out of the pebbles caused a rebirth of the ground; each participant (who symbolized the community) received a new name to symbolize rebirth; the group came together in the Chord. The planting of trees and flowers culminated the play, stimulating "a fresh relationship in the community towards the earth, towards the land, towards the question of .148 property." •"•"^^Julian Beck and Judith Malina, "Turning the Earth; A Ceremony for Spring Planting in Five Ritual Acts," The Drama Review 19 (September 1975):94. ^^"^Ibid., p. 95. -^^^Ibid., p. 94. 82 The Living Theatre premiered its next major play, Six Public Acts (1975), on 6 May 1975 in Pittsburgh and then took the production to the Experimental Theatre Festival in Ann Arbor on 10 May as an entry. The Ann Arbor production (described here) was typical of The Living Theatre's use of various spaces and locations to perform their plays. The preamble, which took place inside Waterman Gymnasium, outlined the six houses of power to be visited. Mimeographed maps that gave direc- tions to the performance locations were handed out as the audience left the gymnasium to go to Public Act One. The Time Shaman, who acted as narrator and guide, led the procession of performers and spectators to the House of Death (the Engineering Building). The performers walked, moaning and groaning and regularly striking tableaux that expressed sorrow and despair. On the lawn outside the Engineering Building, a performer carried in a sign inscribed "Death" and placed it on a stanchion. Six performers enacted a scene reminiscent of The Plague, after which Malina read the story of Cain and Abel. Two performers performed a dumb show of the first murder during the reading. When the show was over, the performers approached the spectators and initiated an informal discussion about violence in our lives. The Time Shaman announced a move to the House of State; during the procession to the campus flag pole (a symbol of the State), the performers enacted scenes of enslavement and killing. At the flag pole, the performers stood in an open formation around the pole, then prostrated themselves and commenced a sing-song ritual commemorating the ten thousand powers, humiliations, and authorities of the State which are responsible for the broken lives and lost hopes of the people. At the 83 conclusion of the ritual, Beck pricked his finger with a needle and smeared his blood on the flagpole. example. The other performers followed his The Shaman asked if any spectators wished to join the actors; in Ann Arbor, about forty audience members mixed their blood with the performers' on the flagpole. This action complete, performers and spec- tators joined in the informal discussion which ended each act. The following procession, in which the performers enacted scenes of torture, led the group to the Huron Valley National Bank, where The House of Money was enacted. Two actors with golden masks became the golden calf while the others threw handfuls of play money into the crowd. The money was then gathered and burned as the performers shouted the words found on the dollar bill. After the money-burning and the end-of- act discussion between spectators and performers, the Shaman led the group to the Administration Building for The House of Property. The company erected a two-tiered, jail-like structure representing The House of Property as they sang about structures that enslave people. With the structure complete. Beck read a passage about slavery and murder, property and theft from Prudhon's Memoirs on Property. The performers (who had been incarcerated) began to writhe and groan and cry from their cells, "How can we get out? How can we escape?" Various answers are given, but the prisoners are not freed until the example of the Spanish Civil War is cited. They rip the bars from their cells and go into the audience for informal discussion. ''"'^'^Claudio Vincentini, "The Living Theatre's Six Public Acts," The Drama Review 19 (Spetember 1975):89. 84 The procession to the The House of War (the R.O.T.C. Building) was accompanied by revolutionary songs sung by performers and spectators. When they arrived at the building, the performers used sticks (the bars from their cells in the previous scene) to execute military drills. After completing the drills, the company formed a pyramid with the sticks and their bodies and recited a poem about war. The pyramid collapsed and the performers placed bread and roses (the antithesis of war) on the steps of the building. The group observed a twenty-second silence as a memorial to those who had foolishly lost their lives in senseless wars, then joined in a discussion with the audience. The silent procession that followed came to the park outside the Power Center and formed a semicircle facing the building. The performers recited a poem about love and the master/slave relationship and began to bind each other until only one performer remained free. through the audience until a spectator bound him also. He walked After a few min- utes, the spectators began untying the performers and were rewarded with embraces. When everyone had been freed, the entire group formed a circle and did an exercise similar to the Chord. After the company perceived that all participants had achieved a state of unification, the group disbanded. The second Pittsburgh play. Money Tower (1975), consisted of three major sections that analyzed the enslaving power of money. The play, presented in several locations (i.e., outside the gates of factories), utilized a five-tiered tower on which the role of the worker in a capitalist society was graphically demonstrated. On the lowest level, the poor and unemployed supported the entire structure by mining 85 ore, putting it on an elevator, and pulling it to the next level, where it was processed by the workers into glittering ingots. The workers then placed the ingots on the elevator, and the poor pulled the elevator to the third tier, where the bourgeoisie determined the value of the metal and proceeded to buy and sell it. The metal was again placed on the elevator and pulled to the fourth level, where it was guarded and protected by the military establishment. Finally, the ingots reached the elite, who accumulated their wealth in a lucite bank. The rich sent some of the money down the tower in the form of wages and payments, but quickly regained it from the lower tiers in the form of workers' payments for rent, food, and taxes. The money went up the tower much faster than it came down, and eventually all of the money was accumulated by the elite. This ended the first section of the play. "Visions and Nightmares," the second section of the play, demonstrated how the visions of the poor and working classes are the nightmares of the rich and how the visions of the elite and the military are the nightmares of those on the lower levels. "Strike and Revolution," the third section, revealed the dissatisfaction of the elite with the amount of wealth they have accumulated. The rich have an obsession for more riches, so they demand higher prices, lower wages, longer hours, and lay-offs, which result in strikes and rebellion. A violent confron- tation with the military is averted, and the play ends happily with a discussion concerning the possible implementation of an anarchistic system which functions without money. 86 Italy The Living Theatre had enjoyed a period of freedom from the worry of money and had produced several major works in the Cain cycle, but in 1975 they had used up the Mellon. Foundation grant. fronted their old nemesis, Mammon. They again con- Having put themselves outside the theatre, they had also cut off their means of support, and it was impossible to live in the United States without money; thus, they accepted several European invitations to perform in festivals. The company left America in the fall of 1975 and performed in the Venice Biennale and then travelled to Holstebro, Denmark. They ended with a tour of France and Italy, moving from Bordeaux to Rome. In Italy, the company found the local governments, particularly in the communist-controlled areas, interested in using the arts as a means of increasing social and economic awareness. willing to sponsor The Living Theatre. The governments were They made their headquarters outside of Rome and began performing wherever they were invited. The group's patrons included schools, factories, unions, and psychiatric hospitals. When working in the psychiatric hospitals. The Living Theatre tailored its performances to the perceived needs of the inmates, usually performing the Chord, Sound/Movement, and the Mat Piece. Malina recorded in her journal regarding one such performance, "everything we do pleases them and they embellish it and participate m it." 150 Judith Malina, "Italy; Psychiatric Hospital Performances," The Drama Review 22 (June 1978):94. 87 While they performed in the streets, in gymnasiums, schools, and other non-theatrical spaces, The Living Theatre developed a piece to be played in theatres. Prometheus (1978) was developed for the intellectual community and used many of The Living Theatre's previous innovations. As the audience entered the auditorium, they discovered a massive set dominated by a large arch constructed of pipe and found the actors bound with ropes in the auditorium seats. "Act One presented a dream- like history of culture using historical aind mythological figures." 151 Zeus, who represented authority, punished Prometheus for his anarchistic act of bringing fire to mankind. Metis, the feminist, was swallowed by Zeus (so that he might suppress female knowledge) and was imprisoned in his belly. Zeus became aware of the devout lo through Metis and lusted for her but turned her into a cow to save himself from Hera's wrath. lo was subsequently pursued by the Furies, but she received no help from Zeus, who had caused her misery. Act Two, performed in the style of epic realism, depicted the events encompassing the Russian Revolution. The Promethean myth of the first act is translated into an historical myth in the second act. In the view of Julian Beck Acts One and Two tell the same story. They demonstrate how human consciousness has been contained within a pyramidal structure of conceptualization which is intrinsically hierarchical and patriarchal.^^2 The events of the Russian Revolution were enacted with the help of audience members, the action being derived primarily from historical writings. Lenin (Zeus) has Emma Goldman (lo) and Alexander Berkman (Prome- theus) arrested. When asked why fellow anarchists are being imprisoned. 151 152 Shank, Alternative Theatre, p. 31. Ibid., p. 33. 88 Lenin replies, "Free speech is a bourgeois luxury . . . a tool of reaction." 153 The action continues with the storming of the Winter Palace by volunteers from the audience who act as Bolsheviks, anarchists, pacifists, and other^dissidents. Lenin dies after successfully inciting and directing the violent revolution and is lifted by the people to the top of a pyramid, "the Living Theatre's symbol of hierarchical oppression." 154 The act ends with Vladimir Mayakovsky's suicide after he becomes disillusioned with the new order. The third act opens with the company hanging motionlessly by their arms and legs from a scaffolding. After a time Julian Beck says, "the scene is Prometheus unbound, a silent action. We will go to Holloway Prison [in the London performance] and there to perform an act of meditation—a five minute vigil in the name of the end of punishment." The play ends with the actors and audience going to the prison for a five-minute vigil. Prometheus was conceived by The Living Theatre as a parallel to Aeschylus' Promethean trilogy; the first act related to Prometheus the Fire Bringer, the second act to Prometheus Bound, and the third act to Prometheus Unbound. The unbinding in The Living Theatre's Prometheus took "place in the spectator's head." The audience should have begun to question the structures of government, the repression of knowledge, and the subsequent enslavement of the people. According to Beck, "the objective of the play is to bring about this meditation in the spectator." 1 53 Ibid., p. 31. 1 f^R Ibid., p. 33. 154^^ . , Ibid., p. 32. 156 Ibid., p. 34, 89 The Living Theatre has toured Prometheus throughout Europe in traditional theatre spaces while continuing to perform in the street for the people. The Becks have not limited themselves to one class of people but are attempting to preach their message of anarchism to all who will listen. Very little has been written about The Living Theatre in the United States in recent years. After Prometheus, the only known addi- tional production is a revival of Antigone in 1980. The Living Theatre, at last word, is still living in Italy and continuing as an active theatre-producing group. Some of the present company have been with The Living Theatre since The Connection in 1959. Most of The Living Theatre actors have left the group, only to return again at a later date. Those who have returned must feel as Joseph Chaikin did when he said, "Anyone who has spent time with the Becks is in some way incriminated for life." 157 The theatrics and politics chapter which follows traces The Living Theatre's exploration of various techniques and theatrical modes. The Becks' political convictions, social commitments, and theatrical predilections are detailed so that the reader can see the relationship between the beliefs and philosophy of The Living Theatre's mentors and the theatrics of the company. Aldo Rostagno, We, The Living Theatre (New York: Ballantine Books, Inc., 1970), p. 227. CHAPTER III THEATRICS AND POLITICS "The theatre is the Wooden Horse by which we can take the town." Julian Beck The Becks' search for process and form has been in a constant state of evolution, even though they have tenaciously adhered to their pacifist/anarchist objectives. "We try to remain cognizant of the stream of history so as to stay valid with it. change of vocabulary, form, and vision." This means a constant The Becks have led the avant- garde theatre movement by "inventing or adapting nearly every experimental concept associated with the alternative theatre groups of the sixties and seventies." 2 From the Becks' idea of "theatre as a place of intense experience, half dream, half ritual, in which the spectator approaches something of a vision of self-understanding, going past true conscious to the unconscious," 3 to their experiments outside the theatre in Theodore Shank, American Alternative Theatre (New York; Grove Press, Inc., 1982), p. 9. 2 Ibid., p. 34. ^William Glover, "The Living Theatre," Theatre Arts 36 (December 1961):63. 90 91 psychiatric hospitals in Italy, "their career recapitulates the sources, aims and successive stages of the whole avant-garde movement in .4 microcosm." Cherry Lane Theatre; Searching for Poetic Form The period from 1947-1952 is considered the first period of the Becks' theatre in America. In their living room and in their first theatre, the Cherry Lane, two objectives emerged: to develop a viable form for the poetic theatre and "to change the whole method of acting. . . . What we wanted to do most was to enhance the blossoming forth for poetry in the theatre, while preserving a certain realism." The Living Theatre's first productions were attempts to extend the boundaries of language by using "poetry or a language laden with symbols and far removed from our daily speech." 7 The Becks found very few poetic plays by recognized playwrights that interested them, so they turned to dramatic works by artists and writers who were not primarily playwrights. They wanted to give verse drama, usually confined to the 4 Christopher Innes, Holy Theatre; Ritual and the Avant Garde (New York; Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 188, 5 Pierre Biner, The Living Theatre (New York; Horizon Press, 1972), p. 27. Childish Jokes, Paul Goodman; Ladies' Voices, Gertrude Stein; He Who Says Yes and He Who Says No, Bertolt Brecht; The Dialogue of the Mannequin and the Young Man, Federico Garcia Lorca; Dr. Faustus Lights the Lights, Gertrude Stein; Beyond the Mountains, Kenneth Rexroth; Desire Trapped by the Tail, Pablo Picasso; Sweeney Agonistes, T. S. Eliot; Faustina, Paul Goodman; Ubu the King, Alfred Jarry; The Heroes, John Ashberry. 7 Glover, "Living Theatre," p. 63, 92 textbook, a new lease on life. They wanted, in fact, to encourage "the modern poet to write for the theatre by giving him a stage where his g plays may be produced," and to find a form suitable for the production of those plays. Beck, in his introduction to The Brig, relates; Our initial commitment was with form. That is why the first play we did at our first Cherry Lane season, 1951, was by Gertrude Stein. , , . Relentlessly, Stein worked with form in an attempt to surface sunken knowledge, not simply information, but the light-shedding qualities of metaphysical and psychological association, and, what is perhaps more, exactness. To find out what is really there, to examine everything, common objects, and to define them, not partially, but totally and exactly. Even though many of The Living Theatre's early productions were considered successful, the Becks were not satisfied, particularly with the verse plays. Except for Sweeney Agonistes, every verse play produced by The Living Theatre was postponed. Postponement was painful for the Becks and the casts because it was "recognition of the fact that the work . . , has not been going well," This frequently caused dissension within the company because cast members blamed each other and lost faith in the directors, while the directors despaired of the company. Al- though the Becks still believed that it was The Living Theatre's responsibility to produce the verse plays, they did not have a process. We don't know how to do them right . . , nor do we know how to make glow the formal structures and theatrical devices of the theatre of ^Aimee Scheff, "The Living Theatre," Theatre Arts 36 (February 1952):96. *^Julian Beck, "Storming the Barricades," essay in The Brig by Kenneth Brown (New York: Hill and Wang, 1965), p. 7. "^^Ibid, , p. 10, 93 verse, that is, a formal theatre, a theatre not of the realist style; how to make it into I don't know what. Having trouble finding the right word for what they should be made into.H The Becks' inability to conceptualize the final form of the verse plays to their satisfaction only spurred their search for a process that could enable them to cope with the verse plays. A principal concern of the Becks was the artificiality of the Broadway theatre. (The Broadway theatre became the object of their derision because they considered it to be the symbol of established theatre.) During The Living Theatre's embryonic years at the Cherry Lane Theatre, the Becks believed that to develop the theatre they envisioned would require an honesty in acting and production not evident on Broadway. The Becks found the established theatre of the time hypo- critical. I do not like the Broadway theatre because it does not know how to say hello. The tone of voice is false, mannerisms are false, the sex is false, ideal, the Hollywood world of perfection, the clean image, the well pressed clothes, the well scrubbed anus, odorless, inhuman, of the Hollywood actor, the Broadway star. And the terrible false dirt of Broadway, the lower depths in which the dirt is imitated, inaccurate. 12 The falseness depicted by the Broadway theatres convinced the Becks that the popular plays being performed and Stanislavski's method of doing those plays was inadequate. "In our reaction against natural- ism, against the American version of Stanislavski, we turned to Ibid., p. 11. •^^Julian Beck, The Life of the Theatre: The Relation of the Artist to the Struggle of the People (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1972), 7. 94 contemporary poets, to a poetic theatre." 13 The Becks perceived that "The Method" was not only inadequate for the theatre they sought, but also was dishonest in its concept. Beck described the disparity be- tween Stanislavski's aims and The Living Theatre's aims in this way: The whole theory of Stanislavski was aimed at getting the performer to recreate the experience so that it is almost existential. The theatre of our time, with its return to ritual and its programme of action is trying to create forms in which alienation from life is changed into integration with life.^'^ The Becks wanted the actor to feel, not just to have the attitude of feeling, for only when this happened could an audience be truly moved. The verse tragedies . . , with all their gorgeous language and rotund passions, all the seething emotions, and the stark dramatic moments, caught, roped, garlanded with what we consider the attributes of splendor—don't pierce the shell, , . . Maybe it's the regality problem, no identifications: we're outside. Then we must concentrate on ways to get in there, or, just as good, a means to open up the dam and let the insides flow out. The Becks felt that the verse theatre which they had seen had never been successful because it had never aroused anything but the baser instincts. this way: Beck described his concept of "baser instincts" in "False notions of grandeur, bullshit beauty, intoxication with wigs instead of hair. Fetishes, when my sexual instincts are aroused by superimposed symbol glamour, legless ideas, bodiless crea16 tions." What The Living Theatre had to do was find a process capable of dealing with the demands of verse drama. closer to life, Paradox, "The problem is to get Nothing in the theatre can get closer to life 13 Biner, Living Theatre, p. 27. 15 Beck, "Barricades," p. 16. 14 Beck, Life of Theatre, 81. 16 Ibid., p. 11. 95 and nothing further away." 17 Beck and Malina knew that traditional theatre had failed to "jolt the audience into a new awareness." 18 Therefore, it would be necessary for The Living Theatre to experiment with unique forms and processes in order that they might reach the audience. One of The Living Theatre's first explorations involved putting actuality 19 on the stage. This anti-Aristotelian investigation was the origin of many Living Theatre innovations, including the elimination of "the separations between art and life, between dramatic action and social action, between living and acting, between spectator and performer, and between revolution and theatre." 20 The Living Theatre's earliest attempt to incorporate actuality into a production was at the Cherry Lane Theatre with Faustina (1952). At the end of the play, after the Roman civilization had fallen and the scenery had disappeared, leaving a bare stage, the actress who played the title role confronted the audience and castigated them for not stopping the murder of a young man in the play. "The power of the moment came from a shift of audience perception from the illusion of Faustina 17 18 Ibid. Shank, Alternative Theatre, p. 9. 19 In this discussion of The Living Theatre's theatrical development, the terms "real," "reality," and "actuality" require clarification, "Real" refers to that which is non-fictional, non-illusory. "Reality" refers to a state of being in factual time and place. "Actuality" is an alternative theatre term which is action-oriented; it requires performer and spectator to be present in the same time and place while an event occurs in order to effect a change in the spectator. 20 Shank, Alternative Theatre, p. 9. 96 to apparent direct communication by a performer." 21 The Becks conceived that by destroying the aesthetic barrier between actor and audience, by erasing the boundary between fiction and reality. The Living Theatre could get closer to life and thereby cause the audience to be stirred from its lethargy. Faustina embodied several experiments that proved to be valuable in The Living Theatre's development. The technique of audience confron- tation was to become an integral component in the structure of later plays as diverse as Antigone and Paradise Now. The disappearance of the scenery onstage presaged The Living Theatre's works that used no scenery at all. The Becks have worked together since The Living Theatre's first production in their apartment in 1951. At the Cherry Lane, Beck direc- ted only one play. Beyond the Mountains (1951); Malina directed all the others. Beck handled the designing chores and was considered by some, 22 including Eric Bentley, to be one of the best designers in New York. Their processes as director and designer were for the most part traditional; they carefully prepared directing books in advance of the play, and they knew what the actors' movements should be and how the actors should interpret their lines (despite the use of some improvisation in the rehearsal process). The picturizations and compositions of each scene were fixed before the play started, with costume designs, music, and set designs already completed. 21 Ibid., p. 10. ^^Eric Bentley, "I Reject The Living Theatre," New York Times, 20 October 1968, sec. II, p. 16. 97 Beck feels that the rigidity of his and Malina's directoral approach in The Living Theatre's early work contributed to their dissatisfaction with those productions. You can never tell performers to move to the right or take a step downstage. They have to be doing something. You can't give a performer just a technical direction. There has to be a motivation; it must be more significant than getting out of the way or filling in the space. Whatever the performers do, they have to be creating something or else they are wasting their lives.23 John Cage's work with chance and indeterminancy helped break the Becks of their strict approach to the mise en scene; We first became acquainted with it [John Cage's work] around 1950. The first concern, the first special event ever presented by The Living Theatre, was arranged by him at the Cherry Lane. We presented the premiere of his Music of Changes. By using methods of chance and indeterminancy to construct his work, he was saying to us all, "Get rid of all this misdirected conscious dominion. Let the wind blow through. See what can happen without the government of sweet reason. "2"^ The influence of John Cage would surface repeatedly in The Living Theatre 's work until it reached fruition in Paradise Now. One of the unique aspects of The Living Theatre was that both Beck and Malina not only designed and directed the plays—they acted in them as well. ductions. The Becks had major parts in all of the Cherry Lane pro- Partially due to lack of funds, the Becks did almost every- thing connected with the mise en scene. During the Cherry lane period. The Living Theatre was the only theatre in New York with a true repertory. ^•^Beck, Life of Theatre, 38. 24 Beck, "Barricades," p. 24. 98 Broadway and 100th Street (The Loft); Altering the Actor/Audience Relationship After losing the Cherry Lane Theatre in 1951, The Living Theatre entered its second period of development in America at the Broadway and 100th Street Theatre (The Loft) in 1954. The Becks continued their experimentation with verse plays at The Loft in an attempt to "pierce the shell." The Living Theatre's production of Auden's Age of Anxiety offered the Becks a feeling of accomplishment because they thought they found a style for the play that allowed them to speak in an honest man25 ner and yet "release the multiple meanings" the cast had discovered in the script. The Becks had rehearsed the play for over a year. They discovered that the long rehearsal period gave the actors time to explore the depths of the play. Most of The Living Theatre's succeeding pro- ductions utilized an indefinite rehearsal period; a play was rehearsed until the company felt it was ready. The experiments at The Loft included plays by recognized playwrights, most notably August Strindberg's The Spook Sonata and Jean Cocteau 's Orpheus. With these plays, the Becks began to question the tra- ditional approach of the director's function as one who "is to keep diving until the author's intentions are known and drawn to light," and began to realize that nothing should happen "on stage that does not support and develop as fully as possible the substance of the play." 26 Everything in a production must emerge from the ultimate reality that 25 26 Ibid., p. 13. Ibid., p. 20. 99 underlies all outward manifestations. What the director, designer, and actor must do is find that essence and translate it to the stage. In these two plays, the Becks realized the importance of doing "the play honestly, no matter how taxing the demands of the script." 27 The Living Theatre's second attempt to alter the audience/actor relationship and obscure the line between fiction and reality as they had in Faustina found form at The Loft in Luigi Pirandello's Tonight We Improvise (1955, 1959). reality and illusion. All his life Pirandello had been obsessed with His plays were a search for truth; that is, which is truth, the actor or the character? He wondered if the theatre could dispense with its own form and still be theatre. It was only natural that the Becks would investigate through Pirandello's play that same quest for truth. Tonight We Improvise, with its play-within-a-play structure, provided the Becks with their first effective form of audience involvement by allowing the actor to come in direct contact with the spectator. While working on Tonight We Improvise, the Becks began to understand why the audience/actor barrier needed to be destroyed. They began to perceive the necessity of returning to the origins of the theatre, to the religious implications of the unification of actor (shaman) and audience (tribe). 28 According to Beck, the play-within-a-play technique was only a means to aid the audience to become once more what it was destined to be when the first dramas formed themselves on the threshing floor; a 27 Ibid. ^^The terms "shaman" and "tribe" were not used by The Living Theatre until 1967. 100 congregation led by priests, a choral ecstasy of reading and response, dance, seeking transcendence, a way out and up, the vertical thrust, seeking a state of awareness that surpasses mere conscious being and brings you closer to God. By bringing the play into the theatre and mixing together spectator and performer, the intention was to equalize, unify and bring everyone closer to life. Joining as opposed to separation. The concept of joining actor and spectator became a major thrust for The Living Theatre. It is true that our message, if you want to call it that, or our mission, was to involve or touch or engage the audience, not just to show them something; but we realize that these play-within-the-play devices arose out of the crying need on the part of the authors, and of us, to reach the audience, to awaken them from their passive slumber, to provoke them into attention, shock them if necessary, and, this is also important, to involve the actors with what was happening to the audience.30 Within the pseudo-improvisational structure of Tonight We Improvise, the actors and director frequently complained about each other directly to the audience while walking down the aisles and generally invading the spectator's space. Julian Beck, the director of the show, played the director instead of having an actor play the part so as to be as honest as possible within the framework of the play. 31 Tonight We Improvise was successful in many respects. The production allowed The Living Theatre to investigate the effect of the altered audience/actor relationship on the audience and on the actor, as well as attaining an honesty possible only when the actor could address the audience as an actor. the right questions. The play even prompted the critics to ask Brooks Atkinson, in a highly complimentary review 29 30 Beck, "Barricades," pp. 21-22. Ibid., p. 22. 31 The play was revived in 1959 at the 14th Street Theatre to run in repertory with two other play-within-a-play scripts. The Connection and Many Loves. 101 i" ^h® New York Times, was motivated to ask, "In the theatre, is illusion as powerful as truth?" 32 In the spring of 1958, before the 14th Street Theatre was ready for occupancy, Mary Caroline Richards brought the Becks a copy of her soon-to-be-published translation of Antonin Artaud's The Theatre and Its Double, and that summer Jack Gelber arrived with the play The Connection (1959). It was not until Beck and Malina read The Theatre and Its Double that they began to realize that "a theatre whose poetry was active aggressive" 33 could further their views. After reading Artaud's essays. The Living Theatre's productions at the 14th Street Theatre made fresh attempts to jolt the audience into a new awareness. With Artaud as their mentor. The Living Theatre attempted to create a spectacle to move the audience to real feeling. They felt that modern man has been insu- lated from feeling by the "steel world of law and order" and that this insulation allowed modern barbarism (i.e., the Jewish genocide, black slavery, Hiroshima, bacteriological weapons, and an indifference to such things as poverty, hunger, prisons, and capital punishment). Artaud believed that if we could only be made to feel, really feel anything, then we might find all this suffering intolerable, the pain too great to bear, we might put an end to it, and then, being able to feel, we might truly feel the joy, the joy of everything else, of loving, of creating, of being at peace, and of being ourselves. 32 Brooks Atkinson, "Theatre: Tonight We Improvise," New York Times, 7 November 1959, p. 27. 33 Karen Malpede Taylor, People's Theatre in Amerika (New York: Drama Book Specialists/Publishers, 1972), p. 209. 34 Beck, "Barricades," p. 25. 102 14th Street Theatre: Investigating Improvisation The Living Theatre's third period in America (from 1959-1964 at the 14th Street Theatre) succeeded a three and one-half year hiatus in which the Becks had no theatre in which to perform. It was at the 14th Street Theatre that The Living Theatre created its most memorable American productions. The Living Theatre's fascination with the play-within-a-play technique continued with Many Loves (1959) by William Carlos Williams. Set within the framework of a dress rehearsal. Many Loves permitted The Living Theatre to throw lines to the audience and even have actors sit in the auditorium with the audience as they delivered their speeches. As the audience entered the auditorium, actors and technicians milled about the stage rehearsing lines, business, and technical cues. Just before the play was to begin, there was a blackout, and someone informed the actors and audience that a fuse had blown and that the play could continue only after it had been replaced. After several chaotic min- utes of actors' and technicians' fumbling around in the dark, the lights came on and the play began. Actually, the audience was not entirely sure when the play started. Charles Mee, after seeing the production, wrote: "When the lights came back on I think the play started. I say 'I think' because there was another 10 or 15 minutes of author, director, 35 and actors arguing about little matters." It was becoming difficult to distinguish what was written by the author and what was improvised "^^Charles L. Mee, Jr., "The Beck's Living Theatre," Tulane Drama Review 7 (Winter 1962);197. 103 by the actors. It was becoming equally difficult, if not impossible, for the audience to discern whether the actors were being themselves or characterizing actors. The Connection; with Artaud Experimenting When Jack Gelber brought the Becks The Connection, many pieces of a puzzle began to fall into place. Beck and Malina realized that a production of this script could synthesize some of Artaud's theories with their own experiences and convictions. Their sojourns in prison had brought them into contact with heroin addicts. (Malina dedicated the play to Thelma Gasden, a junkie prison acquaintance who had died of an overdose.) The difficulty of translating their beliefs and exper- iences to the stage was facilitated by the script of The Connection. The Becks saw in the play an indictment against society. The play offered the hooked junkie as a minor image of a materialistic world hooked on power, money, and success. We felt compelled to do The Connection not only because of our great admiration for Jack Gelber's accomplishments, but also because we were still somehow bound to jail and the junkies there and hoped, naively, that a play might help set them free.~^" The Connection's political message was subtle: the bourgeois audience was no better off than the junkie for its materialism. It was with The Connection that The Living Theatre achieved its greatest critical success using the play-within-a-play technique. In The Connection, the Becks found a vehicle which enabled them to explore •^^Julian Beck, "Thoughts on Theatre from Jail," New York Times, 21 February 1965, sec. II, p. 3. 104 the actor/audience relationship in greater depth. Improvisationally developed. The Connection allowed The Living Theatre to break away from the established precedent of the primary focus of the actor as one who builds a character which endeavors to alter the circumstances of his existence. Instead of exclusive focus on character. The Living Theatre actors also "offered self." They became performers being self, as well as actors creating characters. 37 One of the keys to the Becks' discovery of the power and the honesty of the actor playing self was the presence of the jazz, musicians. Musicians, unlike actors who interpret roles, play themselves. Being themselves, they establish an entirely different relationship with the audience because they are able to talk freely to the audience as a group or on an individual basis. Malina quickly recognized the advantage of self-representation; When a jazz musician plays his music, he enters into personal contact with the public; when he goes home after he has played, one who talks to him knows that there is no difference between the way he is now and the way he was on stage. This type of relationship with the audience creates in him a great relaxation. The Connection represented a very important advance for us in this respect; from then on, the actors began to play themselves.3 The actors' withdrawal from character had an impact on The Living Theatre's later productions, as well as on theatre itself. The Living Theatre shed any pretense of performer creating character, believing that "the attitude of the performer as self causes the responsibility for the world to be thrown back on to the audience, to be shared with •^^Arthur Sainer, The Radical Theatre Notebook (New York: Avon Books, 1975), p. 14. 38 Biner, Living Theatre, p. 48. 105 the performer." 39 This radical departure created questions concerning the place of the performer in the theatre and the nature of actor, performer, and character. Just as interesting as the actor/performer/character relationship was the alteration of the spectator's relationship with the stage action. The 14th Street Theatre, having no prescribed stage boundaries or curtain to establish a line of demarcation between actor and audience, aided in breaking down the aesthetic distance between actor and audience. The play itself was shocking to the audience of 1959 because of its subject matter and language, and the production was a jolt for those used to the Broadway version of realism. The pain of the junkies' addiction—the actual injection of "heroin" and the subsequent convulsions—stunned the audience. The premise of the play confused the audience, which at times wondered what the reality of the situation was: a play acted by The Living Theatre; an audience watching a film director attempt to film some addicts who had been brought to the theatre; or an audience watching addicts wait for a fix, shoot up, and get high. 40 Malina did not present the play as a staged performance but as an assemblage of real derelicts living in the tempo of life. The appearance of reality was reinforced by having the derelicts panhandle the audience before, during, and after the play. Charles Mee described the painstaking attention to detail The Living Theatre employed to convince the audience that the situation was authentic; 39 Sainer, Radical Theatre, p. 15. Taylor, Amerika, p. 211. 106 Before I went into the auditorium to see The Connection, I spoke to Jonathan North, a young actor who plays small parts in the repertory. . . . His job was to approach the addict who panhandled in the lobby during intermission. When the time came North gave the actor five dollars so that he'd tell a story during the second act. ("I just got in from San Francisco, and I hear you tell good stories; so I want you to tell me one during the next part of the show.") Only two or three people who happened to be near the panhandler heard this exchange. But during the second act, North stood up in the audience and demanded his money's worth. The actor then told five dollars worth of story, . . . and for the two or three people in the audience the play struck home a bit harder.'^! The Living Theatre's quest for new processes and honesty led them to improvisation. They had used improvisation as a rehearsal technique in much the same way as Evgeni Vakhtanghov had in Russia—as a means of better understanding character and situation; but they had not used improvisation as a process to create form until The Connection. The pseudo- improvisational structure of Tonight We Improvise offered little opportunity for improvisational development, and as a result "there was little in the play that was really improvised; Pirandello wrote all of the 'improvisations,' but it was set up and directed so that the spectators often imagined that it was really being improvised." 42 Although years later the Becks considered The Connection dishonest because as much of the improvisation was faked as was real, it was a real breakthrough for them in 1959. Actors developed large segments of the play through improvisation, and they had the opportunity to improvise during performance. An actor would comment on the sound of an ambulance that passed the theatre or react to an audience member's comments or late entrance into the theatre or early exit from it. "^•""Mee, "Beck's Theatre," pp. 202-3. '^^Beck, Life of Theatre, 45. Beck 107 considered The Connection a turning point for The Living Theatre's process. In The Connection Judith had arranged an atmosphere in which the actors could improvise lines and actions in the context of the play, never straying too far. This often led to terrible choices, largely because we are not well trained in this area, but often terrific moments emerged. Best of all, an atmosphere of freedom in the performance was established and encouraged, and this seemed to promote a truthfulness, startling in performance, which we had not so thoroughly produced before.^3 It was during The Connection that the Becks began to verbalize their concepts of collective creation. They began to realize that anarchism should not be just on the governmental level but that it should have a direct effect on all areas of society. If there should be no government leader to issue directions, why should theatre have a director doing the same thing? If the people are better off without government leaders, then the theatre should be better off without dictatorial directors. Beck, in an interview with Pierre Biner, claimed that the idea of collective creation had been with them for many years, but that the first time we spoke to them [the actors] about it, it must have been in 1959, they said that all they wanted to do was act and get paid every week if possible. . . . [The actors thought] we [the Becks] should continue to take care of direction and administration and they would continue to practice their profession.'^^ Improvisation was a means used by the Becks to involve the entire company in the building of the production. Even though Malina was credited with the direction of the play, and even though she had imposed the basic form, each actor had contributed to its development through his 43 Beck, "Barricades," pp. 27-28. 44 Biner, Living Theatre, p. 164, 108 own improvisations. The Becks experimented further. There has not been a Living Theatre production since The Connection that has not used improvisation as a major part of the process in its development. The Marrying Maiden (1960) was another step in improvisation and collective creation. The Marrying Maiden, billed as The Theatre of Chance in tandem with Sophocles' Women of Trachis, presaged the Becks' concept of "Free Theatre." Inspired by the theories of John Cage, The Marrying Maiden compelled the actors to improvise the chance structure of the play. really improvising, no faking at all. "Now we were Things were beginning to happen on stage which had never happened before." 45 The Becks' directing process continued to develop with the production of two Brecht plays, In the Jungle of Cities and Man Is Man. Using the "free style of staging" that she had discovered in The Connection, Malina created a production of "scrupulous precision" with In the Jungle of Cities and realized Brecht's oblique and artificial style with Man Is Man. Beck, in his introduction to The Brig, relates: She began to let the actors design their movements, creating a remarkable rehearsal atmosphere in which the company became more and more free to bring in its own ideas. Less and less puppetry, more and more the creative actor. The careful directing books we had used at the beginning were by now quite gone. She began to suggest rather than tell, and the company began to find a style that was not superimposed but rose out of their own sensitivities. The director was resigning from his authoritarian position. No more dictation.^^ Improvisation and collective creation were working for more than just play-within-a-play formats. 45 Beck, "Barricades," p. 29. 46 Ibid, p. 30. 109 The Living Theatre's political conscience became a little more overt with its production of the two Brecht plays. Although In the Jungle of Cities predates Brecht's mature Marxist philosophy, it contains the germ of Brecht's obsession with class struggle and the evils of money by dealing with the corrupting power of capitalism. Man Is Man, written three years after Jungle, contains an unmistakable Brechtian Marxist dialectic. The play deals with socioeconomic and political matters and the loss of individual identity due to the dehumanizing effects of authority and the state. Also important to the Becks was the play's portrayal of the means by which the power structure is manipulated by a few for their own gain. With these plays. The Living Theatre was seeking to find a form that would express their concerns and disgust for a materialistic American society. They felt that their political idealism and theatrical form could be fused to jolt The Living Theatre's audience out of their lethargy and into social action. They faced a problem as to the means to accomplish their goal. The Brig; Realizing Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty The solution to that problem arrived with The Brig. With The Brig, the Becks were able to fuse their Artaudian ideals and radical aesthetics with their revolutionary politics. The production integrated their life, art, and politics into one entity. It was as if everything in my life had led to the occasion. . . . There is a brilliant connection, like a hideous flourescent tunnel, that leads from Washington Heights, where I was born and grew up and educated to putting The Brig on a stage. The Brig, 1963, the 110 consummation of my life in the theatre. 47 Everything always seems to connect, everything in my life leading to the moment where The Brig arrived and enabled me to gasp and know that here it was, that if I were to avoid it, I would be rejecting my course, losing the splendor, if it is that, when it all coheres.^8 Life in the brig is the antithesis of everything the Becks believed. With its Kafkaesque structure of rigid and arbitrary rules, with its inflexible routine and architecture, and with its isolation of the individual aimed at reducing him to a Pavlovian state of obedience, the brig stifles and kills the very essence of humanity—the spirit. Theodore Shank described the play as "the epitome of an anarchist's 49 hell." chy was. In an interview in 1969, Beck was asked what his view of anarHe responded; Classically, the word comes from the Greek and it means simply "without an archon," without a head that is controlling things. What we' re looking forward to is a system in which the people take care of themselves without designating abstract forms to control them— small communities in which we can tell each other what our needs are.30 The brig is the opposite of the anarchist community envisioned by Beck. In the brig, prisoners are so regimented and dehumanized that they cease thinking for themselves and begin to rely on the guards to do their thinking for them. The brig's regulations, from which the play's dramatic action is derived, establish the total control of the prisoner by the guards. / *n Ibid., p. 4. Aft Ibid., pp. 32-33. 49 Shank, Alternative Theatre, p. 12. 50 Renfreu Neff, The Living Theatre; USA (New York; The BobbsMerrill Company, 1970), p. 230. Ill 1. No prisoner may speak at any time except to his guards. A prisoner must request permission to do any and everything in the following way: "Sir, prisoner Number requests permission to speak, sir." He must speak in a loud, clear, impersonal, and unaffected tone. 2. At each exit and entrance there is a white line. No prisoner may cross any white line without requesting permission to do so in the manner quoted above. 3. When unassigned a prisoner shall, at all times, stand at attention in front of his bunk and read The Guidebook for Marines, which will be found at the head of his bunk between his field jacket and his cap. 4. No prisoner shall sit down at any time unless it is necessary for the completion of an assigned task. 5. Under no circumstances shall a prisoner be permitted to walk from place to place. He must run, or, if this is not practical, he must at least show evidence of a trot. 6. The hair of the prisoners shall be cut identically in a short crew cut. 51 7. The uniform of each prisoner shall be identical. The Brig has no plot; it is just the structure of routine. Violence, anathema to the pacifistic Becks, abounds in The Brig. For even the smallest accidental infraction of the rules punishment is meted out, pushing the prisoners to the edge physically and emotionally. Endless humiliation, punches in the stomach, push-ups, and strenuous exercise are used by the guards to mold the prisoners into automatons. The Brig became a paradigm for all structures of authority not based on anarchistic/pacifistic principles; in short. The Brig is the world in which we live. The Living Theatre's goal was to show violence and rigidity to its extremes in the hope that the spectator would ultimately reject the abuses of authoritarian discipline, even to the extent of rejecting all structures of authority, i.e., government, the church, the school, the factory, and the family unit. The Becks wanted to make the play's audiences aware of the horrors of prison, horrors that the ^•''Kenneth Brown, The Brig (New York: Hill and Wang, 1965), pp. 45-46. 112 Becks themselves had experienced, so that they would tear down the prison walls. They wanted the audience to realize the worth of freedom by witnessing its removal. The Brig became the Theatre of Cruelty. Malina, in her notes on directing The Brig, cites Artaud's demands "for a theatre so violent that no man who experienced it would ever stomach • 1 „32 violence again." The Becks' life and their art had finally fused; their radical political views and their radical aesthetic concepts found a catalyst in The Brig. The Brig advanced the Becks' concept of society's role in designating victims and executioners: The Brig condemned and exposed the barricades which divide us into victims or executioners. Barricades, a play of barricades, a play of prisons, prisons which have entered briefly yet decisively into our experience, Judith's and mine. Prisons haunt. I think once in, you never get out, never get prison out of your bones, not until the last one falls.33 The Brig crystallized the Becks' concept of the relationship between imprisonment and psychological repression and between violence and physical repression. They were convinced that if freedom were to be truly realized that all prisons and all violence must be abolished. The couple's political convictions and their discovery of The Brig only caused them to have a greater desire to jolt the audience into action. They felt that the most effective means for achieving that end would be with actuality. The Becks realized that their previous "successful" productions (plays that utilized play-within-a-play ^^Judith Malina, "Directing The Brig," in The Brig by Kenneth Brown (New York; Hill and Wang, 1965), p. 86. 53 Beck, "Barricades," p. 33. 113 technique) were deceitful. But we were finally disturbed ourselves by this device [play-withinthe-play] because it was after all, basically dishonest, and we were publicly crying out for honesty in the theatre. . . . Deception was not the means we wanted to involve the audience.3^ The Brig advanced The Living Theatre's effort to present reality due to its documentary, rather than its fictional, form. Beck's set design reproduced the brig described by Kenneth Brown in his notes to the play. Malina considered the structure of the brig to be the "key" to the play, so it was necessary for Beck to recreate that "immovable structure" on the stage. The men placed inside the structure are intended to become part of this structure, and the beauty and terror of The Brig is seeing how it fails in incorporating those whom it has imprisoned into its own corporeal being. •J The stage version of the brig with its "rigor of detail" and stifling construction "dictates and directs the action by the power of its vectors and its centers of gravity." 56 For the actors the setting became just as real a prison as the brig had been for Brown. They were trapped within the structure, isolated from the audience by a wire barricade. Rehearsals were structured in accordance with The Guidebook for Marines. Actors were prepared for the brig just as men were prepared for the Marine Corps. With the Guidebook as a text, the actors were drilled and taught as Marines; Teach him to walk in measured steps. Teach him to chant strict meter. Make him afraid of another man whose insignia designates him as superior. Teach him to obey. Teach him to say, "Yes, sir!" Ijeach him to reply by rote. Teach him to turn his corners squarely. ^"^Ibid. , p. 23. Ibid., p. 85. Malina, "Directing The Brig," p. 83. 114 Teach him not to consider the meaning of the act, but to act out the c ommand. 3 "7 The rehearsal structure was alien to the actors of The Living Theatre, who were used to an atmosphere of permissiveness and informality. Malina saw the necessity of creating a brig onstage and conditioning the actors to survive the severity of brig discipline. Again she con- sulted the Guidebook; "Drill inspires an individual to be a member of a team. The purposes of Drill are . . . to teach discipline by instilling habits of precision and automatic response to orders, . . . to better morale." 58 Before rehearsals began, Malina drew up a list of regulations in the spirit of the Guidebook and passed them out to the actors. The company voted unanimously to abide by the rules. Rehearsal Discipline Rules a. Actors will sign in before Rehearsal Time is called. Actors should arrive five minutes prior to called time, in the auditorium, to be ready for places when called. b. During Rehearsal Time, actors who are not on stage will remain in the auditorium, ready to be called unless specifically dismissed by the stage manager. c. During Rehearsal Time, there is to be no business or discussion other than that relating to the rehearsal. d. No eating during Rehearsal Time. e. Actors not required onstage may smoke in the first rows of the auditorium. No smoking in other parts of the auditorium. Backstage rules will be posted by the stage manager. These rules were accompanied by others that required that only specified attire be worn at rehearsals; limited what the actor could do at break times; outlined what could and could not be done during rehearsal; and listed penalties for the infraction of rules. "These rehearsal rules imposed no requirements on the actor that ordinary customs of the (-'7 Ibid., p. 89. 53 59 Ibid., p. 91. Ibid., pp. 92-93. 115 theatre do not demand of him, . . . but were . . . imposed with demanding perfection." 60 The Brig's violence was so real that actors frequently required medical attention from the punches in the stomach. "We have certainly had a rash of illness, disabilities, broken ribs, and every kind of 61 agony known to man and beast." The punishment not only exacted its toll physically but also mentally. "Each one came to me [Malina] of his own experience and they gathered to talk each one of his own terror of 69 playing The Brig. The ordeal swept over us. We were all afraid." The result of this actual physical and mental torment of the actor was the erosion of the aesthetic barrier which the Becks perceived separated the audience's observation and the actor's experience. The Brig compelled the audience to endure the cruelty presented. The pain of the blows was necessary in order that the audience could experience pain: "we must make this pain not the useless pain that sickness brings, or the inflicted pain that tempts us to vengeance. . . . 63 This is cathartic pain. We staked ourselves on catharsis." Even watching the filmed version of The Brig causes the viewer's body to experience a physical response. When a prisoner is punched in the sto- mach, a physical reaction to that blow elicits a physical response in ^°Ibid., p. 92. C "I Richard Schechner, "Interviews with Judith Malina and Kenneth Brown," Tulane Drama Review 8 (Spring 1964):210. 62 Malina, "Directing The Brig," p. 96. 63 Ibid., p. 89. 116 the viewer. One critic commented: "No one could sit comfortably, no possible enjoyment resulted, but one carried away an unforgettable image." 64 The action of The Brig was physical and immediate. The produc- tion, however, was illusory—the setting, albeit accurate, was still a setting, and the actors, even though they experienced the plight of prison life, were actors enacting prisoners and guards. There remained for the Becks a level of dishonesty even in a production containing as little artifice as The Brig. The Living Theatre's European productions would strive for an even greater degree of actuality in order that the audience would be changed and leave the theatre and begin the revolution. It is ironic that The Living Theatre achieved its greatest degree of improvisation in America with a play as rigid as The Brig. Beck discovered that improvisation could best be realized within a structure of rigid rules. He recalls the importance of this discovery in his autobiography. The Life of the Theatre: With The Brig came The Living Theatre's first important art-of-acting discovery. Kenneth Brown had written a play in which the action was bound by rules, but within those rules only improvisation was possible. He provided a situation in which improvisation was essential. It was real.^3 Improvisation became a means to achieving the actuality the Becks had sought. If a prisoner accidentally had something wrong with his costume, or if his bunk were not perfect, or if he inadvertently stepped on a white line, an immediate improvised punishment would result. ^^Stuart W, Little, Off-Broadway; The Prophetic Theatre (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1972), p. 200. ^^Beck, Life of Theatre, 45. 117 "Consequently, the actors were treading a tightrope that was, in effect, real,"^^ Improvisation even had its effect on the actors in The Brig. The actors, most of whom had been ''method" trained, discovered the strong potential of improvisation for reality on stage. Beck recalls; The actors in The Brig reported that something special was happening out there, on stage, in the "cage," something which didn't happen in other plays. All the years that performers had been talking about reinventing each moment (the whole stack of evidence and exercises compiled by Stanislavski and his school), we had been fooling ourselves. Make it real: the real trip, physical, invented from moment to moment, reality, reality which is always changing and creating itself, the need for reality (life) in this period of alienation; improvisation as the breath that made reality live on the stage. It would never again be possible for us not to improvise. We would have to construct plays with forms loose enough so that we could continue to find out how to create life rather than merely 67 repeat it. The Living Theatre's production of The Brig also marked the advent of the Becks' attempt to achieve a true anarchistic community within the group. The Becks felt that they would prove to an unbelieving world that anarchism was possible by organizing The Living Theatre as an anarchist collective. (It was only after The Living Theatre's self- imposed European exile that the community was realized.) Collective creation and collective direction were effected but not perfected in the American productions, Europe Mysteries and Smaller Pieces: Theatrical Prototypes Discovering Mysteries and Smaller Pieces (1964), The Living Theatre's first fi6 Biner, Living Theatre, p. 70. 67 Beck, Life of Theatre, 45. 118 European production, became the company's first and easiest collective creation and the prototype for later productions. The nine scenes, suggested by various members of the company, were improvised for the first time from a rough outline drawn up by Beck. provisation became the play. The unrehearsed im- In 1970, while in a Brazilian prison. Beck recounted the birth of Mysteries: Collective creation: The first Paris Mysteries, October 1964, was our first experience with the process. It happened naturally, without effort. All our subsequent experiences were long grinding efforts. In Paris we were almost not aware quite of what we were doing. stumbled into it. We Later we recognized it. "Whenever I paint something there's alway an image; sometimes I know what it is, sometimes I don't." William Bazoites. A mysterious force, something simply stronger than our conscious intentions was at work. This mysterious force created a logical and controlled work. Judith titled the evening Mysteries and Smaller Pieces. moment the meaning came a little clearer. At that We had created mysteries without knowing what they were. We had made our first experiment in collective creation without knowing it. the way of working felt organic, Collective creation. 68 The Living Theatre had become what the Becks had been vaguely seeking— an anarchist performance group, a "tribe," staging communal spectacles in which they presented themselves. of 1964 in this way; ^®Ibid., 46. Beck described The Living Theatre 119 The collective creation. Concept of a theatre company, a working group, as anarchist commune. Free Theatre. And with it improvisation; creation on the spot. Itinerant theatre company as programming unit, a way of living on the edge, outside of the tight center. Counter-violent theatre. Theatre as a spokesman for anarchy, for non-violent revolution, for revolution.^*^ The life, art, and politics of the Becks and The Living Theatre had fused. With Mysteries, the Becks realized that an assault on the spectator's senses was a more effective means of shocking him into action than was language. In 1966, Martin Gottfried interviewed the Becks in Berlin, where they described Mysteries as "a series of thea'trical 70 events which explore all the physical senses." Mysteries also marked the advent of the Becks' conception of Free Theatre. Beck described Free Theatre in The Life of the Theatre; "Free Theatre; no rules, no end. it." 71 It ends when everyone has gone, when everyone feels like ending At the first performance in Paris, Mysteries was concluded with Free Theatre rather than the plague scene. Malina stated in an inter- view; The actors were free to improvise completely after the "Sound and Movement" scene, and we had an organ. It served us well. Also, we produced every possible sound with the furnishings of the theatre itself—the floor, seats, partitions, what have you. We were "playing" the room. There were forty of us and this first "free ^"^Ibid. , 68. 70 Martin Gottfried, A Theatre Divided: The Postwar American Stage (Boston; Little, Brown and Company, 1967), p. 290. 71 Beck, Life of Theatre, 45. 120 theatre" in our history went on for something like three hours. A great many spectators took part in it, and it spilled out into the auditorium.^2 The performers had begun to divest themselves of their Stanislavski training and to turn to disciplines not directly related to theatre. A great interest in yoga and meditation was engendered by Stephen Ben Israel, who held yoga classes on a daily basis for the company. This influence could be seen in all The Living Theatre's produc- tions created in Europe. Critics marvelled at the physical control the performers exhibited (due to years of yoga training) when they toured America. Another important aspect of Mysteries that would manifest itself in later productions was the element of ritual. The Becks considered ritual to be a means to an end—the unification of actor and audience. Mysteries was considered by many to have religious overtones, but even though many members of the community were interested in various religions, including Hinduism, Christianity, and Judaism, the group did not intend for any of the scenes in Mysteries to be religious. The idea was to make the theatre a place of unification with performers acting as priests and the spectators taking the part of congregation. It was hoped that the priests could unify the congregation into an awareness that would lead to revolutionary action. Beck defined ritual: to heighten communication to find ecstasy to invoke the holy spirit to prepare us for revolutionary action to open the mind to enliven the body to decrease fear to exorcise demons to increase trust to dispel hesitation to transform evil to free the heart to arouse sexual energy to soften hardness 72 Biner, Living Theatre, p. 42. 121 to release dreams to free all prisoners to untie hands to diminish death's dominion a ritual to drive the old culture out of the head to unify the forces to raise hope. 3 Mysteries and Smaller Pieces also signalled a new form taken by The Living Theatre to communicate its revolutionary message. The actors addressed the audience directly without attempting to hide behind a character. Audience confrontation and silence were used as weapons to goad the audience into some kind of action. The silence of the motion- less actor who began Mysteries was a strategy to revive the senses; "Silence administered by the artist is part of a program of perceptual and cultural therapy, often on the model of shock therapy rather than persuasion," 74 The silence offended the audience, so they began to shout insults directed at the actor in the beginning; the shouts were eventually directed at other members of the audience. The audience was open to the message of the first scene, and inhibitions were broken down, which allowed the spectators more freedom to participate. This technique, discovered in Mysteries, was used in all the plays developed by The Living Theatre during their European exile. As dehumanized actors mechanically worked onstage, the chanting of the words on the dollar bill was heard in contrast to the incomprehensible shouting of the Man in Charge. The form and message, borrowed in part from The Brig, were central to The Living Theatre's European productions; the victim allows the loss of identity and submits himself to the control of the bourgeois authority figure (executioner) for the "^•^Beck, Life of Theatre, 55, ^"^Susan Sontag, Styles of Radical Will (New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1969), p. 21. 122 sake of Mammon. Julian wrote: I am a slave who came out of Egypt. I have a slave mentality. Out of the house of bondage, into the house of employment. What an illusion, three thousand five hundred years ago, when we moved out of our culture into another, thinking we were going to be our own masters from there on! We got rid of a political master, and were too inexperienced to recognize the true function of the Paymaster, the Chief of Police, the Pillars of Society. "73 This same message, preached over and over, finds its way into every production of The Living Theatre. "Street Song," the fourth scene of Mysteries, contained slogans which were edicts of needs for changes in the world, i.e., "Ban the Bomb." Methods for effectuating these slogans were not addressed in the poem, only the issues that should be treated. The answer to the ques- tions posed in "Street Songs" was implicit in the following scene, "The Chord." Only by joining together in a collective, anarchist com- munity can the proletariat hope to throw off the chains of bondage with which the bourgeoisie has fettered them. The premise for throwing off these chains was answered in the Djdjdj scene. The actors blew their noses to divest themselves of impurities before the scene could proceed. The collective community had to similarly eliminate all pollution before it could be realized as anarchist, i.e., it must get rid of Mammon and all structures of authority. The last scene of the play was an image of a dying world. Many critics felt that the pyramidal pile of bodies was an image of Auschwitz or Hiroshima. The Living Theatre's idea was far more encom- passing; they wanted to show a dying world. 75 Beck, Life of Theatre, 2. It was during this scene 123 that fights broke out, and students refused to obey^the rules of various European theatres and joined the actors on stage in their death throes, either to confront or to die with them. Mysteries and Smaller Pieces contained the prototypes for almost every theatrical mode and technique that was typical of The Living Theatre's productions in Europe. was a set sequence of scenes. The play had no script even though there The play took place on a bare stage except for four boxes used in the tableaux vivants scene. No costumes were used, only the clothes that the actors happened to have on at the time of the show. The performers did not assume roles but remained 76 performers—"State of Being Acting as opposed to Enactment Acting." For the first time in The Living Theatre's history. Mysteries and Smaller Pieces offered the audience the opportunity to participate physically in the show. There was no attempt to make the stage appear to be anything but a stage; there was no attempt to present a fictional world, and there was no theatrical time, only the actual time of performance. There was brief nudity in the tableaux vivants. Frankenstein; Exploring Collective Creation The success of collective creation with Mysteries and Smaller Pieces encouraged the Becks to use the same approach with Frankenstein (1965). They discovered the truth of Joseph Chaikin's words concerning collective creation. ^^Julian Beck in "Paradise Now; Notes," The Drama Review 13 (Spring 1969):91. 124 In a collective creation there are various contributions to be made of different weight and of different importance; but that doesn't mean that they aren't all equal or that the work is not collective.^^ Every person in a collective creation has a function; some excel in research or improvisation while others have greater value as philosophers, critics, or designers. Although the Becks withdrew as directors, they were needed to focus the work. Without the Becks to shape it, Franken- stein became an immense monster that "threatened to engulf us [The 78 As a collective creation the Living Theatre]. It did many times." Becks considered Frankenstein to be a great success. "Total collabora- tion: direction scenario lighting setting costumes all elements." 79 Frankenstein, because it was a collective creation and because each performer created his own part in most of the sequences, became very personal to the company. The group attempted to answer the ques- tion posed by The Brig; Where is the source of evil in man? Franken- stein was "intended as a metaphor for the evil in each human being, the monster in each, which comes together to form our societies which perpetuate violence." 80 To find the evil and violence within themselves, the performers, as a rehearsal technique, confessed crimes they had committed, which brought an autobiographical element to the production. According to Beck and Malina it was "an ugly and painful rehearsal technique" which infected their daily lives. But the search for "the evil madness" in themselves was essential for "this evil that is corrupting all the great efforts of man in his heart."®^ 77 78^^.^ Beck, Life of Theatre, 26. Ibid. 80 Shank, Alternative Theatre, p. 17. 79^^.^ Ibid. 81 Ibid., p. 18. 125 The performers, although presenting characters, were playing roles that each had chosen and devised. Many of the roles played were not persons but abstract ideas such as the functions of the mind, i.e., the Erotic, Animal Instincts, Subconscious, the Creative, Death, Vision, Ego, etc. The performers created sound effects such as bells, wind, waves, and the Morse code. With the sound effects they would mime the effect of the sound, i.e., wind, or become the object making the sound, i.e., waves. The performers became actors who played historical figures, abstract ideas, and fictional characters. Frankenstein created fictonal places and situations and compressed time so that it became theatrical time. Even though "the entire performance was in the form of a theatrical illusion," attempt to involve the audience. 82 there was an The barrier of the footlights was broken by having actors chase "victims" fleeing into the auditorium and by asking the silent participation of the audience in the levitation of the actress at the beginning of the play. Of the four European productions that The Living Theatre brought to the United States, only Frankenstein had a setting. Just as the physical structure of the brig had provided a structure for the action of The Brig, the set for Frankenstein helped dictate the action in that play. The gigantic three-tiered set with its compartmentalized frame- work, symbolic of societal structure, provided part of the conflict of the play. There was a subtle battle that raged throughout the entire production to control the structure and thus symbolically control the Ibid. 126 world. Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley, daughter of feminist Mary Wollstonecroft and pacifist/anarchist William Godwin and wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley, was seized upon by The Living Theatre because of its inherent anarchist message. "The play's philosophical foundation is embedded in the idea that the world must be changed, that a new man must evolve, and all human suffering must be eliminated." 83 The principal political message that The Living Theatre hoped to convey with Frankenstein was that all are monsters, executioners, and victims and that evil and violence must first be purged from individuals' lives before society can change. The principal message was usually perceived by the audience, but the numerous metaphorical images and levels of meaning tended to be obscured by the magnitude of the production. Frankenstein was not a didactic failure, but the entire message was too complex to be realized fully. Frankenstein proved to be more popular with audiences and less controversial than Mysteries had been. The formality of the piece made it more coherent than Mysteries, and it clearly stated The Living Theatre's 84 ideas concerning the relationship of the individual and society. Frankenstein was a retreat from some of the innovations of Mysteries in that it did not attempt to present reality. The play did, however, further The Living Theatre's experimentation with Artaud. The play was developed in accordance with Artaud's belief that "a spectacle should be 83 Biner, Living Theatre, p. 111. Q/ Shank, Alternative Theatre, p. 18. 127 created by a whole company of actors, based on an existing text they 85 would create in modern terms." "It is the closest embodiment of Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty that has been attempted in theatre, its impact going far beyond other attempts, . . , that in retrospect they ft6 seem just that—'attempts.'" Antigone: Focusing on the Performer The Living Theatre's following production, Antigone (1967), proved to be the last script written by a playwright that the company produced. What attracted the Becks to Brecht's Antigone was that it embodied The Living Theatre's anarchistic views. They also saw in the play the opportunity "to find out if the Artaudian devices were possible with a text that was poetic, political, and classical in origin, though contemporary m application." 87 The Living Theatre began as a theatre for the poet, and the Becks had never lost their love for poetry. Antigone was an opportunity to indulge themselves in a classical poetic play and still retain their political convictions and theatrical innovations. The Living Theatre's production of Antigone illustrated what could happen to a society which is not based on anarchistic/pacifistic principles. It also demonstrated the responsibilities of every person 85 Taylor, Amerika, p. 226. 86 Richard Schechner, "Containment is the Enemy," interview with Julian Beck and Judith Malina, The Drama Review 13 (Spring 1969):38. 87 Neff, Living Theatre: USA, p. 124. 128 to effect an immediate revolution. Beck remarked in an interview; We dramatized the responsibility of everyone. That is why the people are on stage all through the play; that's why the confrontation is between people and themselves. The moment at which Antigone loses her trial is the moment at which the people lose their human form.^^ The Becks wanted Antigone to cause the audience to revolt. "Our theatre will have failed if there is no revolution, and so will Brecht's."^^ Antigone demonstrates what happens to a society when it fails to act or acts "too late." We did Antigone in 1967 so that; Antigone's example after 2,500 years of failure might at last move an intellectual paying audience to take action before it is too late.^0 With Antigone, The Living Theatre backed away from collective creation of a text, but improvisation and collective direction were used to develop the production. The quandary was finding a method to evolve collectively a classical tragedy. Malina, in an interview with Richard Schechner, stated; When we started on Antigone, we really had no idea how There was no overall mise-en-scene except what we knew done Frankenstein, and we didn't want a single prop or anything onstage but us because we wanted to go to the extreme.^l to do it. from having light or other 88 Lyon Phelps, "Brecht's Antigone at The Living Theatre," The Drama Review 12 (Fall 1967);129. 89 90 Ibid. Beck, Life of Theatre, 66. 91 Schechner, "Containment," p. 38. 129 The group rediscovered a principle they had first learned during The Brig: that the limitations of the script made it much easier to start than if there were no limitations at all. Another limitation which forced the company to rely on physical communication rather than verbal communication was facing an audience that did not speak English. According to Malina, the company did not know how to begin, so "we learned all the lines and then got into a free space and then did whatever we wanted without any discussion [about the improvisations]. We went through it three times. We totally improvised the play." 92 The play as they improvised it was far from its final form, a process that took months; but within those three improvisations came the basic form of the play. Before the improvisations, the company had discussed the play and the images that it evoked. Beck recalled the process; We talked about the play—it was about castration, subjugation, submissiveness, and "too late." It was about patience and foolishness. And in our discussion we began to do vocal experiments. What is the sound of a voice of a man who is possessed by metal; what is the sound of an emasculated voice? And then we had the rehearsals Judith spoke about and out of these we shaped the whole play. 93 One of the advantages of Brecht's version of Antigone was that it allowed the performers to play themselves. costumes, makeup, and characters were avoided. Just as in Mysteries, Malina made this fact clear when she commented, "I don't want to be Antigone, I am and I want to be Judith Malina." 94 Brecht, when he had first directed Antigone, had to use actors who were unfamiliar with his Verfremdungseffekt and 92 Ibid., p. 39. 93^. .. Ibid. ^"^Jan Kott, "The Icon and the Absurd," Tulane Drama Review 14 (Fall 1969);38. 130 had each actor preface his speech with "And then Kreon said, . . ."or "Antigone said, . . . " This device was used by The Living Theatre "to transfer the level of imaginative reality from character to actor." This technique allowed the performers to be themselves. The Living Theatre "further developed the concept of the presence of the actor— that is, causing the spectator to focus more on the live actor in their presence than upon the fictional character enacted." 96 The Living Theatre wanted to put focus on the actor, to allow "the physical presence of the human being to tell everything." 97 Antigone used no props (performers became props), no setting (performers became walls, arches, etc.), and no sound (performers physically created all sound effects). The various techniques to place focus on the actor led to a style of acting reminiscent of Meyerhold's biomechanics. Beck, discussing the acting in Antigone, stated: No one does anything that follows the superficial tasks of quotidian behavior. No one speaks without uniting what is said with an actual physical locality in the body—that is why we have found so many tones and rhythms for speech. The Living Theatre, along with Jerzy Grotowski's Polish Laboratory Theatre and Joseph Chaikin's Open Theatre, was "attempting to eliminate the rational control of the body and voice which restricted 99 the actor to what could be conceived in advance." Each group was trying to devise a method of acting in which "there would be no 95 Innes, Holy Theatre, p. 192. 96 Shank, Alternative Theatre, p. 19. 97 Phelps, "Brecht's Antigone," p. 128. 99 Shank, Alternative Theatre, p. 20. 98 Ibid. 131 conscious barrier or impediment between the impulse and the physical or vocal response." 100 The Living Theatre, unlike the Polish Laboratory Theatre and the Open Theatre, never held formal acting workshops. Any actor training in The Living Theatre was incidental to working on a particular production. With Antigone, the Becks achieved one of the goals that they had sought when they established The Living Theatre in 1949; a form for poetic theatre. Along with this accomplishment. The Living Theatre also came close to realizing their goal of presenting reality by putting the presence of the performer into focus. They again made their political statements with aesthetic innovation. These discoveries and realiza- tions, along with an intensified political consciousness and communal feeling, made it possible for The Living Theatre to create its most notorious production. Paradise Now. Paradise Now; Liberating The Living Before Paradise Now, The Living Theatre's most successful productions had been those in which the images were negative, images of a system that exploited and repressed. The Becks wanted their next pro- duction to be optimistic—to demonstrate the positive aspects of the revolution. Paradise Now became The Living Theatre's attempt to project that positive image. Paradise, the company agreed, was not a place but a state of being, and they felt that it was their duty to make the image of Paradise so appealing that the spectator would be willing to change Shank, Alternative Theatre, p. 20. 132 himself and society. Not only was it their responsibility to give a glimpse of Paradise, but it would also be necessary to give the directions for getting there. Paradise Now is described in the Preparation section of the script; "A spiritual and political voyage. and the spectators. It is a voyage for the actors It begins in the present and moves into the future (^ and returns to the present. The plot is the Revolution." The Becks wanted the audience to realize that a socioeconomic revolution was not \ only possible but urgent. "The purpose of the play is to lead to a state of being in which non-violent revolutionary action is possible." 102 The Becks had envisioned a transformation of present society into a non/ violent anarchist camaraderie that would destroy the monetary system and concentrate on feeding the people. Paradise Now was the most collectively created production that The Living Theatre had produced. Over one hundred lengthy discussions were held by the company as they tried to decide exactly what Paradise was and what form would be most effective in motivating the audience to action. Ideas for improvisations arose from the discussions, and con- cepts arose from the improvisations that required discussion. Reading a transcript of the discussions, one is impressed with the valuable input of so many company members. Beck and Malina, in an interview with Richard Schechner, related The Living Theatre's process of collective creation; ^°''"Judith Malina and Julian Beck, Paradise Now (New York: Random House, 1971), p. 5. Ibid., p. 6. 133 We decide what we want to do and then find out how to do it. . . . We decide we want to do a scene on a certain subject. Then we discuss the theory about the subject and tell each other our dreams and talk about psychology and politics and whatever else we want to talk about, and get rid of hassles and so on. Then we talk about what kind of theatrical event. We make this clear. Usually we start with an idea, although sometimes we start with a physical scene which then becomes expressive of an idea. Then we say, "How can we do this physical scene in such a way that we can be very groovy totem poles?" Then we do the physical exercises necessary to get us to do that work. . . . So we work from the cumulative knowledge of the people in the company. •'•03 Since the first objective of Paradise Now was to stimulate the audience to carry their revolutionary inspiration out of the theatre and into their everyday lives. The Living Theatre focussed on finding methods to motivate their audiences to concrete action. In previous productions, they had set about destroying the barrier between actor and audience. In Paradise Now, they not only invaded the audience's space and involved the audience thematically in the action, they also invited the audience to participate in the production. Paradise Now had been structured for audience participation for several reasons: 1. They wanted to break from a "rigid form" that allowed no deviation to "Free Theatre" or an "open form" in which anything was right, therefore allowing a contribution by the public. This concept had been motivated by an incident which had occurred during a performance of Antigone. A young man who happened to be drunk and not terribly imaginative, came up on stage and wanted in some way to join us. Because he wasn't very imaginative he didn't know how to join us, and because of the rigidity of form, we didn't know how to include him. 103 Schechner, "Containment," p. 28. ^^'^Aldo Rostagno, We, The Living Theatre (New York; Ballantine Books, Inc., 1970), p. 23. 134 It was for this reason that one-third of the play according to the chart was "unknown" and that one-third of the chart took two-thirds of the time Audience involvement became necessary for the accomplishment of the play. 2. The company felt that unification of actor and audience would be made easier if they shared the action of finding answers in a common ceremony. Malina stated; The answers are found together. That is we perform a ceremony, the solution of which can be found in communication with each other, then what we want from the audience and ourselves is to reach that point at which the solution is found. We know it can only happen with an absolute communion.105 3. Only by audience involvement in the play could the physical and spiritual unification of the individual be realized. were to act as guides to self-discovery. The performers The idea was to lead the spectator to the realization that the human being whose body lives in complete harmony with his brain, and whose mental faculties are happily balanced, attains a state of physical, mental, and spiritual jubilation that eradicates all urge of destruction toward his fellow man.106 4. There was the need for confrontation between performer and spectator. At the beginning of the performance, performers would con- front the spectators in a hostile manner as if the audience represented all the repressive forces of society. The performers' antagonism was designed to alienate the spectator by allowing him to experience a "growing frustration at the sense of a lack of communication." 107 The events that followed were "designed to transform this alienation into •"•^^Ibid. , p. 22. Biner, Living Theatre, p. 195. 107 Malina and Beck, Paradise Now, p. 15. 135 its opposite, physical unity in 'The Rite of Universal Intercourse. ^"•'"^^ Malina, writing about The Living Theatre's American tour in 1968, recalled; "Every night we have stories of victories, of how we turned someone's head from anger and disgust to pleasure and understanding. ""'•^^ The audience's transformation was necessary to lead them into the streets full of joy and love which would spread contagiously and eventually transform society. 5. The Becks reasoned that only with audience participation could the spectator be taken to such an intense level of emotional involvement that he would be forced to react. Emotional involvement would result in feeling, and the Becks believed that "when we feel, we will feel the emergency; when we feel the emergency, we will act: when we act, we will change the world." In Paradise Now, the performers manipulated the interplay of tensions created by confrontation and forced the spectator to make choices. The Living Theatre tried to insure that the choices made would be positive (for non-violent revolution) by contrasting the beauty of the non-violent revolution with the violence of a repressive society. The images of horror were presented, according to Beck, because "If you want to see the truth you have to be mad mad 1 QO Innes, Holy Theatre, p. 194. 109 Judith Malina, The Enormous Despair (New York: Random House, 1973), p. 170. •"• "^Neff, Living Theatre: USA, p. 32. Beck, Life of Theatre, 9. 136 enough to confront a horror." 6. 112 Audience participation was required for the performance to realize its ritualistic aspects. Each of the eight rungs which consti- tutes Paradise Now was introduced by a rite or ritual. 113 The rites are described in the script as "physical/spiritual ritual/ceremonies." 114 The goals of the rituals (as with all rituals) were transcendence and unification which would lead to change. For example, in the second rung of Paradise Now, The Rite of Prayer is described as a prayer of praise. A prayer of the sacredness of all things. It rises gently toward a very quiet ecstasy, ending when the feeling of the prayer, the feeling of universal identification, or oneness, has filled each of us. When the holy relationship has been estab115 lished.-^-^^ The ritual, according to the Becks, not only benefitted the audience but also the performers. The ritual was used by the company as a "psychic energizer" to transcend reality and achieve Paradise. Arthur Sainer described the use of ritual by performing groups in The Radical Theatre Notebook: One of the pervasive beliefs, then among the theatre ensembles in America, is not only that the rite, the ritual, the ceremony changes the spectator, awakening him to certain perceptions and insights, but also that the performer has potential for transcending his present state and attaining greater purity. The performer wants to make a change and be changed. The ritual is his tool for allowing •'•"'• ^ I b i d . , 9. •""•^•^I use the terms "rite" and "ritual" synonymously since ritual is made up of rites. Malina and Beck, Paradise Now, p. 5. 1 1 3Ibid., TW^ TC p. 36. 137 community of performer-spectator, ensemble-audience to succumb to something larger and nobler than itself.H^ The destruction of the barrier between performer and audience opened up possibilities for unique theatrical spaces. The Living Thea- tre, with the "open form" of Paradise Now, could adapt to any space that allowed interaction between performer and spectator. Cal Barber (a member of The Living Theatre during the collective creation of Paradise Now) described the ideal space when he stated, "There must be the possibility of liberation of space." 117 The "liberation of space" concept was extended by Richard Schechner's Performance Group with the production of Dionysus in 69; they constructed an "environment" that allowed actors and audience to share the performance space. When The Living Theatre had to use a proscenium theatre for Paradise Now, they used "orthodox theatre space for unorthodox ends." 118 Confrontation theatre requires the performer to provoke the audience by either causing them to participate or making them feel ill-at-ease for failing to participate. The confrontation could take place either on the stage or in the auditorium and therefore, according to Schechner, "the traditional uses of stage and house are frequently inverted." 119 In Environmental Theatre, Schechner lists the results of confrontation theatre and the inversion of traditional uses of stage and house as illustrated in Figure 2 on page 138. 116 Sainer, Radical Theatre, p. 52. 117 Cal Barber in "Paradise Now; Notes," p. 57. 118 Richard Schechner, Environmental Theatre (New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc., 1973), p. 38. Ibid. 138 ORTHODOX Stage Auditorium bright active giving noisy irregular arrangement costumed magic space dark passive taking quiet regular arrangement everyday dress plain space CONFRONTATION Stage Auditorium bright active giving-taking noisy irregular arrangement alternately bright and dark forced into activity taking-giving noisy regular arrangement changed by attempts to change the whole space usually in street clothes, but sometimes provoked to nakedness or exchange of clothes plain space made magic usually in street clothes, sometimes naked magic space made plain Figure 2. Characteristics of Orthodox and Confrontation Theatre SOURCE; Richard Schechner, Environmental Theatre (New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc., 1973), p. 38. 139 With the aesthetic barrier between performer and audience destroyed by confrontation, acceptance of the event by the audience could only take place if that event were real. The Becks felt that the fic- tional form could not light the path to revolution. Beck set forth The Living Theatre's objective to create a real event when he stated; We said in preparing Paradise Now that we wanted to make a play which would no longer be enactment but would be the act itself, that we not reproduce something but we would try to create an event in which we would always ourselves be experiencing it, not anew at all but something else each time; not reproducing and bringing to life the same thing again and again and again but always it would be a new experience for us and it would be different from what we call acting.120 Many critics who saw Paradise Now did not understand the programchart or the production, but most seemed to realize that the event, because it was the act itself, was outside the realm of criticism. Harold Clurman observed in Nation; "The company disarms criticism. Its productions are a way of life, closer to religious manifestations than 121 either art or entertainment." zine, stated: Jack Kroll, critic for Newsweek maga- Traditional critical standards simply don't work with the Living Theatre. In one sense they are beyond criticism—exasperating, boring, outrageous and high-handed as they can be, their authenticity of spirit is beyond question as is their desire to settle for nothing but real change in the human beings who are the ultimate substance of both art and life. With the presentation of actuality, the performers could not just present a character; they would have to present themselves. A real 120 Schechner, "Containment," pp. 34-35. "'"^•'•Harold Clurman, "Theatre," The Nation 207 (28 October 1968): 445. 122 Jack Kroll, "The 'Living,'" Newsweek, 28 October 1968, p. 134, 140 event designed to change lives could not succeed with fakery. That The Living Theatre achieved their goal of honestly portraying self is attested to by the critics' and other audience members' remarks. Patrick McDermott observed; Any member of the Living Theatre has many faces any of which he can rapidly mold or melt down. He is in control. But what makes his performance unmistakably real is that his various faces are not the products of the actor's craft (although the better achievements of the trade) but life as he lives it.123 The performance of reality led some critics to condemn the company, not entirely unfairly, of not even being actors. Walter Kerr, senior critic of the New York Times, noted: "The performers do not seem to be actors at all. They are converts," 124 The company did consider themselves converts—converts committed to a non-violent revolution. The performer's presentation of self was reinforced by the absence of costuming and makeup. Everyday clothes or as little clothing as possible were worn by the actors. Much controversy was stirred up by the American press concerning the "nudity" of the performers. (The performers did not take off all their clothes in the United States because they knew that it would lead to their arrest, and they had no desire or time to be in jail.) To the Becks, nudity represented the throwing off of the restrictions of a repressive society, a return to the natural state in which one is free from repression. It symbolized the shedding of one's outer 123 Patrick McDermott, "Portrait of an Actor Watching; Antiphonal Feedback to The Living Theatre," The Drama Review 13 (Spring 1969);76. 124 Walter Kerr, "You Will Not Be Lonely," New York Times. 6 October 1968, sec, 2, pp. 1, 14. 141 defenses and the exposing of a person's vulnerabilities. For The Living Theatre, the restriction of the performer from the removal of his clothing demonstrated the extent of "the taboos and inhibitions imposed on him by the structure of the world around him." 125 As long as the law forbade nudity, the gates of Paradise would be closed. Sexual liberation became an important concept in the creation of Paradise Now. The Becks believed that a non-violent anarchist society is only possible through sexual liberation. This belief ac- counted for the production's attempt to transform violence into joy and concord through sex (or as close to sex as one could come without the removal of clothing) in the Rite of Universal Intercourse. According to 1 9fi Beck, "the key to the exorcism of violence is the sexual revolution." Sexual liberation for the company became one of the most crucial messages to be communicated in the production because "the Beautiful Non-violent Revolution will only take place after the Sexual Revolution because 127 before that the energy is violent." Paradise Now failed to produce the revolution that the Becks and the company envisioned. Although The Living Theatre had played to larger audiences on their American tour than ever before, and although they had even motivated some spectators to take off their clothes and follow them into the streets, they began to doubt the effectiveness of their performances as tools of revolution. They could discern no change 125 Malina and Beck, Paradise Now, p. 15. 1 96 Beck, Life of Theatre, 103. 127 Biner, Living Theatre, p. 200. 142 in society, "Malina and Beck came to believe that they were being assimilated as other trappings of social change were assimilated, thus forestalling a fundamental change in the structure." 128 Brazil; Legacy of Cain: Reaching the People After the American tour the company realized that they had not played to the people who needed or would respond to their message. By playing on a commercially-organized tour. The Living Theatre had performed primarily for middle-class audiences. They perceived that it was not the middle class that would lead the revolution—the middle class had plenty to eat; instead, it was the poor who must be reached. The Living Theatre reasoned that the only way to communicate with the "slaves of the privileged" (the poor could not afford to go to the theatre) was for the theatre to go to the streets. Only in the streets could the theatre bring about the non-violent anarchist revolution. After an abortive attempt at collective creation of another production. The Living Theatre broke into cells in 1970 to take the theatre to the street and to the people. The Living Theatre Political Action Cell, the Becks' group, was the only cell to survive. The cell eventually ended up in Brazil. Work- ing in small communities called favelas, the Political Action Cell began collectively developing and performing plays of what was to be a 150-play cycle. The Legacy of Cain. All of the plays were to be founded on, or deal specifically with, the bases of enslavement; the State, Property, War, 128 Shank, Alternative Theatre, p. 26. 143 Love, Money, and Death. The title of The Legacy of Cain refers to the origin of violence; it was conceived by The Living Theatre as a street spectacle that would take place in many areas of a city or village over a period of several weeks. Stephen Ben Israel, a member of The Living Theatre Political Action Cell, described the play: "It is a spectacle that deals primarily with the topic of man's enslavement of man, and its various manifestations. ment as we know it," It is an attempt at an exorcism of this enslave- 129 While in Brazil, the Becks developed a view of the world order which Beck describes as "sado-masochistic." This view, an extension of the Becks' concept of sexual liberation, came about after the Becks discovered that the favellados (impoverished villagers), rather than rebelling against their servitude, accepted the role (of slave) thrust upon them by the ruling class (masters). For the Becks, therefore, the sadist represented the master (or domination) and the masochist represented the slave (or submission). and sexual roles. The Becks perceived a relationship between social Beck writes: The social contract. Master and Slave, . . . is an extension of the Sexual Contract. That is why in the new socialist countries the working class continues to slave, because we comprehend all of life, and extend it, in terms of, and starting from, our comprehension of the Sexual Contract. The contract (drawn up by a patriarchal society) is based on domination and submission, the man dominates the woman, this is the matrix of the contract, and out of it all human relationships get conceived in terms of domination and submission, of ownership of property, of capital and labor, the sexual form of behavior comes to function as the model for all of our behavior. . . . The complicity of the 129 Paul Ryder Ryan, "The Living Theatre in Brazil," The Drama Review 15 (Summer 1971);22. 144 slaves in this regard must be exposed or we may die like slaves, as we have done for thousands of years.-^30 The Becks believed that, if the people could liberate themselves sexually from their sado-masochistic pattern of behavior, it would simultaneously cause them to struggle to be free of the master/slave relationship, thereby instigating the revolution. As revolutionary artists, it was The Living Theatre's responsibility to educate and organize the working class so that they should be, according to Beck, "prepared to 'seize power' and 'take over the means of production,'" 131 This concept became an important consideration in the development of The Legacy of Cain cycle. The Becks felt it was important to make the favellados aware of the masochist/sadist relationship. Malina, in "Rehearsal #151," described the means by which this view could be communicated in the plays; If we put ourselves in a position in which the people control us, then we are vulnerable, and the traditional response is for them to be sadistic. Now at that moment that they turn sadistic, we have to turn them to an erotic action. The master becomes sadistic and vengeful. The thing is to turn it to the erotic. . . . I am saying that the slave must be transformed without becoming a master. When people find themselves rebelling, at the moment they feel that they can seize the power they can become either a master, or they can change the world and not become a Master but a Great Lover in the GREAT sense of the word. And this holy condition, in which one is not a slave nor a master I call erotic. 132 If the workers could understand and overcome the sado-masochistic nature of man, it would, stated Beck in an interview, "turn the world from a master-slave economy and psychology into a structure or system which is 1 30 Beck, Life of Theatre, 102. Shank, Alternative Theatre, p. 27. ^^^Beck, Life of Theatre, 120. 145 no longer parasitic and exploitative but rather creative. ""^"^"^ The first problem that The Living Theatre encountered was the creation of new forms that would effectively communicate the revolutionary message, as well as serve the needs of the people. The theatre would not only have to take to the street; it must also be mobile enough to disappear before the police arrived. For several years The Living Theatre had been formulating ideas for guerilla theatre attempted it before coming to Brazil, 134 and had even After The Living Theatre's divi- sion into cells, the Political Action Cell was destined for Paris. In Paris, The Living Theatre had its first experience with guerilla theatre. The company went to the university in Vincennes to conduct a class; there they found students in turmoil because of an increase in the Metro rates. The Living Theatre Political Action Cell organized students, divided into groups, and began planning Death by Metro (1970), a fortysecond play to be performed twenty to thirty times in different stations throughout the day. The play went smoothly at rendezvous one and two, but at rendezvous three. Beck and eleven others were arrested and beaten. Many of the proposed 150 plays that were to constitute The Legacy of Cain were conceived as guerilla theatre. Beck discovered that for guerilla theatre to be successful it has to be a totally unexpected hitand-run affair performed by unknown actors and accompanied by signs, charts, and political slogans. Above all, guerilla theatre had to be 133 Shank, Alternative Theatre, p. 27. •"•^"^The term "guerilla theatre" originated with Peter Berg of the San Francisco Mime Troup. 146 mobile and flexible. Members of The Living Theatre should not have taken part in Death by Metro because they were too well-known in Paris. Another aspect of guerilla theatre that The Living Theatre discovered was "the medium is the message." If a piece were being done in a bus terminal, laundromat, bank, or supermarket, people would listen. Beck observed: "All you have to do is get up there and do something, anything , and it just tells those people right away that there's something else out there that's happening; that's how the medium is the message." 135 Guerilla theatre could be an effective means of communicating The Living Theatre's message even if the Political Action Cell was not trying to avoid the police. Working in a language that was not spoken well by the majority of The Living Theatre members forced the company to avoid using words as the primary means of communication; they fulfilled Artaud's desire for "the visual language of objects, movements, attitudes and gestures" to be organized into "immediately readable hieroglyphs" and "symbols." The absence of dialogue also avoided censorship. 136 Any performance was supposed to be approved by the authorities, and it was much easier to get approval of a scenario of actions than it was if there were any questionable dialogue. The Living Theatre believed that the most effective way of making the plays meaningful to the favellados was to involve them in the collective creation. In preparation for the first play of the Cain 135 Rostagno, We, The Living Theatre, p. 43. ""•"^^Antonin Artaud, The Theatre and Its Double, trans, by Mary Caroline Richards (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1958), p. 90. 147 cycle, Favela Project #1: Christmas Cake for the Hot Hole and the Cold Hole (1970), The Living Theatre, along with some university students to whom the company give instructions, visited Embo, a favela of about eight hundred people in the state of Sao Paolo. Four visits to the slum were made; they talked to people in an attempt to become aware of their world. Stephen Ben Israel commented: "We felt we had to talk to the people about what their lives were about because we had never really been in contact with these kinds of people before." 137 The company mem- bers interviewed the favellados and recorded their responses to questions about the deprived workers' dreams, goals, living conditions, community, family, and work. All these recordings were then edited into a collage and used in the play. The Living Theatre had taken another step in the development of collective creation, in the performer's relationship to the spectator, and in the spectator's relationship to the play. The performers were no longer bringing a play to an audience but were including them in the process of development. The workers could then identify with the play because it dealt with their personal concerns and ideas; they could even hear their own voices or those of their family or friends. Christmas Cake also marked a new direction in audience participation. At the end of the play, the spectators had to untie the per- formers, who had been gagged and bound by Death, before the completion of the Rite of Liberation could be accomplished. The performers had been put in the position of slaves, and the workers had the opportunity •^^^Ryan, "Brazil," p. 23. 148 either to become masters or free themselves of the sado-masochistic pattern by untying the performers. Malina recorded that when Christmas Cake was performed in one favela, the favellados just watched after the binding of the performers. No one attempted to untie the company, even though it was understood that the performers would have to be untied before the performance could continue. "But they were also aware that the performance was illegal— . . . and that by participating in the symbolic liberation of the performers, the spectators were risking imprisonment as criminals." 138 Finally the favellados began to untie the performers, and the one untying Malina whispered, "Tomorrow the favellados will free the people of the whole world." The play had been a success, for Malina believed that in that moment "this man became capable of hope of another (perhaps greater) action." 139 After the untying of the performers by the audience, the unification of performer and spectator was celebrated with everyone participating in the Chord. A large circle was formed as the group held each other by the shoulders and joined in a musical "Chord of Liberation." Now that everyone was free, the Treasure Box was opened, revealing a large cake that was eaten by the performers and their liberators as they talked. This final action broke any barriers between performer and spectator—all were equal; all had taken part in the play. The Christ- mas Cake scenario called for the company to return to the same location one week later to continue political discussion. The Becks realized that the process used to create Christmas Cake "'••^^Sainer, Radical Theatre, p. 78. Ibid. 149 was still not adequate to involve the community. The company was still performing plays for the people and not with the people. They reasoned that in order to involve the people in their productions to the extent they desired, the company would have to live with the people for an extended period of time. An opportunity to involve the community in a play arose after their move to Ouro Preto, when one of the junior high schools invited the company to create a Mother's Day play, an invitation which was immediately and eagerly accepted. One hundred fifty students were asked to write down some dreams about their mothers. The young people came up with 150 dreams and sto- ries which were edited according to content by the collective into ten dreams which focused on the relationship of mother and child in that society. The Living Theatre began working with the students, utilizing theatre games, exercises, and improvisations to dramatize the ten dreams. When the parents came to see Ten Dreams About Mother (1971), the mothers were tied to their children with umbilical cords of crepe paper, thus involving them physically and thematically in the action. The destruc- tion of the master/slave relationship was depicted at the end of the play with the children "flying" off a platform into the arms of children below; the crepe paper umbilical cords broke, separating them from their mothers. After the performance, the parents of the children discussed the play with The Living Theatre, proud of what their sons and daughters had accomplished. The Living Theatre had reached its goal of collectively creating and collectively presenting a play with the people. They had reached, with their own form of street theatre, a socioeconomic class 150 of people who would never have the opportunity to step inside a theatre. According to Stephen Ben Israel, "There were about ninety-nine percent black people and they were all factory workers and their wives. ""'•'^^ The Living Theatre had played to the community that they felt would have to start the revolution; the revolution would begin when the workers ended the master/slave relationship in their homes with their wives and children. This new-found freedom from being either master or slave would then have its effect in the factories, in the government, and, consequently, in all society. United States; Legacy of Cain : Living the Collective Ideal After returning to the United States, The Living Theatre received a grant from the Mellon Foundation to produce theatre in Pittsburgh, where the company (as they had in Brazil) focused on the working class, specifically the coal miners and steel workers, to create collectively street theatre. They set out to use their theatre skills to focus the attention of these workers on their condition and to stimulate discussion to help bring about social, political, and economic change that would result in the workers taking control of production and replacing the profit motive with a creative impulse in their work. 1*^1 The Living Theatre's obsession with the anarchist revolution and its use of theatre as merely a means of achieving it was expressed by Beck when he made the statement; "We have moved into the position now of where we are more concerned with being directly a part of the political activity of our time than we are being a part of the theatrical activi^v •'•'^^Ibid. , p. 338. •^^•'"Shank, Alternative Theatre, p. 29. 151 of our time." The productions created in Brazil and Pittsburgh set aside The Living Theatre's preoccupation with performance of self. The perfor- mers were more frequently called upon to personify abstract ideas and symbols (i.e.. Death, the State, Money, War, Love, Time, etc.) as they had first done in Frankenstein, rather than to develop characterizations or to play self. The method used to create the movement for these productions was adapted from Meyerhold's biomechanic exercises; however, the difficulty of finding material on the exercises forced the company to "accept images of what we thought the exercises were like. individual images that we have put into practice." And it is these 143 Despite using bio-mechanics. The Living Theatre has made a conscious attempt not to develop a technique of acting because it would be "alien to the concept of anarchy with its implicit abolishment of established system." The Becks believed that the greatest theatre is life as it should be lived (in a non-violent anarchist society), and that life in the perfect state destroys the need for theatre. If theatre and life can be united, the revolution will have been accomplished. In Six Public Acts to Transmute Violence into Concord; Tampering with the Master/Slave System; Ceremonies and Processions: Changing Pittsburgh; Prologue to "The Legacy of Cain" (1975), The Living Theatre stressed the integration of the theatre (performance) with life. 142 The means chosen to accomplish / Paul Ryder Ryan, "Money Tower," The Drama Review 18 (June 1974):9. 143 Ibid., p. 17. 1--^ Ibid. 152 this integration was the emphasis on real time and place. Real time rather than theatrical time was stressed by having a Time Shaman announce the actual time every fifteen seconds throughout the play. Instead of using theatrical scenery, the play took place in various locations around the city. In addition, the spectators had to walk from place to place to make them aware of real space and real time. The collective development of the Cain cycle in Pittsburgh had taken a new form. The Living Theatre, having grown from eighteen in Brazil to over thirty in Pittsburgh, found the collective discussions time-consuming; creating The Money Tower (1975) required over five hundred discussions and four years. The collaborative creative process that developed in Pittsburgh allowed everyone in the group to give opinions and ideas; the collective would discuss the ideas offered and then divide into cells to develop certain themes. When the cell had developed a form for the theme, it would be brought to the collective and further discussed and, if good enough, improvised on. was finally created. Thus, The Money Tower Beck described the process in an interview with Paul Ryder Ryan; One of the themes we went to work on, Judith and myself, was The Money Tower. We decided that we thought we could find a way to amalgamate in a single scenario the various ideas about money relating to how money functions in terms of this tower. We sketched out the basic scenario and then we met with the collective, which made a number of suggestions, important suggestions for changes. After The Living Theatre's decision to produce the concept, the collective again divided up into cells, with each cell given a specific responsibility. One cell (headed by Pierre Biner) was responsible for 144 Ibid., p. 13. 153 biomechanical research and choreography, another cell was responsible for the setting (lead by its designer and engineer Stephen Ben Israel), while other cells were assigned the responsibility of developing different ways of demonstrating how money functions, a cell for each level. The Living Theatre also sent a cell to tape record and videotape interviews with workers of the city as other cells were researching and studying the political history of the steel town. As they had for the previous ten years, the Becks made a conscious effort in Pittsburgh to stay in the background and allow the collective to assume the duties of director. As in the past, however, the Becks were the ones who ultimately had to shape and focus the production. Beck had always taken copious notes during the collective discussions. In 1974, he had filled over thirty-eight notebooks with notes on the Cain cycle, some of the notebooks exceeding five hundred pages in length. After collective discussions, he would go over the notes and mark them with colored pencils, different colors representing major themes discussed. The Becks also kept large card files which were divided according to the themes of Domination, Submission, Authority, Property, Money, Violence, Death, and Revolutionary Change. On these cards are statements that everyone in the collective has been able to agree on. These statements form the core of text material. Since going to Brazil in 1970, The Living Theatre had experienced another major transitory period. The collective had tried to become a model for a non-violent anarchist society. They transformed their own lives and were trying to extend that change to the world, no longer 145^. ., ._ Ibid., p. 17. 154 become a model for a non-violent anarchist society. They transformed their own lives and were trying to extend that change to the world. No longer were they confronting the audience as in Paradise Now; they were soliciting, on a cooperative basis, the potential spectator's involvement in the collective creative process. They became concerned with the education of the workers and .based their productions on the problems and dreams of the working class. In Brazil and Pittsburgh, the company had formed cells to research, develop, and implement food co-ops, day care centers, and free schools. of theatre. stand for." Their lives became for them the purest form Beck stated: "Our presence is our message, we are what we 146 They had given up performing in theatres and had taken to the street; plays were given in prison when they were prisoners and to the workers who were their neighbors. Their audiences were invited, after the performances, to a greenroom in the street to share food, drink, and ideas. Although the Becks were still shaping the production, the form, process, and direction of the plays were collective. Italy; Prometheus; Returning to Theatres Upon their return to Europe, The Living Theatre began intensive work on Prometheus, which was intended for performance in theatres. The process of the collective creation of Prometheus was similar to the one used to develop Frankenstein. The collective first decided to do a play based on Greek mythology and then began to discuss the subject and theme of the play. After deciding that the production would deal with "the 1 Z.6 Shank, Alternative Theatre, p. 30, 155 ways in which humans have been bound—physically, spiritually, and cul147 turally," the logical mythical character was Prometheus. After re- searching the Prometheus legend, Greek mythology, and various psychos logical images, it was. decided by the collective that each member would choose a character from mythology or an historical figure that could relate to a myth. For example. Beck chose Zeus because of his interest in overcoming the pyramidal power structure which crushes those on bottom. [Imke] Bucholz chose to play Metis because of her concern with the suppression of female knowledge and the imprisonment of women.1^8 The structure of the play was then developed around the roles chosen by the actors. "The Becks had an idea (Act Two) of translating Promethean myth into historical myth, and they searched for analogous characters associated with the Russian Revolution." 149 Each actor was responsible for researching and finding his own character. "Zeus be- came Lenin, Prometheus became imprisoned Alexander Berkman, Metis became an anarchist prisoner and feminist." 150 The Living Theatre, because it was again using theatres, reverted to forms not used since the sixties. Theatrical settings were used to create fictional places, theatrical time superceded real time, and confrontation with the audience in the form of shouting and demonstrable speech was reminiscent of Paradise Now. The actors became concerned with character, mythical and historical. Pictures of the production reveal Beck looking remarkably like Lenin, costumed and wearing makeup. ^^^Ibid., p. 31. IZQ ^^^Ibid. In Act I, nudity accompanied an ^"^^Ibid., p. 34, 130^^. _, Ibid. 156 actor/audience confrontation. In the second act, described as "epic realism," actors performed a scene from Mayakovsky's Moscow Is Burning using biomechanical movement. In Act III, the members of the company were themselves and talked to the spectators as performers. Audience participation was an important aspect of Prometheus; The Living Theatre even innovated a new technique for audience involvement. In Act II, volunteers from the audience were asked to come to the stage and play Bolsheviks, anarchists, pacifists, terrorists, prisoners, actors, Red Guards, infantrymen, etc. Members of The Living Theatre would then rehearse the volunteers, and, when they were ready, the spectator/actors would be inserted into the action of the play. "At one point, everyone in the audience is involved as they are asked to perform emblematic gestures." The performance ended with actors and spectators performing a vigil, a five-minute meditation, outside the theatre for all prisoners. Were a chronicler of the avant-garde theatre movement to choose a group which embodied the whole of the movement. The Living Theatre would be the obvious choice. The Becks started The Living Theatre at the beginning of the movement in their living room in an attempt to revitalize poetic language and form, and they have continued to function for the past thirty-two years as a viable experimental theatre group. Although from the beginning The Living Theatre has remained constant in its anarchistic/pacifistic principles, and although it has attempted to live the life it advocated for others, the Becks have constantly Ibid., p. 32. 157 changed their theatre in an attempt to reach the people with their revolutionary message. As they searched for the most effective means to present their beliefs, The Living Theatre ran the gamut of avant-garde innovations. Working under the notion that jolting the audience was the most effective means of forcing the spectator to confront the problems of society. The Living Theatre hoped to create a spiritual change within the spectator so that he could ultimately effect a revolutionary change in society. Because of this belief, they were one of the first groups to investigate the unique possibilities of the alteration of the actor/ audience relationship and the differences between actor/performer/ character. Because they believed that the audience would have to be- come aware of life as it is, the company retreated further and further from fiction and moved closer and closer to actuality. Performers, presenting self in the context of real time and place, aggressively confronted the audience in the hope that they would break down the spectator's inhibitions. The performers used actual improvisations and exercises as part of their performance and invited audience participation; this allowed both actor and audience to break out of their traditional places and mingle in a common space. The audience became a vital participant in The Living Theatre's performances, from the "group grope" of Paradise Now to Antigone's thematic involvement of the spectator to Prometheus' use of audience as actors. Actors would often play several roles and remain onstage in view of the audience during the entire play, emphasizing their roles as performers rather than 158 characters. This was emphasized by having the actors actually exper- ience what was being enacted (state of being acting rather than enactment acting). The performers also functioned as priests and group therapists with the objective of unifying performer with spectator and spectator with spectator. The Living Theatre has experimented with every technique and means it could invent or adopt to make possible a theatre capable of motivating its audience to social action. Yoga and meditation were used to prepare actors for the physical, mental, and creative rigors of performance and to liberate the actors' minds. to free their bodies. Nudity was used Performers used both their bodies and voices expressionistically to create inanimate objects and sounds. Actors personified abstract ideas and symbols in their later productions. Non-linear action and language collage were used in Frankenstein and other plays. Chance and indeterminancy were explored in Marrying Maiden and later productions. Improvisation was used in performance and as a tool to develop performance material. Productions such as Frankenstein were created from non-dramatic sources. Long periods of silence and confrontation were used to goad the audience to a reaction. Experimentation with fiction and reality was used with The Connection and other plays. Audience participation occurred before and after pro- ductions since Brazil. communication. Language was de-emphasized in favor of physical Collective creation has been used to develop every production since The Brig. Their obsession with political and social upheaval has been the source for almost all of The Living Theatre's theatrical innovations. 159 Since leaving the United States in 196., The Living Theatre has found it difficult to remain in any place for more than a few months because of their radical lifestyle. But it is that radical lifestyle that has made it possible for The Living Theatre to pioneer in every facet of the avant-garde theatre movement. CHAPTER IV CONCLUSION The 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s witnessed an explosion of creative activity in the theatre. Alternative theatre groups sprang up and began to experiment, breaking the bounds and conventions of traditional theatre. The theatre's great creative periods have manifested themselves in flashes. According to Richard Schechner in The End of Humanism, the Golden Age of Greek tragedy (Aeschylus to Euripides) lasted only sixtyseven years (472-405 B.C.); the Elizabethan-Jacobean period, starting with Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine and ending with William Rowley's The Changeling, lasted just thirty-five years (1587-1622 A.D.); and the alternative theatre movement, from Black Mountain College's John CageMerce Cunningham performance to the demise of Richard Foreman's offBroadway theatre, was a brief twenty-seven years (1952-1979 A.D.). The Living Theatre was at the vanguard of experimentation during the entire twenty-seven years of the latter period. By their own admission, the greatest influences on the Becks and The Living Theatre have been Vsevolod Meyerhold, Piscator, Artaud, Brecht, and Cage. There was also a reciprocal influence with some of their Richard Schechner, The End of Humanism; Writings on Performance (New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1982), p. 21. 160 161 contemporaries—particularly Joseph Chaikin of the Open Theatre and Jerzy Grotowski and his Polish Laboratory Theatre.^ The Living Theatre had a great impact on theatre groups which came into being during the stormy 1960s and 1970s. "No group was better known or more influential in the late 1960s than the Living Theatre.""^ The techniques initiated and adapted by The Living Theatre "became formulated in theatrical modes of the sixties and seventies. It can be said that Malina and Beck explored more of these modes than any other company." 4 Virtually all of their productions after leaving the United States in 1964 could be considered political theatre because they dealt (at least symbolically) with social, economic, and political problems. Free Theatre, which had no structure, borrowed the concepts of John Cage's Happenings. The company, after realizing that the audience that they wanted to reach would not be in conventional theatres, decided that Street Theatre would be the most effective means of getting the message to the people. Guerilla Theatre was employed where performances, unless approved by the State, were 2 Joseph Chaikin began the Open Theatre as a Living Theatre workshop to deal with non-realistic acting. Grotowski's Polish Laboratory Theatre and The Living Theatre were the outstanding groups to perform at the Theatre des Nations Festival in Paris in 1961. It was at the festival that the Becks met Grotowski; several years later. The Living Theatre visited Grotowski at his studio in Wroclaw where they attended a rehearsal. Oscar G. Brockett, History of a Theatre, 4th ed. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1982) p. 701. ^Theodore Shank, American Alternative Theatre (New York: Press, Inc., 1982), p. 36. Grove 162 illegal (e.g., Brazil). Multiple focus and integration of performers and spectators in the same space became known as Environmental Theatre. The United States has had a negligible impact on European theatre with the exceptions of musical theatre and group theatre. The groups that came into existence in the early sixties were stimulated not by European but American ensembles. Arthur Sainer observed, "No European ensemble had any influence on the American theatre in those years [The first half of the 1960s]." 5 The Living Theatre, having made itself known in the 1950s with its productions of Tonight We Improvise, Many Loves, and The Connection, gave the impetus for the emergence of European groups with their appearance at the Theatre des Nations and subsequent tours in 1961 and 1962. According to Sainer, The Living Theatre, an American export self-exiled to London and the Continent had an enormous impact on the European theatre and, like the Polish Laboratory Theatre, was responsible for the pro- ^ liferation of European ensembles in the second half of the decade. Some of the companies that made use of The Living Theatre's techniques or used The Living .Theatre as their model are listed by Theodore Shank in American Alternative Theatre; These included in France Orbe-Recherche theatrale. Theatre du chene noir, Treteau libre; in England, C.A.S.T., Red Ladder Theatre, The Freehold, T.O.C.; in the United States the Firehouse Theatre, The Company Theatre, Alive and Trucking. The Living Theatre's impact on the traditional theatre is more Arthur Sainer, The Radical Theatre Notebook (New York; Books, 1975), p. 38. Ibid., p. 40. Shank, Alternative Theatre, p. 37. Avon 163 difficult to determine. The Becks never proposed to reform the New York stage, but they did want to give an alternative to an entity they considered to be cheap and artificial. However, just as ultra-high fashion is too extreme for the general public—yet elements of those fashions find their way into accepted style—The Living Theatre's radical productions were unacceptable to the majority of the New York theatre-going public, but elements of their approach became accepted as conventional theatre. Andre Serban has integrated audience and action into a common space. Performance of self became not only accep- table but popular with A Chorus Line. Nudity, downgrading of language in favor of Artaudian techniques, athleticism in performance, multiple roles, and fragmented focus are no longer uncommon. Directors have ventured into improvisation as a means to develop form, allowing actors to participate in what were previously considered the director's duties. The Living Theatre's greatest concern has been social, economic, and political change. The radical techniques and modes, the selection and creation of their plays were for one purpose; to change the spectator so that he could change the system. goal. Anarchy was and is their The Becks have used theatre as a political tool to effect a revolution. a failure. Therefore, in the Becks' own terms. The Living Theatre is During the political activism of the 1960s, The Living Theatre was heralded as heroic by the radical left. "For a time the disaffected almost everywhere echoed its [The Living Theatre's] attig tudes and practices." But times changed. ^Brockett, History of the Theatre, p. 761. 164 The commitments of the counter-culture in the sixties dissolved in youthful opportunism in the seventies, as the pacifism of the sixties transformed into disillusionment or in some instances violence in the early seventies and indifference at the end of the decade.^ The Becks and The Living Theatre remained constant in their convictions despite poverty, ridicule, deportation, imprisonment, and a nomadic life. But their convictions, passion, and tireless efforts have not been enough to change the world. The "Wooden Horse" has never been allowed within the walls; the barricades still exist. g Shank, Alternative Theatre, p. 37, A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BOOKS CONSULTED Abel, Lionel. Metatheatre; A New View of Dramatic Form. Hill and Wang, 1963^. New York; Artaud, Antonin. The Theatre and Its Double. Translated by Mary Caroline Richards. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1958. Beck, Julian. The Life of the Theatre; The Relation of the Artist to the Struggle of the People. San Franr-i .cr-n- r-i^-y r^gv.^-. n^^,.^ 1972. ^ "^ ' Biner, Pierre. The Living Theatre. New York; Horizon Press, 1972. Brockett, Oscar G., and Findlay, Robert R. Century of Innovation; A History of European and American Theatre and Drama Since 1870. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1973. Brockett, Oscar G. History of the Theatre. Bacon, Inc., 1982. Brown, Kenneth H. The Brig. New York: 8th ed. Boston; Allyn and Hill and Wang, 1963. Brustein, Robert. The Culture Watch: Essays on Theatre and Society 1964-1974. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975. • Seasons of Discontent. New York: Cohn, Ruby. New American Dramatists: Press, Inc., 1982. Simon and Schuster, 1965. 1960-1980. New York: Grove Coigney, Martha Wadsworth; Ravel, Judith; Leabo, Karl eds. Theatre 2: The American Theatre, 1968-69. New York; International Theatre Institute, 1970. Card, Robert E.; Balch, Marston; and Tempkin, Pauline B. Theatre in America; Appraisal and Challenge. Madison, Wis.: Dembar Educational Services, Inc., 1968. Gilman, Richard. Common and Uncommon Masks; Writings on the Theatre 1961-1970. New York: Random House, 1971. Gottfried, Martin. A Theatre Divided: The Postwar American Stage. Boston; Little, Brown and Company, 1967. 165 166 Hewitt, Bernard. 1959. Theatre USA: 1668 to 1957. New York: McGraw-Hill Houghton, Norris. The Exploding Stage; An Introduction to Twentieth Century Drama. New York: Dell Publishing Company, Inc., 1971. Innes, Christopher. Holy Theatre: Ritual and the Avant Garde. York: Cambridge University Press, 1981. New Lahr, John and Price, Jonathan. Life-Show; How to See Theatre in Life and Life in Theatre. New York: Viking Press, 1973. Little, Stuart W. Off-Broadway; The Prophetic Theatre. Publishing Company, Inc., 1972. Malina, Judith. The Enormous Despair. Malina, Judith and Beck, Julian. House, 1971. New York: Paradise Now. New York; Random House, 1972. New York: Random Mazzotta, Gabriele, ed. The Living Book of the Living Theatre. wich, Conn.; New York Graphic Society Ltd., 1971. Neff, Renfreu. The Living Theatre; Company, Inc., 1972. USA. New York: Pasoli, Robert. A Book on the Open Theatre. Merrill Company, Inc., 1970. Dell Green- The Bobbs-Merrill New York: The Bobbs- Poggi, John Emil. Theatre in America: The Impact of Economic Forces 1870-1967. Ithaca, N.Y.; Cornell University Press, 1968. Price, Julia S. The Off-Broadway Theatre. Inc., 1962. Rostagno, Aldo. We, The Living Theatre. Inc., 1970. Sainer, Arthur. 1975. New York: New York: The Radical Theatre Notebook. Schechner, Richard. Inc., 1973. Environmental Theatre. Scarecrow Press, Ballantine Books, New York: New York; Hawthorn Books, The End of Humanism; Writings on Performance. Performance Arts Journal Publications, 1982. Shank, Theodore. American Alternative Theatre. Inc., 1982. Avon Books, New York: New York; Grove Press, 167 Sontag, Susan. Styles of Radical Will. Giroux, 1969. New York; Farrar, Straus and Smith, Michael Townsend. Theatre Trip. Company, Inc., 1969. New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Spritz, Kenneth. Theatrical Evolution; The Hudson River Museum, 1976. 1776-1967. Taylor, Karen Malpede. People's Theatre in Amerika. Book Specialists/Publishers, 1972. Yonkers, N.Y.: New York: Drama Vos, Nelvin. The Great Pendulum of Becoming. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1980. A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ARTICLES CONSULTED Atkinson, Brooks. "Theatre; Tonight We Improvise." New York Times. 7 November 1959, p. 277 "^ Beck, Julian. "How to Close a Theatre." 1964);180-190. Tulane Drama Review 8 (Spring " • "Thoughts on Theatre from Jail." New York Times, 21 February 1965, sec. II, p. 3. ' Beck, Julian and Malina, Judith. "Turning the Earth; A Ceremony for Spring Planting in Five Ritual Acts." The Drama Review 19 (September 1975):93, 94. Brecht, Stephan. "Revolution at the Brooklyn Academy of Music." Drama Review 13 (Spring 1969);47-73. Calta, Louis. "Connection Offered in Premiere Here." 16 July 1959, p. 30. Clurman, Harold. "Theater." New York Times, Nation 207 (28 October 1968): Glover, William.. "The Living Theatre." 63, 64, 74, 75. The 445, 446. Theatre Arts 36 (December 1961): Gottlieb, Saul. "The Living Theatre Abroad; Voice, 14 October 1964, p. 37. Frankenstein." Village . "The Living Theatre in Exile; Mysteries, Frankenstein." Tulane Drama Review 10 (Summer 1966):137-152. Hatch, R. "Where There is Total Involvement." 106-109. Horizon 4 (March 1962): Hewes, Henry. "Miracle on Fourteenth Street." September 1959): p. 27. Saturday Review (26 Hoffman, Theodore. "Who Killed What Theatre?" (Fall 1969);11-14. Tulane Drama Review 14 Kerr, Walter. "You Will Not Be Lonely." sec. 2, pp. 1, 14. 168 New York Times, 6 October 1968, 169 Kott, Jan. "The Icon and the Absurd." 17-24. Kroll, Jack. "The Living." The Drama Review 14 (Fall 1969): Newsweek (28 October 1968): pp. 134, 135. Lester, Elenore. "The Final Decline and Total Collapse of the American Avant-Garde." Esquire (May 1969): pp. 142-151. Living Theatre Collective. "Paradise Now: (Spring 1969):90-107. Notes." The Drama Review 13 McDermott, Patrick. "Portrait of an Actor Watching; Antiphonal Feedback to The Living Theatre." The Drama Review 13 (Spring 1969): 74-83. Malina, Judith. "Italy; Psychiatric Hospital Performances." Review 22 (June 1978);93-96. The Drama • "Last Performance at The Living Theatre Invective." Review 33 (August-September 1964):49-51. Evergreen Malina, Judith and Beck, Julian interviewed by Schechner, Richard. "Containment is the Enemy." The Drama Review 13 (Spring 1969); 24-44. Malina, Judith and Brown, Kenneth interviewdd by Schechner, Richard. "Interviews with Judith Malina and Kenneth Brown." Tulane Drama Review 8 (Spring 1964):207-219. Mee, Charles L. , Jr. "The Becks' Living Theatre." 7 (Winter 1962):194-205. "Epitaph for The Living Theatre." (Spring 1964);220, 221. Tulane Drama Review Tulane Drama Review 8 Phelps, Lyon. "Brecht's Antigone at The Living Theatre." Review 12 (Fall 1967):125-131/ Ryan, Paul Ryder. "The Living Theatre in Brazil." (Summer 1971);21-24. "The Living Theatre's Money Tower." (June, 1974);9-19. The Drama The Drama Review 15 The Drama Review 18 Schechner, Richard, ed. "The Living Theatre and Larger Issues." Drama Review 8 (Spring 1964);191-206. Tulane . "Speculation on Radicalism, Sexuality and Revolution." The Drama Review 13 (Summer 1969);89-110. . "Who Killed Cock Robin." "ll-14. Tulane Drama Review 8 (Spring 196^) 170 Scheff, Aimee. 96. "The Living Theatre." Theatre Arts 36 (February 1952): Silber, Irwin. "To: Julian Beck, Judith Malina and The Living Theatre From: Irwin Silber." The Drama Review 13 (Spring 1969): 86-89. Tynan, Kenneth. "Off-Broadway: October 1959): 126-129. Drug on the Market." New Yorker (10 Vincentini Claudio. "The Living Theatre's Six Public Acts." Review 19 (September 1975); 80-93. The Drama APPENDIX A THE "SKELETON KEY" FOR FRANKENSTEIN or The Frankenstein Poem THE ACTION ACT I A meditation the purpose of which is to lead to levitation If it succeeds the play is consummated It [sic] it fails it becomes a victimizator The net is thrown, the coffin is brought Someone says No A Procession begins Others say No They are hunted, they are electrocuted, they are gassed, they are guillotined, they are racked, they are hanged, they are garrotted, they are beheaded, they are crucified, they are shot They plead for their lives Two survive A storm rises Dr. Frankenstein takes the heart of The Victim The Dead Shall be Raised Burial by Church and State They lower the Hanged Man The Body is painted The Workers scream The Old and the Poor come with snow and hammer How can we end human suffering The Capitalist speaks The Marxists march The Oracle prophesies The Body reversed The Generals, the Capitalist, the Marxists, the Workers, and the explanatory Voice speak of Automation The laboratory is constructed The Cabbalists build the Golem The Doctor implants the Victim's heart in the Body on the laboratory table Foot brain and eye are grafted The failure of the heart 171 172 Paracelsus appears and directs the graft of the third eye Freud appears and orders the sexual graft Norbert Wiener appears and advises the use of electrodes The electrodes are attached The Creature moves THE ACTION ACT II Inside the Creature's Head He Opens his eye He sees light He functions He experiences Miracles and Wonders as his capacities rouse He sleeps He dreams of the sea Shipwreck Drowning The brine bubbles up He wakes The control Booth instructs him Educational input He learns of the world He translates into the mythological theatre of prototype Daedalus discovers how to fly Icarus is launched Europa is raped Pasiphae seduces the bull The Minotaur is born The maze is made The Young Men are sacrificed Theseus kills the Minotaur Icarus falls He is instructed in the qualities The Control Booth illustrates He translates into the legend of the enlightenment Instruction persists The sail persists The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are riding The Functions of the Head slash the Ego out into the world The Body Vanishes The Word is born The Creature narrates his story The Earth People flee The Creature encounters Death The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are riding The Functions slash each other out into the world The Police The Siren The Killing He takes over authority Authorities take over 173 THE ACTION ACT III The Posse is searching They say Yes The Prisoners are fingerprinted, dressed and photographed World Action Arrests World Action The Whistle Blows World Action They move from cell to cell World Action The Doctor is arrested World Action A note is passed World Action The Prisoners eat A knife is passed World Action The Prisoners sleep The Jailbreak The Fire Alarm Death by Fire The Creature counts Man lives SOURCE: Renfreu Neff, The Living Theatre: USA (New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1972), pp. 62-65. The APPENDIX B LIVING THEATRE ACTION DECLARATION January, 1970 The structure is crumbling. All of the institutions are feeling the tremors. How do you respond to the emergencies? For the sake of mobility the Living Theatre is dividing into four cells. One cell is currently located in Paris and the center of its orientation is chiefly political. Another is located in Berlin and its orientation is environmental. A third is located in London and its orientation is cultural. A fourth is on its way to India and its orientation is spiritual. If the structure is to be transformed it has to be attacked from many sides. This is what we are seeking to do. In the world today there are many movements seeking to transform this structure—the Capitalist-Bureaucratic-Military-AuthoritarianPolice Complex—into its opposite; a Non-Violent-Communal-Organism. The structure will fall if it's pushed the right way. Our purpose is to lend our support to all the forces of liberation. But first we have to get out of the trap. Buildings called theatres are an architectural trap. The man in the street will never enter such a building. 1. 2. 3. Because he can't: The theatre buildings belong to those who can afford to get in; all buildings are property held by the Establishment by force of arms. Because the life he leads at work and out of work exhausts him. Because inside they speak in a code of things which are neither interesting to him nor in his interest. The Living Theatre doasn't want to perform for the privileged elite anymore because all privilege is violence to the underprivileged. Therefore the Living Theatre doesn't want to be an institution anymore. It is out front clear that all institutions are rigid and support the Establishment. After twenty years the structure of the Living Theatre had become institutionalized. All the institutions are crumbling. The Living Theatre had to crumble or change its form. How do you get out of the trap? 174 175 1. Liberate yourself as much as possible from dependence on the established economic system. It was not easy for the Living Theatre to divide its community, because the community was living and working together in love. Not dissension, but revolutionary needs have divided us. A small group can survive with cunning and daring. It is now for each cell to find means of surviving without becoming a consumer product. 2. Abandon the theatres. Create other circumstances for theatre for the man in the street. Create circumstances that will lead to Action, which is the highest form of theatre we know. Create Action. 3. Find new forms. Smash the art barrier. Art is confined in the jail of the Establishment's mentality. That's how art is made to function to serve the needs of the Upper Classes. If art can't be used to serve the needs of the people, get rid of it. We only need art if it can tell the truth so that it can become clear to everyone what has to be done and how to do it. SOURCE: Pierre Biner, The Living Theatre (New York; Horizon Press, 1972), pp. 225-227.