The world stage has lost a shining light and WRL has lost a dear friend. We mourn the death April 10 at the age of 88 of legendary pacifist actor-director Judith Malina, co-founder of the Living Theater. She was 88.
Judith and her husband, actor-director Julian Beck, founded the Living Theater in 1947. It soon became a world-renowned creator of theater of resistance, with increasingly experimental, improvisational, and participatory productions like Paradise Now, Eureka, and its passionate condemnation of capital punishment, Not in Our Name. Eventually, the company was provocative enough to earn the wrath of the federal government, which began a series of prosecutions that eventually drove the theater into exile for some years.
All that time, Judith was also an activist with WRL. She was arrested with Ralph DiGia and Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day in 1955, during the protests in City Hall Park against air raid drills (and shared a jail cell with Day). And she spoke - alongside Dan Berrigan - at one of our 90th anniversary events in 2013.
The loss of this peaceful anarchist will be felt around the world. We send our condolences to her children and to the Living Theater, along with our hopes that it will continue in her great spirit.
- Judith Mahoney Pasternak, 4/12/15
