A page turns. One of the great pioneering American counter-cultural icons, Judith Malina (co-founder with her late husband Julian Beck) of the groundbreaking revolutionary theatre troupe, The Living Theatre died this past Friday, (at the Lillian Booth Actors Home in Englewood, New Jersey, where she had been living, in assisted living, these past few years). She died following complications from lung disease. She was eighty-eight.
Her obituary by Bruce Weber in The New York Times may be read here
An appreciation en francais may be read – here
and in italanio – here and here
Internationally respected and revered, without a doubt, many more appreciations will follow.
Here’s a two-part interview (from 2008) with Gerald Thomas – here and here
Here‘s a 2010 interview with Harold Channer
and interviews with Paulo Eno – here – and with John Bredin (from 2012) – here
Here‘s Malina with her legendary partner Julian Beck discussing two of their most famous productions – “The Connection” and “The Brig”.
For The Allen Ginsberg Project note on Julian Beck see here.
Not only profoundly important as an actor and director (and activist above all else), Malina gained significant profile in later years as a bit-player in commercial films, a movie-star! This obit headline wasn’t probably one she expected, but “such is the nature of “fame””!
The occasion of the publication of her Piscator Notebook in 2012 was gloriously celebrated by the New School in New York and the whole occasion (well worth watching – including, among other things a riveting reading by Malina) can be seen here
We should also note the singularly engrossing Diaries 1947-1957 (from 1983, published by Grove Press)
Here’s Judith Malina at the Poetry Project in 2012
and here‘s Judith Malina from the previous year:
I’m so honored. No words, really. I’m writing an entire book on my experience with Julian since I was the last (and only) director to stage him in a theater piece outside of the Living Theater. It has now been forty years since I staged “That Time”, the last piece in the “Beckett Trilogy”, at La MaMa ETC Annex. The other two, “Theater 1 and II had Fred Neumann and George Bartenieff in them but the REAL and ETERNAL experience was the one I had with Julian and Judith (and, to a certain extent with Hanon). I buried the three. If at all possible, I would love to gain access to Allen’s footage of Julian’s burial. He had his big, huge camera there. I think it must have been the very first of a kind. I don’t know how to thank you. My career took off on a huge scale in Brazil, just like Julian predicted.
see also https://allenginsberg.org/2025/04/t-a-10-2/