The Living Theatre

03/17/2025

For all online engagement with The Living Theatre, please visit www.livingtheatre.org or subscribe to The Diarist on Substack.

02/20/2025

Please join us in remembering Tom Walker, vestry member at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery, archivist of The Living Theatre for 50 years.

From a career of thousands of performances in dozens of productions around the world, we will watch Tom’s last performance in Rosetta, which took place in Seoul, South Korea. Rosetta is about a late 19th century Christian Missionary female doctor who saved thousands of lives and helped to transform the Korean Peninsula.

March 2nd 2025 at 2pm
St. Marks Church in the Bowery
131 East 10th Street, New York NY 10003

07/29/2024

A message from Garrick Beck:

"We’ve lost another of the longtime Living Theatre greats. Maybe not lost. Maybe gained now the shared memories of the modest and magnificent Mary Mary. Beautiful, profound, graceful, and kind. The absolute coolest of the cool. Measured and wild all at once. One of the great Living Theatre people ever. Paradise, Frankenstein, Mysteries, Antigone, The Money Tower, Prometheus. An awesome performer in each of these. The ‘endless’ 20-year tour. The street theatre. The arrests in Brazil. More performances and rehearsals and adventures than any of us can keep track of. Wise and dryly humorous, straightforward and mysterious. None like her. What a gift her memory gives us."

(Photo by Ira Cohen)

07/24/2024

On this day in 1968, Paradise Now premiered at Festival d'Avignon.It was after this premiere that the company was (in)famously prevented from performing the play again as scheduled, and The Living Theatre issued an eleven point declaration to announce their decision to leave the Festival a few days later.

Pictured is a spread on Paradise Now from London magazine "IT" #35 (July 12-25, 1968), including the Paradise Now "Map" as drawn by Jm and JB, printed in primary colors.

The cast of Paradise Now at Festival d'Avignon included: Jim Anderson, Pamela Badyk, Carl Barber, Julian Beck, Carol Berger, Mel Clay, Rufus Collins, Pierre Devis, Echnaton, Carl Einhorn, Gene Gordon, Roy Harris, Jenny Hecht, Franck Hogeboom, Henry Howard, Steven Ben Israel, Sandy Linden, Birgit Knabe, Judith Malina, Michèle Mareck, Mary Mary, Gianfranco Mantegna, Gunter Pannewitz, Dorothy Shari, William Shari, Luke Theodore, Steve Thompson, Jim Tiroff, Diana Van Tosh, Petra Vogt and Souzka Zeller

06/28/2024

We’re proud to support the South African tour of ‘Pieces of Me’ by Bo Peterson! As friends and fans, we’re excited to see Bo’s powerful exploration of “love and silence under apartheid” reach new audiences. This deeply personal one-woman show, accompanied by Christopher Petersen and directed by Royston Stoffels, embodies the transformative power of theater we champion.

Support independent artists and vital storytelling!

06/27/2024

06/24/2024

"When I found out about my father’s hidden life, his secret, nearly 40 years ago, my life changed..." Bo Petersen

Now, on The Diarist, read all about Bo Petersen's solo performance piece "Pieces of Me" and its current South African premiere. The version of “Pieces of Me" that will be showcased in South Africa will be directed by actor/musician/director Royston Stoffels, with musical contributions from Bo’s cousin, Christopher Petersen, co-founder of The Jazz Yard Academy in Bonteheuwel

The Living Theatre is proud to support "Pieces of Me," an autobiographical one woman show written and performed by Bo Pederson

06/04/2024

Happy birthday Judith Malina! 🎉🎁
Judith Malina was born on June 4th, 1926 - 98 years ago today!

To celebrate, we're revisiting portraits from the digital collection of Living Theatre materials held at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale (linked in comments)

This picture was taken in Pittsburg, PA either before or following a performance of "Turning the Earth" (part of the Legacy of Cain cycle) on May 25th 1975.

Birthday poster design by Emma Sue Harris

06/01/2024

ON THIS DAY in 1983, The Archeology of Sleep (Julian Beck's last realized play) opened in Nantes.

In 1983, Judith and Julian moved The Living Theatre to Nantes, France where Julian wrote “The Archaeology of Sleep”. The group performed the play and organized a Museum of Sleep with local artists in June. Unfortunately, Julian developed cancer while in Nantes and the group disbanded.
In remission in the fall and performing in Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Cotton Club”, Julian was able to reunite the company for a month’s run in January 1984 in New York. The repertoire was “Antigone”, “Masse Mensch”, “The Yellow Methuselah”, and “The Archaeology of Sleep”. Julian’s cancer returned and the company disbanded again. Julian lived for another year, dying in September 1985.

03/25/2024

On the full moon in March, we left the greenhouse and thought about our weekend of sitting in the house in Queens with Tom’s stuff, sitting in the house.

Judith Malina (always the diarist) (as was Tom) wrote down a sentence about what she was doing at ‼️every‼️ full moon from 1964-2014. “Full Moon Stages” is a collection of all of Judith’s full moon entries, published by Three Rooms Press Publishers

03/12/2024

The loss of our beloved archivist and friend Tom Walker has reinforced our vigor for keeping track. The loss of Tom’s unrecorded memories has moved us to collect memories involving Tom and The Living Theatre.

Have a memory of Tom Walker? Click the link below to access the thread and add to our Archive of Collective Memory by commenting on our latest thread on The Diarist.

This is an attempt to digitally document The Living Theatre’s Archive of Collective Memory. The loss of our beloved archivist and friend Tom Wal…