The Living Theatre, who have returned to New York in a big way, have been all over the theatrenet lately.
In the NY TImes:
For two decades they performed avant-garde and activist classics and naturalistic quasi-happenings. Audience interaction was the point, and confrontations, nudity, onstage and offstage sex and frequent police intervention were as much the marks of a good show as an ovation.In the Village Voice:
The Brig is a play of consequence, both aesthetically and politically. Its 1963 production by the LT not only set off reverberations that rippled through the whole Off-Off movement, it led to questions in Congress, the theater's seizure by the IRS, jail terms for its founders, and the company's departure to Europe for a five-year exile.And on the blogs (Obscene Jester, The Playgoer).
They've also been hitting the YouTube pretty hard, with clips from their vaunted past ad well as their exciting present.
Wanna know why they've returned? Ask Judith and Hanon.
Would you like a clip of Judith and Julian in action in 1975? A trailer for the upcoming documentary? How bout a taste of The Brig? Clips from some workshops? Have you seen No Sir, the Living Theatre's response to military recruitment in Times Square? More from 1975?
And if you make it through all that, you can watch The Living Theatre run a workshop and rehearse Chicago at Roanoke College. (Wait for the 1:12 mark, when the reporter says to Jerry Goralnick, "You've mentioned things different than the norm. Are you a bunch of radicals traveling the country going to colleges?")
Comments (1)
I've been thinking a lot about the Living Theatre recently, specifically the performances of Paradise Now at the Avignon Festival in '68. I smile to myself to think that they have become the elder statesmen (and women) of American Theatre - what a difference 40 years will make.
Posted by Gabe Johnson | May 25, 2007 11:22 AM
Posted on May 25, 2007 11:22