Personifying the 1960s countercultural challenge to traditionalism, self-proclaimed anarchist and pacifist Judith Malina once likened herself to a biblical prophet, railing at but never dissociating herself from her people. Founder, with Julian Beck, of the experimental Living Theatre, she aimed at dissolving the separation between actor and character, cast and audience, art and politics.

Born on June 4, 1926, in Kiel, Germany, to Rabbi Max Malina and Rosel Zamora, a retired Polish-Jewish actress, Judith immigrated to New York with her parents in 1928. At age seven she appeared at an anti-Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden and shortly after wrote her first poem, for Manhattan’s Central Synagogue. By 1938, she was helping her father send pamphlets to Germany, asking, “Do You Know What Has Happened to Your Jewish Neighbors?” She was naturalized in 1944. Throughout her life, the influence of her family’s cultural and religious beliefs continued. Often her diary records the Jewish holidays on which activities took place.

Dropping out of high school when her father died in 1940, Malina met and began her association with Beck, held various unskilled jobs, and studied acting and directing with Irwin Piscator at the New School for Social Research, debuting as an actress in August 1945. In April of 1948, she and Beck, to whom she was married from October 30, 1948, until his death in 1985, incorporated the Living Theatre, which eventually produced more than seventy-five plays. Their son, Garrick Maxwell, later an actor, was born on February 17, 1949. Her daughter, Isha [sic] (from Genesis “and she shall be called woman”), who later acted with the Living, was born on July 19, 1967. Among her critically acclaimed presentations at the Cherry Hill Theater were Pirandello’s Tonight We Improvise, Gertrude Stein’s Dr. Faustus Lights the Lights, and the premiere of William Carlos Williams’s Many Loves.

Expelled by the Cherry Hill management, the Living Theatre eventually settled in its own Fourteenth Street loft. Malina translated Antonin Artaud’s iconoclastic The Theater and Its Double and continued developing avant-garde theatrical approaches with Beck, presenting Jack Gelber’s The Connection (1959) and Kenneth Brown’s The Brig (1963). Touring Europe, Malina directed the company’s collective creations, The Mysteries and Frankenstein, and in France, influenced by the Free Speech Movement, helped create Paradise Now (1965). Leaving France after its performances were disrupted by hecklers, the company toured the United States throughout 1968. Self-exiled again in early 1969, Malina celebrated a seder aboard ship en route to Europe. In 1971, the company performed street theater in Brazil until jailed and expelled as incendiary. The company then settled in France until 1983, when it returned to America.

For her work, Malina received the Lola d’Annunzio award (1959); Page One Award (1960); Obie Award (1960, 1964, 1969, 1975, 1987, 1989); Creative Arts Citation, Brandeis University (1961); Grand Prix du Théâtre des Nations (1961); Paris Critics Circle medallion (1961); Prix de L’Université de Paris (1961); New England Theater Conference Award (1962); Olympio Prize (1967); and a Guggenheim fellowship (1985).

Besides teaching at New York University and Columbia University, Malina appeared on the Molly Goldberg series and in such movies as Enemies: A Love Story, Dog Day Afternoon, and The Addams Family. Archivist for the Living Theatre, New York State writer-in-residence, publisher of diaries, translations, essays, and cofounder of Akashic Records, which preserves sacred texts, Malina also wrote poetry throughout her career. In 1982 she issued Poems of a Wandering Jewess, adapted as a jazz cycle by Steve Lacey (recorded in 1995).

An antiwar activist since the 1950s, she belonged to Women Strike for Peace, the General Strike for Peace, the U.S. Committee for Latin American Political Prisoners, American Friends of Brazil, the War Resisters’ League, and the Industrial Workers of the World. Influenced by Dorothy Dix and Martin Buber, she rejected the Bible as “barbarous” but found compassion in the siddur; in 1984, the New York Humanist church named her Humanist of the Year.

In 1988, she married Hanon Resnikov, a long-time writer-director in the Living Theatre.

A central figure among the radical New York intelligentsia of the 1960s, Malina opposed American Jewry’s hostility toward unity between Palestinian Arabs and Israelis, arguing that all God’s creations have to work in concert with Him. In her poetry, Malina powerfully exploits religious imagery as cultural reminiscence and explication of current actions. Best known for using mime, improvisation, and audience participation in the Living’s performances, she has continued to encourage innovative new playwrights. In 2004 Malina and her late husband Julian Beck were inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame. That same year, they played themselves (through archival footage of Beck) in the documentary Resist!: To Be with the Living, a profile of Malina, Beck and the Living Theatre they created.

SELECTED WORKS BY JUDITH MALINA