Judith Malina (born
June 4,
1926) is an
American theater and
film actor,
writer, and
director, who is one of the founders and leaders of
The Living Theatre.
Biography
Early life
Malina was born in
Kiel,
Germany, the daughter of an aspiring actress mother and a
rabbi father.
[select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10B17F7345B14728FDDAA0994D8415B888AF1D3] In 1929, she moved with her parents to
New York City, where, except for long tours, she has lived ever since. Interested in acting from an early age, she began attending the
New School for Social Research in 1945 to study theatre under
Erwin Piscator. Malina was greatly influenced by Piscator's philosophy of theatre, which was based on
Bertolt Brecht's principles of "
epic theatre" but went further than Brecht in departing from traditional narrative forms, and which saw theatre as a form of political communication or
agitprop—though Malina, unlike Piscator, was committed to
nonviolence and
anarchism.
