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Approaching The Flame
I have no courage
Let me “go forth†as a coward
Scared to death in my heart
As I approach the flame,
While my brave feet
Carry me forward
And I am glad to serve
The best and not the worst in me.
—Judith Malina
At Judith's burial, her son Garrick said now it is not about death but it is about disbursement. Now, Judith is all of our courage...to serve our best selves and to create the best world we can imagine together, following her brave little footsteps, carrying each other forward.
—Brad Burgess
Below are excerpts from Judith's obituaries.
To read the full length articles, please click on the photos.
We are planning a memorial event this coming fall. Details will be released soon.
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One of Malina’s last public appearances took place in December at the Bowery Poetry Club. She was in a wheelchair and breathing with the help of an oxygen tank as she read a poem about Eric Garner, the African-American man from Staten Island who died in a police choke hold last summer. Malina’s reading was followed by chants of “I can’t breathe.†—Jon Kalish
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Judith liked to boast that she’d been arrested for civil disobedience in 12 different countries. (The Living performed all over the world, and from the beginning—before ‘diversity’ became a buzzword—the company was international, multiracial, radically queer.) She made no apology for insisting on “the beautiful nonviolent anarchist revolution†nor for the seeming simplicity of slogans the Living sometimes declaimed from the stage and on the streets: Stop the Wars. Open the Jails. Abolish Money. Scorn her as a “utopian,†and Judith would shrug her narrow shoulders, shoot you a wry smile and ask: “What else could I be?†—Alisa Solomon
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[T]he ink devoted to Malina’s death is ample evidence that she will remain a formidable presence in the Living Theatre as long as it survives — and in theater around the world, as long as it survives. —Judith Mahoney Pasternak
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Being in her presence was a hint of the “beautiful, nonviolent anarchist revolution†Judith spoke of so often—a world of commonality, yet deeply individually driven; a world of shared yet distinctive visions and bold, uncompromising actions; of intellectual rigor; plus a great deal of laughter. —Karen Malpede
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Judith Malina was intensely committed to her vision of a better world, an avant-garde combatant who used words and gestures, a thespian agitator for the causes in which she believed. Although theater was her stage, she led her actors as a tribal family into a world of inequality and injustice where she was often ignored in the silences of the age or rebuffed by authority. I don’t believe I’ve ever met anyone so determined to make her voice heard, and I’ve rarely come that close to anyone quite so passionate, so brimming with the desire to cause change and affect consciousness. —John Tytell
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Ms. Malina was tireless and passionate in advancing the idea that theater can be, and should be, a blunt force for cultural change. She and Mr. Beck, an Expressionist painter as a young man who became renowned as a set designer, considered themselves anarchists and pacifists, and their productions were statements as much as performances. —Bruce Weber
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Malina never lost her spirit. She regarded the turmoil as part of her daily effort to move toward B.N.V.A.R. — "beautiful nonviolent anarchist revolution.†—Robert Simonson
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Living Theatre lives on in those Malina touched. The Living Theatre did not die on April 10 with the passing of Judith Malina, the Living’s founder and guiding genius, say her friends and colleagues who shared their memories of her with The Villager last week. —Albert Amateau
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Malina insists she’s doing her best work and is adamant about working in New York. “I’m in the theater because I’m a revolutionary,†she said. “I want to make the beautiful anarchist non-violent revolution and I think this is where, if anywhere, it’s going to happen. We’ll keep going. If we have no place, we’ll do street theater. We can always work on the street and pass the hat.†—Jon Kalish
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“Judith exemplified the philosophy we have of productive, creative aging,†Seligson observed. “Just because you might need assistance, that doesn’t mean you stop being who you are.†Ms. Malina, who had been writing poetry and working on a play about life at the Actors Home, was involved in her craft until the very end. —Jay Levin
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Judith's unwavering commitment to nonviolence, to a utopian possibility, to a deep anarchist perspective, to stay connected to younger generations, to scream with unrelenting love and belief in human possibility, to say we must end the cycle of vengeance and violence, has deeply informed my life as father, husband, friend and artist. —Baba Israel
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Had Judith Malina never existed, the 1960s would surely have had to invent her. Yet it was Malina, a diminutive, German-born, American theater provocateur of immense boldness, recklessness, commitment and courage, who actually helped crystallize our notions of 1960s aesthetic and political radicalism through the Living Theatre, the company she founded with husband Julian Beck in 1948. —Charles McNulty
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Lola Pashalinski, who was a founding member of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company, recalled seeing Malina’s performance in “Paradise Now.†“She was screaming at the audience, and she was stark naked, and it took my breath away,†Pashalinski recalled. “I was so happy to see someone of that age do that.†—Rebecca Mead
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