URGENT CALL TO ACTION IN SUPPORT OF LIVING THEATER

[From Aaron Burr Society]:

Donate to the Living Theater

Please forward this message to others who can help.

The Living Theatre is currently in danger of losing their space in a dispute with their landlord.

The Living Theatre is the legendary radical theatrical group founded in 1947. The theater has experimented with different theatrical forms, but it was founded on the principles of a circular integration moving street protests > into the theater > back into the streets.

In 1970 the theater went to Brazil, where they were detained by the government. During the detention, Judith Malina's cell mate was disappeared. The theater company was released after an international campaign by artists, political and cultural figures, including Yoko Ono and John Lennon, Marlon Brando, and Jean Paul Sartre, as well as New York City's Mayor Lindsey.  In 2008, President Lula presented Judith the Ordem de Merito, the highest Brazilian cultural honor. The theater has recently participated in Dilma with the current Brazilian president Rousseff's efforts to locate the bodies of the torture victims from the former regime. The Living Theater efforts include helping to organize street performances, in solidarity with OWS, as part of a national campaign for the families of torture victims.

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT TO OCCUPY WALL STREET

The Threatre's history resonates with themes that are directly related to Occupy Wall Street. In April the Living Theatre offered OWS's art groups a residency. The residency involves Occupy art groups creating videos and live performances at the theater. We were working to develop the process when the the issue with the landlord surfaced. While we continue to work together in planning the collaboration, saving the theater is the key to moving forward.

There have been many interviews and articles about OWS, both internally and externally. However, the ability to develop and refine our collective voice on video and on stage would be powerful and has great potential. Once this process has been developed and refined, we will invite other non-artistic working groups to participate.

We realize that many cannot afford to contribute, but please forward this call for help to those who can.

Living Theatre history:

Founded in 1947 as an imaginative alternative to the commercial theater by Judith Malina, the German-born student of Erwin Piscator, and Julian Beck, an abstract expressionist painter of the New York School, The Living Theatre has staged nearly a hundred productions performed in eight languages in 28 countries on five continents – a unique body of work that has influenced theater the world over.

During the 1950′s and early 1960′s in New York, The Living Theatre pioneered the unconventional staging of poetic drama – the plays of American writers like Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Paul Goodman, Kenneth Rexroth and John Ashbery, as well as European writers rarely produced in America, including Cocteau, Lorca, Brecht and Pirandello. Best remembered among these productions, which marked the start of the Off-Broadway movement, were Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights, Tonight We Improvise, Many Loves, The Connection and The Brig.

for more information go to  http://www.livingtheatre.org/