The Diaries of Judith Malina,
1958–1971 (Excerpt)
Edited by Kate Bredeson
Activist, director, actor, and poet Judith Malina (1926–2015), co-founder
and director with Julian Beck of The Living Theatre, meticulously detailed
her every day in diaries that she kept from her childhood until her final
月. Born in Kiel, 德国, Malina immigrated to the U.S. with her family in
1929, and her earliest diaries record her impressions of growing up in New York—a
life of school, errands, 博物馆, and plays. Since the start of The Living Theatre
在 1947, her diaries are a crucial primary source for documenting her life and that
of the company, as well as cataloguing her sharp observations of culture, 艺术, 和
政治. Throughout her adult life, her writing attests to her increasing commit-
ment to pacifism and nonviolence. A prolific writer, she left behind hundreds of
thousands of diary entries, most of which remain unpublished, despite her desire
to make them all available to readers. Malina published two collections of her dia-
里斯: The Enormous Despair (1972) on the theatre’s 1968-69 tour, and The Diaries of
Judith Malina 1947–1957 (1984); these books are illuminating for theatre histori-
答案, artists, and anyone interested in anarchist politics and counterculture, 和
way theatre can be a tool for political work. My book, The Diaries of Judith Malina,
1958–1971 publishes for the first time her diaries from these seismic years in the
company’s history, much of which was spent in self-exile, first in Europe and then
in Brazil, and is part of my larger project to edit and publish her lifetime diaries.
The following excerpts from 1961 和 1966 outline the bustle in advance of The
Living Theatre’s first European tour, early travel highlights, and their visits to the
Berliner Ensemble—experiences which left great impressions on Malina and her
company. Following the successful New York runs of William Carlos Williams’s
Many Loves—which opened the 14th Street Theatre in 1959, Jack Gelber’s The Con-
nection, and Bertolt Brecht’s In the Jungle of Cities, the company received many invi-
tations to perform abroad. Malina’s diary highlights the leadup to their sailing to
欧洲, money troubles that would plague them for the company’s entire history,
and their consideration of the relationship between their desire for independence
© 2022 Kate Bredeson
PAJ 131 (2022), PP. 3–27. ■ 3
https://doi.org/10.1162/pajj_a_00606 3
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Judith Malina with diary in Brazil, 1971. 照片: Juvenal Pereira.
4 ■ PAJ 131
and their need for support. She narrates her experience visiting the Kennedy White
House in search of funding, reading Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish on the ship to Eu-
绳索, and her spiritual observations. 的确, her diary is full of references to God,
the goddess, and the influences of Martin Buber and Dorothy Day. She makes a fre-
quent practice of writing annually on Kol Nidre, Yom Kippur, and Rosh Hashanah,
and uses these occasions to contemplate the larger divine world and her place in
它. Malina’s passion for poetry is equally on display; she references Walt Whitman,
“wept for Sappho” as she approaches Lesbos, and mourns for her dead love Jim
Agee. Throughout the diary, Malina connects her thorough knowledge of art and
politics to the many places she travels. With each new city, she studies language
phrases and learns about history. In Rome, she laments not speaking more Italian.
In Paris, against the backdrop of the Algerian War, she hears of poor treatment
of Algerians. In the section published here, Malina and The Living Theatre visit
England, 法国, 意大利, Serbia, 希腊, and Germany, which at the time was split
into East and West, as Malina notes that the company first visited “Only six weeks
before the wall went up.”
In addition to providing details about her company’s professional and interper-
sonal endeavors, these passages highlight Malina’s reflexive contemplation of her
diary-keeping practice; she was an obsessive diarist who wrote regularly about the
practice of keeping a diary. On May 29, 1961, she asks: “Shall I keep a publishable
journal? Why should anyone care?” She highlights her feeling of being split be-
tween dueling impulses to record:
Yesterday, I made a note, afraid to begin a journal, not sure of my motive.
Wanting to keep two journals, a journal of the heart and spirit, and a jour-
nal of the mind and the world. A journal of work and a journal of the soul.
A few lines later, she reports feeling split between wanting to write about the sea
and feeling obligated to record “theatrical events” in her diary. This tension would
follow her throughout her diary-keeping life, during which she alternated between
recording practices, sometimes composing detailed chronicles of people, 地方,
and events, and other times writing in a poetic, lyrical, non-narrative style that
illustrated her feelings.
Malina’s spirituality, her love of Paris (“O Paris, 巴黎, 巴黎. / O my real world.”),
and the troubles her theatre faced living and working together, are evident in the
following passages. Her writing emphasizes the nomadic nature that would define
The Living Theatre’s existence in the 1960s; a feeling of whirlwind and exhaustion
is clear in her reports. She often writes quick entries while traveling, sometimes with
handwriting upset by the motion of trains or cars, while at other times she lingers
in rich descriptions. She has a flair for writing extended retrospective passages full
of minutiae and contemplation, such as her reminiscences about her teacher Erwin
Piscator in August 1968, or her reports of performance exercises she and the theatre
BrEdEson / The Diaries of Judith Malina, 1958–1971 (Excerpt) ■ 5
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staged in Brazil in 1970. 这 1961 和 1966 passages published here include her
lengthy account of The Living Theatre’s first visit to the Berliner Ensemble, 和
Malina’s meeting with Helene Weigel, whom she quite admired (“‘Shut up, shut
up’ she said, grinning.”) The company’s return to the Berliner Ensemble in 1966 在
their next European tour concludes this selection and features Malina’s thoughts
on Piscator—about whom she writes in her diaries often, and her examination of
Weigel and company’s technique and effect. Throughout, Malina grapples with the
internal workings of her own company and her larger spiritual place in the world.
Paired, the Berlin diary entries from 1961 和 1966 demonstrate her commitment
to study and growth in her own practice; the great influence of Piscator, Weigel, 和
Brecht on her own work; and her reflections on class and politics that underscore
everything she does.
My hope is that the publication of Malina’s lifetime diaries will expand the avail-
able information about her own history and that of the company, nourish inter-
est in the relationship between activism and art (in terms of both successes and
failures), and expand contemporary thinking about the practice of diary-keeping.
Judith Malina’s diaries open up new understandings for her and her life’s work and
are an invitation to her readers to consider our own record-keeping and personal
archives, 到, as she wrote in April 1967, “write everything down / To show how
beautiful it is.”
■
行进 9, 1961
The European plans pile up, the engagements in various great cities are fantastic,
too fantastic to believe. 巴黎, 罗马, 阿姆斯特丹, Naples, Turin, Glasgow; no mat-
ter how hard we work, the sum of $40,000 seems beyond my human comprehen- 锡安. Not only do we not have any of it as yet, but we are in constant trouble with our creditors; there is a chart in our lobby of a ship crossing the Atlantic on a graph of a thousand dollars an inch, and a big theatrical trunk under it with a slot for contributions. It yields an occasional twelve cents to a dollar. We are chasing foundations, 慈善家, and planning two social benefit parties. 四月 6, 1961 Night train to The White House to see Pierre Salinger, the presidential aid. 国际米兰- view was arranged for us by Josephine Van Gasteren, Dutch actress and journalist, who came to interview me for her newspaper, Der Telegraph, became enthused about what The Living Theatre was doing, and showed me her interview with Salinger in which she had already suggested The Living Theatre as a better “calling-card” for America than the State Department sponsored tour. Last week we went to The State Department, mostly at the urging of the various foundations, 朋友们, and philanthropists that Julian has approached for the 6 ■ PAJ 131 l 从http下载 : / / 直接的 . 米特 . e d u p a / j j / 拉蒂斯 – df / / 4 4 2 ( 1 3 1 ) / 3 2 0 2 0 9 4 0 p a / / j j _ a _ 0 0 6 0 6 压力 . 来宾来访 0 8 九月 2 0 2 3 40,000 dollars needed. 但有, a Mr. Heath Bowman, the kind of well-spoken kindly evasive man one would expect at The State Department assured us that Con- gress could hardly appropriate taxpayers’ monies for “these plays.” He pointed out that even The Skin of Our Teeth was causing consternation, much less Brecht and a play about drug addiction. Congressman Lindsay came with us to The State Department, and he brought with him a representative from Senator Javits’ office. Lindsay the liberal Republi- can champions us handsomely. He speaks bravely though politely of opposing the conservatives of Congress. No one will be moved, but Lindsay acts like a movie- congressman. Suddenly we have friends from all over. We even went to the House to hear Lindsay’s speech, but it never got on the agenda and we witnessed the undignified machinations of quarrelsome old men. All this began with Howard Taubman’s eloquent appeal for funds for us in The Times in which he spoke of “our country’s prestige” and “cultural ambassadors.” Since then we are deluged by a world we never made. And while our politics are at variance with this whole structure, the theatre’s world continues, and makes its own road. We do not envision state aid, but its morality is kin to the big Foun- dations. Dorothy Day refused $20,000 from the Ford Foundation to the Catholic
Worker. But we solicit help from any source. We are not altogether untroubled by
这, and this final trip to The White House arouses many and varied feelings.
Josephine Van Gasteren phoned Salinger from our office and set up an appoint-
蒙特. We thought perhaps it would not take place because of the political crisis
in Laos, but The White House schedule is unperturbed. Preparations were being
制成, photographers and SS men readied for Prime Minister MacMillan’s second
interview with President Kennedy. The Laotian crises and the complication of the
recognition of Red China still left time for The Living Theatre’s tour.
Salinger, like his office, is informal. We described, briefly, our situation. He skimmed
over Taubman’s article, asked if we had been to The State Department to see
先生. Coomes. We mentioned Bowman, and he winced “there’s a name out of the past.”
He meant, I think, the past administration, Bowman dating from Eisenhower’s
政权, whereas Coomes is a new-frontier man. He picked up his multi-buttoned
phone and asked for the USIA, 我们. information service, which is the governmental
catch-all for cultural activities. Don’t know whom he spoke to, but he suggested
that The Living Theatre’s problem be “re-evaluated.” Putting the phone down he
说, “That’s not very much money, but you know USIA has hardly any budget.”
Tass called, interrupting our conversation to find out who else was in MacMillan’s
派对. “Lord Hume and several lesser luminaries.” There seemed no need for lengthy
explanations, he seemed so fully to grasp the situation; whether this is genuine in-
terest or merely the statesmanship of a reputedly brilliant man, who plays Bach, 和
has a gold Javanese dancer’s mask on a shelf above his desk, that remains to be seen.
BrEdEson / The Diaries of Judith Malina, 1958–1971 (Excerpt) ■ 7
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He jotted down the theatre’s phone number, and promised to call us as soon as he
had any information.
So we are to be re-evaluated!
Salinger is impressive. He listens intensely, informally; because of my political prej-
udices I tend to be suspicious, but he seemed for all the world warm and personal
and responsive. I liked him, immediately and respectfully.
We were well-received; we will await word. The new administration is anxious to
请, but we are dubious material. It would be interesting to know how we are
evaluated?
可能 29, 1961. On the High Seas
Shall I go up and look at the sea?
They say the sun is shining and the weather is glorious. When I go up, I will enjoy
它. But there is a dark joy in this calm, its cradle motion, and having just read at
random in Ginsberg’s Kaddish. Not literary thoughts, but a fine gloom that soothes
and dulls.
Shall I keep a publishable journal? Shall I write: “我认为: what shall we bring them
在欧洲. What newfangled dreams can I lay at the altar of my Homeland? 什么
can we carry back to them who are my forebears in the old country?”
The Steward knocked. Person from Porlock. I put out my cigarette, adjusted my hair
and the incense.
“Sleeping?” he says.
“不. Working.”
(Shall I keep a publishable journal? Why should anyone care?)
“I make your bed later, ok?
“Ok, later.”
I snapped the lock aggressively.
Ghan, Ghan, Ghan
Is the Vision of Kubla Khan
Yesterday, I made a note, afraid to begin a journal, not sure of my motive. Wanting
to keep two journals, a journal of the heart and spirit, and a journal of the mind
and the world. A journal of work and a journal of the soul.
I have lost the ground I stood on.
I am at sea.
And He divided the waters.
Do I mean, really mean, that I divide my world in half?
I should go up on deck and look at the sea, but I love the soft gloom of the cabin.
I made a note on the sea, but I hesitated to write it down because I felt obliged to
keep a journal of theatrical events.
8 ■ PAJ 131
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The hell with it. All is One, even if I can’t believe it. It’s still One, whether I believe
it or not.
Outside on deck the mark of His Glory is unmistakable in black and white. 这
white foam and the singing blackness. We would stay out all night but the cold rain
drives us indoors. The cabins are like beneficent prison cells that shelter us when
the Outside drives us out. We avoid His Face, but His Hand rocks us to sleep as in a
cradle, His touch touches us and makes us ill with fright, or joyous with awe.
The Voyage suffices without thought of the goal.
In The North Atlantic I recognize His Face, which is everywhere, but hidden by the
aversion of our gaze. On The North Atlantic I feel His Hand which is on my always,
but I shine Him off my consciousness with the small vain things. Not Here Where the
Ocean is. The special prayer which our hard, ocean-stern faith prescribes is simple:
Blessed Art Thou, O Lord, our God,
Who has made the Great Sea.
The ship was once The Europa, a German ship that was a piece of war booty, 关于-
modeled by the French. A taxi driver told me this first.
Night on deck. Heavy fog. We are moving north. Europa, crossing the sea to the
Old World. The bull in the water and I am on her back, swept back. The ancient
jackals still gnaw.
六月 2, 1961. Plymouth Harbor
Loveliest land ever seen.
O venerable dream of the Real World that is England.
六月 5, 1961. Between Paris and Turin
Night train from Paris to Italy. Almost dawn.
Paris come and gone like an image just passed in a kaleidoscope. Though we will
soon return—never again for the first time.
Paris is to love.
In St. Germain des Prés, along the venerable street with the venerable church, A
small hotel, the St. 乔治, from the window a corner of The Deux Magots, 和
house where, it is pointed out to us, Sartre lives.
The Church bells wake me early (the name begun by Childebent, son of Clovis in
558, the tower dates from the twelfth century).
Breakfast at the Deux Magots. Everyone looks pretty and bohemian; the girls are
enchantingly beautiful. The men tacky but young. Everyone is young. They sit at
the tables all day long and look young. People feel themselves part of the décor.
But no one is well dressed.
BrEdEson / The Diaries of Judith Malina, 1958–1971 (Excerpt) ■ 9
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When yesterday we walked up the Champs-Elysées no one was well-dressed, 尽管
it was Sunday and the crowds were crowded and festive. Glad I did not see that side
of Paris till I thoroughly loved St. Germain des Prés, for its gaud and wealth are in
far better taste than in New York, and it has a beauty unknown in my loved and
stupid city, but it is in the guise of pride and commerce, and not free and breathing
like the beautiful crumbling gentler streets of the left bank.
We walked the first night in a “rausch” of romance. Along the Seine, past legend
after legend.
And we skimming in the three days we had, as much as we could.
Briefly, 圣母, the Louvre, the streets themselves, the Madeleine, ETC… 这
streets are the best spectacle.
Though the gendarmes carry naked submachine guns, a sudden shock to see that
coming at you.
But oh how kind they are when answering questions. And they speak softly like
朋友们.
Our friends tell us they are not so gentle to Algerians.
We meet our friends from the London Connection. They are all here living within
two blocks from us, all around the Place St. Germain des Prés.
Life in Paris. Everyone hustles. Goodrow hustles me out of 100 francs. No score.
Life on a night train, nearing the border.
Claude Plançon, the director of Théâtre des Nations, is attractive, 杰出的, worldly,
unworldly, 人类, shrewd, humane. His concern is for the world’s suffering. 他的
work to alleviate it. His medium, the One Theatre. His is a lover of the underdog,
of intellectuals, of negroes, 人的, of the ladies, of fine food. But he has spent
cumulatively six years in prison, in five different countries.
We talk of our practical problems: all seems to be well-controlled. He handles
things in his office with the kind of vigorous impatience that Julian shows. 但
when he leaves his office and takes us to luncheon, he is like a man without prob-
莱姆斯, smiling, uncomplaining and interested.
He is entertaining the Filipino dancers who just then arrive from their distant coun-
尝试. We all speak in English.
Through the insanities of Paris traffic we go to a small restaurant overlooking the
Seine. I drive with Plançon in his car, the others take a taxi. He drives like a maniac.
I answer his questions about the American attitude toward Cuba, the new admin-
istration, etcetera… He listens with great care.
At the restaurant we talk over the finest food, truffles, and crêpes Suzette, of preju-
dice and hatred and racism. In the Philippines, there is no race prejudice, they tell
我们. They heard of it for the first time when the American liberation army came with
their white-negro soldiers segregated.
10 ■ PAJ 131
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六月 10, 1961. 罗马
The Splendor of the World Unfolds
六月 15, 1961. Train from Rome to Turin
The company arrived in high spirits. Jimmy stayed in New York an extra week, 但
the programs he stayed to work on were not finished. Peter stayed a week to be with
Nina in childbirth. Carl Lee and Jim Anderson drove from Paris; they arrived late
leaving Shirley Clarke, who is now Carl’s scandalous mistress, to make public her
affections by her display of agitation.
The company are in good spirits, with one horrible fault: they have come to openly
hate one another. Most of them do not speak to one another. Sharing rooms, ta-
布莱斯, train seats are all a problem in anger.
I quarrel only with Jimmy.
Jamil and Marilyn, both filled with unnecessary worries, ally themselves with
Martin Sheen and Janet, looking with longing on the others’ innocence, Sala is ev-
eryone’s scapegoat. Her exuberance offends them. Murray is the scapegoat of Lee’s
wrath, and Skip, though kind-hearted, imitates her.
No one appreciates John Coe, and no one appreciates the fine qualities of Joe
Chaikin, except for me.
Cynthia glows, she expands in Rome’s dreamworld. She has her own friends and
exuberates in the Roman life.
George Miller has Roget.
Peter is glum, smiles only talking of Jeremy.
Rudd Lowry is a pain in the neck, but everyone complains and still likes him.
The musicians were grim till Shirley cheered them up.
I like her now.
One thing that unites everyone in the company is their love for Rome. 每个人
adores Rome. They see her, talk of her, explore her, revel in her.
Julian is too vehement against Rome.
I know Rome, immediately and instinctually, and I know Rome is in fact,
“The World.”
This grandeur is a pile of shit.
But the jewel is in the lotus.
Ivan, an Italian Communist, befriends us, shows us the side streets of Rome, 和
talks to us with vigor and fervor, and remarkably little hostility about the truth of
the communist views. He is amazingly candid and direct. The only thing he cannot
believe is that we understand him and still do not approve. He feels it must be that
we don’t get the message. Americans must rebel, 他说. We agree.
Well why don’t you? (Incredulously)
Then he explains that he doesn’t mean us, The Living Theatre, we’re rebelling
足够的, he means the American people. I try to explain that the American people
BrEdEson / The Diaries of Judith Malina, 1958–1971 (Excerpt) ■ 11
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are conservative, 那是, they are afraid things will get worse than they are, 或者那个
they will lose their prosperity.
“You have prosperity?” (再次, incredulously). These actors work for forty-five dol-
lars a week.
That’s because they’re rebelling against commercial theatre which pays better.
We walked through Rome and the Villa Borghese till dawn. And then we went back
to the Hotel and smoked.
The Connection opened at the Parioli with great success. Many Loves followed and
was also well received.
The difficulties were in setting up the technical aspects in time. The Language
Barrier. Everywhere The Language Barrier. Wittgenstein says: “The Limits of My
Language means the Limits of my world.” Tractatus Logico—Philosophicus.
Proverbial rudeness of Roman audiences.
We had been received with much interest. A pompous press conference took place
the day after our arrival in Rome. Lobby of The Plaza Hotel, forty journalists in a
wide circle. Julian and I on medieval chairs under the pseudo-Fragonard ceiling.
The leading critic asked to share the throne with us.
Gerardo Guerrieri, our host, importer and friend, makes a speech in Italian,
followed by a long speech by my long-lost teacher of the “March of Drama” at
Piscator’s.
Paolo Milano, who greeted us first with “forgive me for boring you with these long
lectures.”
Everyone waiting for The Play to begin, but Julian (my guest) and I listening like
sponges. Greedy to know a bit more about Calderon, or The Restoration, or The
Commedia dell’Arte.
Now meeting again on his ground, we hear him speak again, in Italian, this time
about us.
The journalists ask the usual questions; everything takes four times longer with
翻译. Language barrier. We regret not having at least a little, un poco l’Italian.
Flash bulbs.
We stay at a pretty Parioli hotel, Hotel Delle Muse, on Tommaso Salvini Street—
not far from Eleanor Duse Street—in residential pretty Rome. No ruins, no monu-
评论. A svelte movie theatre. Westerns in the afternoon. Connection at night.
The Guerrieris, Anne and Gerardo, who invented and manage The Teatro Club,
treated us marvelously. I even had a quarrel with Gerardo in our first private en-
counter over the staging of The Connection in Europe. Treating it as a conventional
玩, it could be played as taking place in New York only. But the Here and Now is
hard to understand theatrically.
Anne went to The Workshop for a short time and is somehow a New York girl.
They had received some of the gentle discussion about The Living Theatre that the
conservatives are administering. But they arranged nonetheless for full and even
12 ■ PAJ 131
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enthusiastic press coverage and social receptions. At one of them the American
Cultural Attaché was present, but not host, he “could” greet us only informally.
A posh party with di Chirico in caricature given by Mme. Bordoni, wealthy patron
of Teatro Club.
They showed us Rome first, driving us around on the night of our arrival, to the Fo-
rum and the Trevi Fountain for our wish, spending time with us explaining Rome.
And their Maria-Teresa leant me a veil for the papal audience.
The plays adapted easily to the new stage. Many Loves, under-rehearsed, drops the
whole climax to the Clara monologue. John Coe cut a cue. It could have been I. Big-
gest theatre I have worked in since school days. Smaller house for Many Loves than
for The Connection. No simultaneous translation for Many Loves. 起初, I fought
this device, but it helps attendance.
六月 17, 1961. Belgrade
Rome—the grandeur of death
Paris—the joy of life
Venice—the Lagoon of Pleasures (the pleasure city)
West Berlin—Jazzy Hope Accelerated
East Berlin—Suffering Hope deferred
Belgrade—Gray dawn—Emptiness. Nothing.
Turin to Milan.
The great Piccolo Theatre. In Red Plush. Again great success.
Many Loves, 也, is well received in Milan. Terrible tiredness from parties given for us.
We go to Paris through the Alps. Eating lunch in the gorge between crags, we watch
the sunlit peaks go by.
In Paris the real openings take place. From the provinces to the capital.
O Paris, 巴黎, 巴黎.
O my real world.
Tonight, in one hour, my Paris debut. Most important moment. This is the heart of
the real world. Here where the soul is, of which we are all provinces, where the mas-
ters stood, I stand. Where the great one were. Copeau, who dreamed it up. Jouvet’s
dressing room. Its last occupant was Suzanne Flon, George told me.
Nervous for the opening. Heat. No air. The house overcrowded. Excitement. 荒野
reception. Endless curtain calls. They dragged me backstage but fortunately late
after protests. A real hit. The actors excited as at a New York opening. The press not
all for us, but those against—stuffy Gautier of Figaro—object only on puritanical
grounds to the subject.
At the “University of Théâtre des Nations,” a class from twenty-seven countries, 我们
are more praised than questioned. These youngsters are bright-eyed and serious
BrEdEson / The Diaries of Judith Malina, 1958–1971 (Excerpt) ■ 13
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and energetic, and fun. They remind me of the old days at Piscator’s, when we were
the ones to ask. Now we answer like old hands.
Rehearsing and attending to The Press leaves us no license to return to the Louvre
or to see Notre Dame.
The Vieux Colombier is of such excellent proportions, and in its air such quantities
of inspiration from the master who worked there that rehearsing becomes a plea-
sure again.
Many Loves goes well. I am especially liked and my joy is complete.
We walked up to Montmartre on the opening day. It was hot. Hot too at night in
the theatre. But they sweated through it, and in the heat of their heat we knew they
loved us as we loved them.
Sacha Pitöeff, tall bearded and handsome, the son of the great Pitöeffs, came to
congratulate us.
All went well save The Jungle rehearsals which were deferred for one technical prob-
lem after another. Teiji’s tape was late arriving (though Claude Plançon’s beautiful
black mistress, Matlida the Haitian Voodoo priestess, prayed for them in on time).
The score for tape needed lots of rehearsing. No lights in time, more time to erect
the set than we had expected. All things conspired against us.
I had threatened not to let the play go on if it was not run through once, after weeks
of not playing it. I needed the work for my own role of Mary, which I had only
played four times, and those most imperfectly.
But when the time came and the play was not rehearsed, I wanted to present it,
for all its flaws, half-improvised if need be, with lights when there were lights, 和
darkness where it fell.
But this play that we had dragged across the ocean at terrible expense, to be played
only one time, but that time to prove to Europe that Americans can do Brecht. 到
prove that we can play in what is thought to be “a stylized” form.
Everyone agreed not to play, when my heart sank. No matter what I said before I
wanted, with terrible passion, to put the play on. I pleaded with Julian who bitterly
consented, though very much against his better judgment. The company rebelled.
Lee said if we played, she would go through with the show and then leave The Liv-
ing Theatre. Everyone was against me. Since I barely know my lines, I had the most
to lose if it was a shamble. I prevailed on some, and then called for Claude Plançon
who had to do the rest. I was in makeup and costume at curtain time, but Julian
had not put on his complicated Chinese makeup, and others were not costumed.
I stood in the passageway to intercept Plançon, it was after curtain time. From him,
my plea had authority. He made a speech, a clever speech to the audience, urging
them to wait. The heat was intense but they waited with us.
14 ■ PAJ 131
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The play went beautifully. If the lights and music were wrong it was miraculously
arranged each time so that the play went smoothly. Nevertheless Lee left us; 她
stayed in Paris when we went on to Berlin. Jim saw her later in Venice.
The crisis was over. The Living Theatre a success in Paris. All the press praised us.
We went on to Berlin.
Leaving Yugoslavia, rain on the flat country. Green and wet and grim. A train
jammed with peasants. No seats. We take a wagon-lit and lie back while they go
在, in the next car leaning against the wet windows.
六月 18, 1961. 希腊 (Frontier of Idomeni)
Into the ancient land. Sharp hills with no vegetation, sparse grass and a few shrubs,
rocks and rocky earth. Excitement of approaching.
Not so when we approached Berlin. There was horror at the enemies’ land.
Denn so ein Feldzug
Das ist kein Schnellzug
Ist nur ein Bummelzug
Durch Feindesland.
[For such a campaign
Is not a fast train
Is just a slow train
Across enemy’s land.]
The intensifying heat. The lack of food, growing hunger and discomfort on the
火车. Just as we crossed the border a German lady gave me an apple. We were with
Jim Anderson.
“This is like jail.” I said. “Have you ever done time?”
“When you first saw me, I had just finished six of a ten-year stretch.”
We talked of prison in the hot gloom.
In Belgium the houses were narrow and huddled together even when there was
room.
And into East Berlin. A fat German shares our couchette. He is violently anti-
共产. He rails at the division of Berlin. He points out the landscape of the
east zone, “This was once the peasants’ land, and the peasant worked eighteen
hours a day and got every bit out of it that would grow. But the collectives took it
away from the peasants and now they are laborers and they let the land go to ruin.
That’s why there’s a food shortage.”
现在, through Thessaly the heat is intense too, and the anticipation of approaching
Berlin was like the descent into the Inferno. Intense heat. Everyone stripping down,
fanning themselves, drinking fruit juices and colas.
BrEdEson / The Diaries of Judith Malina, 1958–1971 (Excerpt) ■ 15
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六月 19, 1961. 希腊. Frontier of Idomeni
The drama of the landscape and the tragedy of the people.
We have stopped on a cool high mountainside. Unexplained. Not at a station.
Speculation.
Now approaching Athens.
While I speculate on the past the future rushes toward me.
六月 18-19, 1961. 雅典
The Vulgar City is just that. But from Jimmy’s balcony the lighted Acropolis is visible,
glittering crown of ancient glories. We will see tomorrow the distress of this metrop-
olis. The Balkan gloom, the proletarian gloom. A poor city, but neoned and new.
Oh yes, 柏林, that too was neoned and new. We expected hell, and found instead
a driving sadness, a city of pain and hope. There was a film festival on and coming
out of the station we met Gideon Bachman, as on a village street, and breakfasted
in his chic hotel, and saw from the terrace a park—which is the middle of the city,
and Kurfürstendamm, bright and lively, surrounded by trees.
We spoke to a few people. The obsession is The Division. The West Berliners live in
a state of terror of Communism.
We live in a pension run by a crazy Jew who feels too horribly the persecution
around him. He enquires about an American wife. He gives the Jewish members of
the troupe free towels. But when Cynthia unwittingly lies down on her bed a few
minutes after checkout time he sent in two uniformed policemen to remove her.
Everywhere I saw incidents of paranoia. It is “the humor” of these people.
The theatre, which is no theatre, is located in a modern experimental project, 这
Hansaviertel, a rebuilt section in which the various buildups were designed by all
the leading architects. The Akadamie der Künste is ultramodern, but its notion of a
theatre is highly impractical, it is a long ramp with the audience on two sides. 和
weeks of rehearsal, one might be able to make—
In the Parthenon.
Is this the flower of man’s mind?
七月 8, 1961. Paris to Frankfort
Thinking of leaving Venice, beside the Grand Canal. The waters are green. 天空
light blue.
Behind the Rialto
Before me Athens
七月 15, 1961. Orient Express
Slow train through Yugoslavia. We leave the mountains behind at Zagreb. 和
there is no room to sit. Our baggage and our awards stored in the passageway, 我们
sit in the dining car till Belgrade at eleven.
16 ■ PAJ 131
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In Turin where we played only The Connection, I felt external to the theatre; 当我
act, I am part of the proceedings. I envied the actors. The stage where Duse played.
There is a romantic head of Duse on a pedestal in the lobby. Helen Ray is in her
dressing room. We hang out in Joe Chaikin’s which was Salvini’s.
Perhaps July 23, 1961. Approaching Lesbos
Yesterday, Julian and I complained that we felt nothing. That the great monuments
and the ruins of the ancient glories and the splendid sights and the most exciting
adventures left us with an inexplicable emptiness which we had been trying to
hide. The adventure of the yawl “The Whit” (for Whitman) may never be told. 我, 为了
一, will never tell it.
But today, coming toward Lesbos, Mitilini, the deep tiredness, the depression, 这
seasickness, the sun blindness lifted.
The depression lifted and I wept. I wept long and alone in the cabin, I tried to write
and wept that I could not. I wept for all the dead poets. I wept for Jim Agee, WHO
could and dared not. I wept for the people of Pyrgi, happy with their donkeys.
I wept for Sappho, for Lester, for Julian, for the Turks, whose cruel land we see in
the distance, for our shipmates, who touch God with a light finger, for the ship,
and its handsome crew, for Pan dead and Jesus crucified, the Byzantine churches,
the songs of Homer.
We are putting in now, at a deserted beach of Mitilini, and I am again now fully alive.
七月 23, 1961. Copy of a letter. Off Lesbos. “The Whit”—on the Aegean.
Dearest Love,
The sea is dark, the hills gray, the sky chalk as we approach Mitilini, the Lesbos on
which Sappho sang.
I have come out onto the spray-washed deck, under the great undulating sail, mov-
ing away from the confining cabin where my thoughts were so sad that my tears
flowed freely, as you know too well they often do. I was not thinking of you.
But as soon as I came out into the wholesome air, under the hot Greek sun,
I thought of you, so strongly and so passionately that I am using this notebook,
intended for sad poems, to write to you and tell you of the pleasure beyond poetry
that is you.
This yawl, in which we crossed “the wine-dark sea,” is called The Whit for
Whitman, and in it we are approaching the Lesbos of Sappho, and I thought of
Sappho all night, and in her superiority, teacher of girls, singer of songs, lover of
poets (Alcaeus) and of sailors.
It was for love of a sailor that she leapt from one of those great cliffs into “the wine-
dark sea” (the phrase is Homer’s) because the sailor told her she was aging.
It is her love of girls that won her her vulgar reputation.
But it is her Hymn to Aphrodite and the fragments of her great verses that won her
deathlessness.
BrEdEson / The Diaries of Judith Malina, 1958–1971 (Excerpt) ■ 17
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And I thought of the dead poets, and I thought of Jim Agee, saying “I live for the
day that I can write a poem, but when I see the paper empty in front of me, I put
down the pen and tremble and get sick. It is too great a thing, too holy. Someday
I will dare.” And he died before he dared.
And I thought of Allen Ginsberg because his initials form the acrostic AG and of his
“Howl” and his Kaddish and his arteries of drugged pain and ecstasy, so far from
the metered exactness of Sappho’s famous “Sapphic line.”
And I thought of Whitman for whom this ship is named, the poet of unmetered
verse, who broke away from the bonds and limitations to write freely of his free
spirit and free love.
And I tried to write as I so often do, a poem of what I thought of and felt, 但是
verse was hard and unmoving, rhymed and ungiving.
And I cried for Jim Agee dead, and for Sappho’s island despoiled by the Turks,
raped by the Venetians, enslaved by the Franks, plundered by the Genoese; a his-
tory of massacres and wars, and nature cruel too with earthquakes, devastating as
the wars.
And I thought of Sappho banned from her island because of her political views and
I thought of all the banned and all the dead and all the unwritten poems.
Yesterday we visited Chios, Homer’s birthplace, and there a village, Pyrgi, 在哪里
they live as in the time of Jesus, in ancient clothes, on donkeys, with animals living
in their clay houses, and the women spinning not with spinning wheels, but with
spindles, by hand and nothing changed or changing. Just life going on. They stared
at us, as we at them—the outsiders in a village unused to outsiders. They had to
clear each street for our truck, of donkeys, chickens, 人们, as we came through
because there is not any traffic there, not even carts.
And I thought of life unchanging, that goes on with sweet, loving children, 和
young girls and boys, and suddenly, without a middle age, 古人, spinning
or blind, sitting in the sun, but still laughing.
And the sad dead poets.
And I wondered of life:
At your loveliness in the unchanging joyous life of the unquestioned and unques-
tioning pleasure, spinning time away like the life of the Pyrgi.
At the striving and struggling of the poets, all of us dead before we have done the
poems.
And both the man on the donkey, and the poets, plundered by the ravaging armies
of other men, and the earthquakes of which men die untried and unaccused.
18 ■ PAJ 131
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Yesterday I was seasick of the Aegean and I had no thought but of my own insides.
But today I am well. And I cried for the world I could not understand.
Julian said, “I understand nothing.” And the sea spray blots my words and my
vision even as I write.
We approach Lesbos, and the sea is not “wine-dark,” it is blue. And I prayed. 和
I write you with love,
Judith
七月 25, 1961. 雅典
The voyage was crammed with too much. And after all the sights and the travels
and the visits and the tour, and the cities, etcetera, there is nothing left with which
to feel. Back in Athens, there is a sense of repose in working on a press release and
being involved rather than a spectator.
Everything we have seen is extraordinary, but there is no context and no picture
现在. A kaleidoscope which will in time come together to have some meaning and
some consistent impression.
Reading Time Magazine today I am struck again with the terrible net in which the
unwilling war-makers are caught, and how they are tightening it around them-
自己. Like the little silverfish in Mitilini harbor. And I think that perhaps East
Berlin was the most potent of the experiences we had.
Especially the Berliner Ensemble.
Undated, 1961
“Simpler, Easier, Higher, Gayer”
“these are the words,” says Stanislavsky in his essay “The System and Methods of Cre-
ative Art,” “which ought to be inscribed on the front of every theatre.” And then he
balances this grand thought with the conclusion of this sentence—“the temple of art,
if theatres had been such temples. Only love of art and everything sublime and beau-
tiful that lives in the heart of every man, only that should be brought into a theatre
by everyone entering it, and poured out from every man as from a pail of pure water.”
Throughout these essays, which are certainly preachments on the art of communal
work as much as instructions on the art of the theatre, Stanislavsky asking for “Hap-
py laughter resounding in the studio,” at the same time ritualizes the work of the
actor, even the role of the spectator.
He asks for grandeur and nobility and worthiness of “our times” and of “our na-
的,” and it is his vision to advise this with unfaltering lovingkindness, patience,
and forbearance. He the devotee—all things are forgivable, but woe to him whose
faith in Art falters, or who gives way to indolence, or to vanity or ambition.
Here is surely a brave man, who can make us proud, as we were in our student days
when our teacher proved wise.
BrEdEson / The Diaries of Judith Malina, 1958–1971 (Excerpt) ■ 19
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In these hard-headed days such reiteration of “the joyous consciousness of the
creative artist,” “the feeling of joy and love of art,” “the passionate love apart in a
man’s heart” become a bitter pill. And to swallow so much “joy” when we know
too well the distressing pettiness existing in the day-to-day of every theatre we ever
worked in or ever heard of, including the Moscow Art.
What a brave man not to be discouraged by the facts, but pleading with the survivors.
Like Scott, dying of cold near the Pole, his diary in hand, noting the pitfalls for the
next man, fool enough to go out this far.
He is brazen about these clichés because they are in fact, the whole hope, 的
theatre, of the theatre in its place in the world, and perhaps even the hope of the
世界.
Undated, 1961
After visit to the Berliner Ensemble
As the way around Berlin grows deeper and taller, we feel the division like a knife
wound cutting our world in half.
Only six weeks before the wall went up the actors of The Living Theatre Company
visited East Berlin, taking the S-Bahn as easily as a New Yorker takes a Subway
火车. There was no barrier then, no border guards. The only visible division, 那
between luxury and poverty that as we crossed from the jazzy neon-lit Hedonism
of the west to the austere atheist ruins of the Eastern sector.
We were touring Europe with our repertory, but most of us had never seen a reper-
tory company, because there is none to see in The United States. Though we were
performing Brecht’s ITJOC we had seen little of Brecht’s other work. And we came,
excited to see the great company founded by Brecht. Not only to see his plays per-
formed but to see his theories and techniques given concrete expression. We came
to learn and we learned a good deal.
The Theatre am Schiffbauerdamm is an old theatre, built in the decadent style, 和
gilt angels holding crumbling wreaths from the ornate proscenium. This lavishness
was not “remodeled.” They use what is at hand.
I was in awe. This was the theatre where Piscator first created Epic Theatre; 现在
Helene Weigel directs the large enterprise, her beautiful tough face is hard and
compassionate at once. She welcomed us like her children. We tried to praise
她. “Shut up, shut up,“ 她说, grinning. No trace of accent in her English. 这
Hitler years she had lived through with Brecht in California, a housewife, wait-
英, the playwright neglected and disliked in the United States. He was after all, A
共产. For nine years she did not act, did she know how it was to come out?
She led us to her office. Picasso’s dove of peace, communist symbol and sym-
bol of the Berliner Ensemble, framed. She points it out “Picasso gave it to me.”
20 ■ PAJ 131
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She is warm, but talks facts. “Our company is composed of 280 人们, sixty actors,
the rest technicians and staff. The government gives us everything we need.” Soon
she is talking about industrial production in the German Democratic Republic.
(“We don’t approve of the term ‘East Germany.’ East Berlin, that’s something else.”)
The problems of shoe manufacturing, the position of the Jews, 政治, 矿业.
Then suddenly she smiles, “You horrible people, you are doing The Jungle of Cities.”
She doesn’t approve because the play is an early play in which Brecht states the
question and leaves it unanswered. Later he wrote believing he knew the answer.
When we tell her the play is a success in N.Y. she is pleased.
Before the rehearsal, Weigel treats our company to lunch in their canteen. The can-
青少年, in military style, serves good food and a drink called Berliner Weisse Bier in a
large goblet with raspberry syrup.
The rehearsal is formal. On a lighted stand is the Modell-buch of Arturo Ui. On each
page eight photographs each depict a change of stage placement, clear and consec-
utive as it was staged in the original production. Not beautifully photographed, 这
camera seemed planted down center. The effect is of utility. The aesthetic follows.
The Modell-buch exists not to restrict but as a check “to test the sense and beauty
of our dispositions.”
Next to each photograph is the accompanying dialogue and technical description
of the moment (声音, 光, ETC。) It is referred to often.
The scene is the monopolist’s office in Chicago. The ticker tape brings news. Out-
side the sound of the world in turmoil. A blast of sound as the frame door is
opened revealing the gangster Arturo Ui waiting outside for Power to let him in.
Ui is a Hitler figure in a tan raincoat, and a green Hitler face. They are rehearsing
for the replacement of a small role. But even the leading actors appear in costume,
full lights, the crew ready with sound and music cues. Each detail followed through
with incredible German precision. Makers of microscopes and precision machinery.
There is a fantastic kind of concentration. The kind we know in rare performances
when “things go well.” Hardly ever in rehearsals. A young woman directs with sim-
plicity. No emotion in this rehearsal. Each action is examined and perfected. 不
egos. I thought to myself “they are striving for The Communist ideal.” When the
director called a break, instant joviality. They invited us up onto the stage, joking
about the serious work of a moment before. They showed off the stage machinery,
the turntable and the treadmill. Then they began again, sober as dress-players. 这
music blared again and again as the door opened, exposing the green faced Hitler.
Till each player was exactly so posed as in the Modell-Buch photograph. Hand and
head position, posture and expression. They seemed tireless, no impatience.
At night, the audience, mostly well-dressed West Berliners and tourists, came as to
an important event. The Avoidable Rise of Arturo Ui enacted on the scene of the crime
facing the people of Berlin, the play ends “the womb out which this (Hitler) crept, 是
BrEdEson / The Diaries of Judith Malina, 1958–1971 (Excerpt) ■ 21
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fertile still.” But in the program, it is shown not the Hitler of the past, but “the capi-
talists” are the Arturo Uis of our time. A string of horrible quotes from the American
press illustrates our Gangsterism. The uncanny element in the performance is the
result of what seems to us abnormally hard work. Work in the opposite direction
of the emotional morass into which the modern adherents of Stanislavsky so often
plunge themselves. The work of alienation is in Brecht’s words, “to take what to the
event and character is known, obvious, evident and produce surprise and curiosity
out of it. Each event and character are minutely studied for the fullest range of these
shocks of the obvious event, and exploited to the degree that each actor can create
creatively”. Ekkehard Schall’s Arturo Ui stunned us with its wealth of invention.
After the play, in the canteen, Ekkehard Schall said “we haven’t got a theory, 仅有的
a technique for working and we are always changing that. I don’t try to ‘alienate’
a performance. When a character should cry, I cry. When he is supposed to laugh,
I laugh. But I try to find all the possibilities for him.”
We all drank Berliner Weisse together in their canteen. The actors overcame the
language barriers with bits of French, Italian, even Yiddish. Questions at first ten-
tative because rousing political debates, those who were bilingual interpreted for
其他.
The more lively the arguments the more hope we felt for each other. The Germans
were more eloquent being used to political arguments. But both we and they were
vehement. The spirit of friendliness never wavered.
Repertory allowed some actors in each company free on alternating nights. I did
not see Weigel, those who did called her magnificent.
The Ensemble players came to see us perform in an ultramodern theatre in the West
Sector. Not yet any border guards. Though they admired our style and our perfor-
mances they took exception to our themes.
Brecht’s daughter Barbara, an actress in the troupe, married to Ekkehard Schall, 说
of William Carlos Williams’ Many Loves—“perhaps it has significance in the West.
We do plays about life and death.” But our production of The Connection with its
melancholy picture of the addict world, they found too gloomy and pessimistic.
We couldn’t, though we wanted to, play In The Jungle of Cities in Berlin. But Schall
said of the play that he couldn’t understand what it was about. Perhaps because it
is not as didactic as the later plays.
When we packed our props and sets and costumes after our last performance in
柏林, the Berliner Ensemble actors came to help us pack. Unlike their establish-
ment we traveled our three plays with a company of thirty, all of whom, even the
技术人员, 采取行动. When they saw us shorthanded, they vigorously worked with us.
The admiration we felt was mingled with personal feelings. We write to them still,
22 ■ PAJ 131
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and the correspondences between our small free enterprise and their state theatre
is full but letter writing is a lost art and we will lose touch.
The Living Theatre will tour Europe next year, we may return to Berlin, but it seems
now in these days laden with fear and fallout that we will not be able to visit the
Berliner Ensemble again. Unless God grants us that the healing force of Art and the
healing force of love will at last break down the walls.
■
八月 31, 1966. 柏林
Tell old stories. In a cool office in the Volksbühne a cool intellectual named
Gaissmeyer questions me. 不, the change came later; how Piscator changed. Talk
about teacher. Careful, he isn’t here to defend himself. My first encounter? 和-
printable. The notebooks? His influence? On whom? But why wasn’t he success-
ful in America? Did he like your work? Limitation of vocabulary. It was long ago.
Am I not a little girl anymore? Why not?
He wants to talk on tape. I’ll try to remember (and not get even).
But I was always afraid of him.
The content. His maps.
So this was what became of the long-awaited interview. Unpacking the sheafs of
纸, unasserted, that we sent on the tour to Berlin, I come across the secretary’s
letter—Mr. Piscator has to leave Berlin, he asks me to say he’s so sorry—he looks
forward to seeing you when you return to Berlin.
And he hung on the raindrops pouring down the flat front of his modernistic the-
atre and he heard the uninformed archivist and the ungrateful pupil.
美国, 他说, will become fascist. He speaks of America as if it were already
德国 1939. I shudder.
Piscator’s room: a huge map of the world on a wall; little red and black pins mark-
ing all the battles.
九月 1, 1966. 柏林
Last night “as an Antigone Rehearsal” to see the Berliner Ensemble’s Coriolanus with
the company. Study of a way to do a Brechtian classic.
The border guards remark, in a friendly way, on the picture of Gandhi in Julian’s
passport, and asked if my peace button was the Easter march symbol. Everyone had
already noted the more relaxed and talkative attitudes of the DDR border guards
when we entered Berlin, inside the city they seemed even more so. How important
it seems—this young girl at the passport control—whether she smiles or not.
East Berlin in the fog and rain: the bridge across the Spree to Bertolt Brecht Platz,
neon-lit, neon-lit with the revolving sign that turns above the theatre’s spired
roof, just like the garish Mercedes sign that spins above West Berlin, but not so
BrEdEson / The Diaries of Judith Malina, 1958–1971 (Excerpt) ■ 23
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ostentatiously, not so bright electronic blue. The huge black eagles face each
other on the bridge from another age. The river’s black-green soldiers, DDR and
Russian walk briskly. No one loiters, lingers, dallies. A banner—Heute Spielen wir
Coriolan—just that, in black letters on a white sheet, as though some neat-letterer in
a strike headquarters or a political demonstration had painted an announcement.
The house is full. The historical décor is meticulously kept in excellent gildage.
Each cornucopia is glittering as it pours its golden fruits, but the crystals of the
chandelier have been replaced with light blue balls of blown glass. A new curtain.
A tapestried Peace Dove (Picasso’s) in gray and black: a more somber dove, 他的
wings folded, his head with the olive branch, not held quite so high. Very beautiful,
as birds always are.
They are very precise. Sometimes this is soaringly beautiful and sometimes it’s a
副. They act, 我认为, with great feeling. (Weigel is very quiet, jittery: the role does
not excite us as much as her person: this is a virtue, I think.) They are searching
for the same sounds and movements as we are in Antigone, and as the Frankenstein
score has developed. The best sounds are taped, by the actors. The physical work is
激烈的, but the speech is thought to be incompatible with the movement. Proba-
bly on the theory that you can’t have vocal control when exerting the body, 但它
shouldn’t be the control but the intensity + even correctness of the rhythm, 哪个
is a form of intensity.
They are really mistaken, the sounds would be much better not on the tape but
居住, and the movements which are splendid would be still better if the actors were
making the sound. The energy is there, in performance as in battle, the amount of
energy is increased as the amount expended is increased.
(the more you do, the more you can do)
士兵, 唉, to increase their power to die and kill are sent into the battles even
today trained to cry out some blood-curdling syllables, not so much to scare the
enemy with their savage cry, as to rouse their own blood, and stir the heartbeat up
and make the chemical changes that the scream, both heard and uttered, institutes.
I watch my friends. They are watching them studiously. A few of them are new to
watching seriously the work performed in the theatre.
(Olivier rehearsing Oedipus, and how I held my breath, really held it, when he
paced out the entrance after the blinding, to make sure the steps were right so he
could stumble securely, and going in and out of it, from the agonized stumble to
the casual words to the stagehands, and back again, both all the way. Aha, she said.)
The bearbeitung shows the worthlessness of the ruling class. The famous mother is
no more than a woman who “can dish it out, but can’t take it,” which is a poor ex-
cuse for tragedy. And her son’s emotional response to her not more impressive than
将会, let’s say, evidence that Hitler “really loved” Eva Braun. What’s good is the
idealization of the democratic system. The character of “The Roman Workers,“ 这
people and their genuinely delegated tribunes. How they are deluded by the hero
24 ■ PAJ 131
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at the beginning, a criticism of the tendency to personality cult—but their swift
“You’re under arrest” when the consul misuses his power, and their certainty of
their right to dismiss him, the assurance with which they make their choice, 这些
are praised more in Brecht than in Shakespeare. Instructs more than it inspires. 但
its eloquence is in itself inspiration.
The audience is partisan about the actors. They applaud enthusiastically. The play-
goers are young, not dressed up, but dressing the way college students used to dress
for lectures, the girls in white blouses, the boys in dark jackets. The girls wear no
jewelry, but their hair is elegantly dressed. Jimmy Anderson notes with distress that
there is little smiling in the lobby and the stairways. He imitates the way a formal
smile of greeting is followed by a serious look. “I know theatre lobbies” he says.
Meaning his three years in the intermissions of The Connection in New York and
欧洲, “and I’ve never seen them so unsmiling as here.” (“They can be recognized
by their artificial smile.”) He’s right, they’re serious. Better than phony laughter, 这
beer-hall heartiness of the gruesome-time, the cocktail party flutter, 在另一
手, earnestness could do well to be better acquainted with joy.
Image of the stagehands, visible above the draw curtain from our balcony seats:
clustering in swift-moving silent swarms to topple Rome and Coriolanus both,
back and forth on their swiveling foundations.
Weigel in the canteen.
Erwarten sie nach der Vorstelling in unserer kantine.
-We are rehearsing Mann ist Mann.
-Her eyes are small and sparkle.
-She warmly embraces Jenny. “Stefan has told me so much about you.”
-I played it twice (Mann ist Mann), once when I was thin and once when I was fat.
-I only played it when I was thin—and she puffed both cheeks out at me in a chil-
dren’s pantomime of fat.
-“They caught a long-haired boy here and he protested he wanted to look like Marx.”
Henry films—“Stop that terrible thing, for twenty years I have always a camera
behind me and always the edge of one eye looks at the camera.” The company pro-
tests they’re used to Jim and Henry and cameras, but she doesn’t think so.
-“One reads of you only occasionally” says Barbara Berg.
-They are going to Venice before we do.
-“I want to show them the world” she says of her company—they loved London
so much.
-Jenny says the critics will say they are better than we, 不管, whether we are
better or whether they are better.
-Her candor surprises Weigel as it is meant to.
-Eleven weeks, she says, is too long to rehearse a play (Mann ist Mann) 当。。。的时候
director already has a book, and has done the production before.
-Trying to say something conciliatory I hit upon “seniority.”
-Aha! She says, seniority!
BrEdEson / The Diaries of Judith Malina, 1958–1971 (Excerpt) ■ 25
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Easy talk, family talk, about babies, or praise of being a grandmother, or they are
doing four new productions for Brecht’s anniversary—Four is much, 不?—Her eyes
grow intense with time—this is our fourth or fifth time in Weigel’s canteen.
-I think maybe, 出色地, maybe I try Courage again.—
-是的, 是的, do it, we want to see it—.
-出色地, maybe I will,—
Jenny winningly.
-You have to go back to “the other land….”
-To the other land—we echo.
九月 8, 1966. 柏林
HH: Read through the play with a drum accompaniment.
I read Watling’s translation of the Sophocles to the company.
九月 11, 1966. 柏林
Madame Piscator. She is pale, and tears come through her genial smiling when she
talks of his grave, and the difficulties that the city is making about the tombstone.
The stone they are setting is ten centimeters too high, and they will not permit it.
And then there’s a battle between the Catholic and Protestant elements about the
坟. (I could hardly understand, I dared not ask too much, but seeing my look of
astonishment and disbelieve, she waved her hand, shrugging, “of course, it’s all po-
litical.”) She asked to be allowed to speak to the senate, but they wouldn’t let her.
Herr Gaissmayer was our companion at lunch. His father-in-law is the esteemed
architect who built the Volksbühne for Piscator. He went to the Senate (Hamon?)
thinking his renowned name would give him the authority to demand for Piscator
the honor—grave—he merits. But it was no avail. The city will not.
“Have you seen Brecht’s grave?” she asks. “It is a plain, Gothic shaft, and in front of
it a square field of flowers.” She asked them to plant Piscator’s grave but they count-
ed the ground as too costly. Nor did the Volksbühne so much as put a picture up,
she complains, at the time of his death, whereas in the East, in Schiffbauerdamm, A
photograph was displayed of Piscator, to mark his death. She insists this city never
loved him. “But where could he go? Where could he find an island?” and “Where
will you go? Where can you find a corner?” We tell her our long story and it diverts
她. But she comes again to her loss and praises him.
九月 13, 1966. 柏林
They are putting up the Frankenstein set at the Akademie der Künste. The Brig set is
向下, the ten days of The Brig are over, the ordered days with their ritual: the af-
ternoon rehearsal, the hurried meal at Bellevue under the U Bahn or at the Schnel-
limbiss curry house, the preparations for the performance, the glimpses of the var-
ious casts on the stage, from the light booth where Jenny holds court running the
sound tapes from her space-ship, from the flies, from the back of the house, of Tom
suddenly punching for real because his girl’s left him—and being cooled out by a
long loving look of Steve Ben Israel, of butterflies in The Brig cage, and between the
26 ■ PAJ 131
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dressing rooms and the theatre entrance, the black night with its changing skies, 它是
half-moon and the distant gunfire that always hangs in the air in Berlin.
九月 14, 1966. 柏林
The Automation Collage: Steve Ben Israel is back. He’s got a deep chug going on
阶段. Julian demonstrated a rhythmic reading for the Generals and the Capitalist.
Sounds rise as Steve says, “A little more spaced out.” 1/25, thirds; Gene says “it’s
like 14th Street, it’s like when we used to play the theatre.”
九月 15, 1966. 柏林
Rosh Hashanah. O Lord open thou my lips and my mouth shall declare thy praise.
“Mystical chord, 请,” says Julian, and the actors open. All day the Collage. 工作
is slow, trance-like, and profound.
The Living Theatre Records at the Beinecke Library Rare Book and Manuscript
Library at Yale University holds Judith Malina’s original diaries from which the
excerpts printed here are taken. The author wishes to thank the Beinecke staff, par-
ticularly Susan Brady, Living Theatre archivist Tom Walker, and Malina’s children
Isha Appell and Garrick Beck, for their collaboration to make this project happen.
KATE BrEdEson is a theatre historian, director, and dramaturg. Her book
Occupying the Stage: The Theater of May ’68 is published by Northwestern
University Press. The Diaries of Judith Malina 1958–1971 is forthcoming.
She is currently at work on the next volume of Malina’s diaries, 哪个
begin in prison in Brazil in 1971.
BrEdEson / The Diaries of Judith Malina, 1958–1971 (Excerpt) ■ 27
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