The Living Theatre

The Living Theatre is an experimental company founded in New York in 1947 by Julian Beck (New York 1925-1985), painter and poet, and the actress and stage director Judith Malina (Kiel 1926). From the very beginning the group’s activities bore the stamp of social and political commitment, imbued with a strong libertarian matrix.

The Living Theatre’s name expresses the whole force of its project: the idea of a theatre that is open to life, politics and change without ever renouncing research and experiments with new forms of expression.

This performance, “Seven Meditations on Political Sadomasochism,” is celebrated as one of the company’s most significant pieces that explores Sacher-Masoch’s Six Houses of Bondage: Love, Money, Property, State, War and Death, with a seventh meditation on Revolutionary Change.

Content warning: this performance contains brief nudity and simulated torture.