Judith Malina was an actress, director, and co-founder of The Living Theatre with husband Julian Beck. The company, founded in 1947 as an imaginative and political alternative to commercial theater, staged nearly 100 productions and performed in eight languages in 28 countries on five continents.  Malina’s Off-Off-Broadway credits include: THE THEATER OF CHANCE (1960), IN THE JUNGLE OF CITIES (1960), THE CONNECTION (1961), THE APPLE(1961), MAN IS MAN (1962), THE BRIG (1963), THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF SLEEP (1964), THE YELLOW METHUSELAH (1984), THE ONE AND THE MANY (1984), THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOKLES (1984), and RICHARD II (1987). She was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2003. In 2008, she was bestowed the Artistic Achievement Award from the New York Innovative Theater Awards “in recognition of her unabashed pioneering spirit and unyielding dedication to her craft and the Off-Off-Broadway community.”

Malina was born in Germany but grew up in New York City. Born to Jewish parents (an actress and a rabbi), Judith was raised seeing the importance of political theater. She attended the New School for Social Research in theater and studied under Erwin Piscator. In 1963, The Living Theatre was suspended by the IRS for five years over tax problems, so Beck and Malina left the United States. Although the charges were later proven baseless, the company’s tour of Europe in those five years produced their most radical and provocative works, culminating in the book “Paradise Now” (1971).