The Living Theatre returns to Yale
Forty-one years after the Living Theatre's infamous performance of Paradise Now at Yale, which ended in the arrest of ten performers and audience members for public indecency, the Living Theatre's cofounder and artistic director, Judith Malina, returned to New Haven for a two-day residency at the drama school. The visit included a series of classes and workshops with drama school students, screenings of two documentaries about the work of the Living Theatre, and book signings with Malina and company members.
The Living Theatre was founded in 1947 by Malina and the late Julian Beck as an "imaginative alternative to the commercial theater." Over the years it has staged nearly 100 productions in eight languages in 28 countries, and has helped to establish Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway as legitimate theater venues. In 1968 the Living Theatre embarked on a national tour of Paradise Now, with Yale as its first stop. The play, which encouraged audience participation, contained a scene in which cast members removed their clothing, and some audience members followed suit. As the cast and audience members exited the University Theatre onto York Street in various states of undress, ten people—including Beck and Malina—were arrested by the New Haven Police Department for public indecency. The next night the audience swelled to more than three times the theater's capacity for the second performance of Paradise Now. No arrests were made.
The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library has acquired the archives of the Living Theatre. This collection documents the administration of the theater, its stage productions, and its relationship to other avant-garde and radical cultural and political movements in the United States and Europe from the 1960s to the present. Also included are extensive diaries and journals of Judith Malina and Julian Beck, as well as their personal papers and writings.
Concentration in projection design is first in nation
A new concentration in projection design will be offered to students beginning next fall. It is the first such course of study in the United States. "The use of projection in performance is expanding exponentially," says award-winning projection designer Wendall Harrington, who has served on the design department faculty at the drama school since 2006 and will oversee the new projection concentration. "The projected image is a powerful tool. Those designers at the forefront of this medium will have the opportunity and responsibility to encourage its eloquent use." Dean James Bundy added, "The introduction of the projection design concentration continues Yale's commitment to artistic and technological innovations in the field."
Cochaired by Ming Cho Lee and Stephen Strawbridge ’83MFA, the design department at the drama school is unique in its integration of all areas of design, providing students with a common ground of core knowledge of the field and emphasizing that all elements of design are an integral part of the whole and cannot be conceived independently.
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