Julian Beck, co-founder of the Living Theatre, with Judith Malina
Julian Beck was born 96 years ago today.
An actor, director, poet and painter, Beck is best known as co-founder of The Living Theatre company in New York City.
Born in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, he briefly attended Yale University, but dropped out to pursue writing and art. He was an Abstract Expressionist painter in the 1940s, but his career turned upon meeting his future wife. In 1943, he met Judith Malina and quickly came to share her passion for theatre. They founded The Living Theatre in 1947.
Beck co-directed the Living Theatre until his death. The group's primary influence was Antonin Artaud, who espoused the Theatre of Cruelty, which was supposed to shock the audience out of complacency. This took different forms. In one example, from Jack Gelber's The Connection, a drama about drug addiction, actors playing junkies wandered the audience demanding money for a fix.
The Living Theatre moved out of New York in 1974, after the Internal Revenue Service shut it down when Beck failed to pay $23,000 in back taxes. After a sensational trial, in which Beck and Malina represented themselves, they were found guilty by a jury.
Beck's philosophy of theatre carried over into his life. He once said, "We insisted on experimentation that was an image for a changing society. If one can experiment in theatre, one can experiment in life."
He was indicted a dozen times on three continents for charges such as disorderly conduct, indecent exposure, possession of narcotics and failing to participate in a civil defense drill.
Besides his theatre work, Beck published several volumes of poetry reflecting his anarchist beliefs, two non-fiction books: The Life of the Theatre and Theandric and had several film appearances, with small roles in Emergency, Oedipus Rex, The Cotton Club, 9½ Weeks and his role in Poltergeist II: The Other Side.
In 1970, Beck's work was denounced alongside Eugène Ionesco and Samuel Beckett by Nëndori, the literary monthly of Albania, for supposedly being "inundated by mysticism and pornography."
Beck and Malina were life partners in an open marriage, and Beck had a long-term relationship with Ilion Troya, a male actor in the company. The couple shared a lover in Lester Schwartz, a bisexual shipyard worker who was the third husband of Andy Warhol acolyte, Dorothy Podber. They had "two offstage children," Garrick and Isha.
Beck was diagnosed with stomach cancer in 1983, and died two years later at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. He was 60. Malina died in April, 2015 at age 88.