About Judith Malina
Judith Malina (June 4, 1926 – April 10, 2015) was an American actress, director and writer. With her husband Julian Beck, Malina co-founded The Living Theatre, a radical political theatre troupe that rose to prominence in New York City and Paris during the 1950s and 1960s. == Early life and education == Malina was born in Kiel, Weimar Germany, the daughter of Polish Jewish parents: her mother, Rosel (née Zamora), was a former actress, and her father, Max Malina, a rabbi in the conservative denomination. In 1929, at the age of 3, she immigrated with her parents to New York City. Malina's parents influenced her deeply, leading her to find an interest in political theatre, as her father left Germany with his family, largely due to the rise of antisemitism in the late 1920s, after attempting to warn people of the threat posed by Nazism. From 1943 until 1945, Malina worked for Valeska Gert at the Beggar Bar. There she observed many of Gert's performances which influenced her later artistic approach. Interested in acting from an early age, she began attending the New School for Social Research in 1945 to study theatre under Erwin Piscator. Malina was greatly influenced by Piscator's philosophy of theatre. Piscator saw theatre as a form of political communication or agitprop ("Theatre interests me only when it is a matter of interest to society.").
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