Living Theatre at Cherry Lane and The Studio Collection

New York: Living Theatre, 1951-1959. 12 programs and one flyer. 7 x 4 1/4 in. to 21 3/4 x 8 1/2 in. Very good. Item #7461

Collection of twelve programs for early Living Theatre performances and one flyer for a presentation of the films of William Maas at the Living Theatre Studio. The plays represented in this collection include the Living Theatre’s finest early work in plays such as Beyond The Mountains, Dr. Faustus, Faustina, and Many Loves, performed at Cherry Lane; and Tonight We Improvise, The Idiot King, Phedre, The Young Disciple, Orpheus, and the Spook Sonata at their studio.

The programs are substantially literary. They contain profiles of the playwrights, essays on dramatic and post-dramatic art, poems, and illustrations by Harold Norse, Paul Goodman, Martin Buber, Alfred Kreymborg, Carl Van Vechten, Laura Perls, and Larry Rivers. In the program for Faustina, Judith Malina herself works through some of “Notes on a Ritual Tragedy,” in which she develops her idiosyncratic conception of theater as ritual.

The Living Theatre was founded in 1947 by Judith Malina, who studied theatre with Erwin Piscator and Julian Beck, an abstract expressionist of the New York School. During its active existence (running until 2013) the company staged almost one hundred productions, performed in eight languages in twenty-eight countries, on five continents, proving to be one of the more influential groups in postwar theatre. In the 1950s and ‘60s the Living Theatre did unconventional stagings of poetic drama, including works by Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, and Paul Goodman, as well as European dramatists rarely produced in the US (such as Cocteau, Lorca, Brecht, and Pirandello). During the 1970s the company performed in locations as varied as the Pittsburgh steel mills and the favelas of Brazil, before returning to New York in the 1980s. 

A rare collection of their vital early work.

Price: $1,750.00