The Living Theatre, the longest running experimental theater company formed in 1947, is about to embark on a three week journey across the United States of America for the Know Your Rites Tour.
As our country becomes increasingly disillusioned and mired in the election process, thousands of votes swallowed in the system, voices squashed, the least liked candidates ever running for office whose politics are based on hate speech, war mongering and corporate influence, mass murders prompted by bigotry and fear, innumerable refugees fleeing countries we have destabilized through war, we choose this time to travel through the middle of America to offer an alternative.
We offer a reawakening to one’s rights and rites. We will hold mass public rituals in the streets, at corporate headquarters, bank lobbies, fossil fuel sites of destruction. We will lead non-violent direct action trainings. We will perform an updated revival of one of the most significant shows in our repertoire, Seven Meditations on Political Sado-Masochism, a piece created by the company after being released from a prison in Brazil and focused on the torturous abuses by the Brazilian police.
The Living will travel to large metropolisesas well as small towns to engage with communities in theatrical interventions and rituals.
We take up the charge from our recently dearly departed co-founder, Judith Malina, an indefatigable source of radical artistry. In her name, we trek across the states offering a version of the beautiful non-violent anarchist revolution.
The Know Your Rites Tour begins on August 15, 2016 in New York City. We traveled to multiple cities along the way including:
8/15 Troy, NY
8/15 Buffalo, NY
8/16 Niagara Falls, NY
8/17 Flint, MI
8/17 Detroit, MI
8/18-8/19 Chicago, IL
8/20 Normal, IL
8/21 St. Louis, MO
8/22 Wichita, KS
8/23 Denver, CO
8/24-8/25 San Francisco, CA
8/26 Big Sur, CA
8/27 Los Angeles, CA
8/28 Las Vegas, NE
8/29 Phoenix, AZ
8/29 Tucson, AZ
8/30 Las Cruces, NM
8/31 Austin, TX
9/1 Houston, TX
9/2 New Orleans, LA
9/3 Birmingham, AL
9/4 Knoxville, TN
Performances:
-a performance of "Seven Meditations on Political Sadomasochism"
A visceral examination of the social contract between the governed and the government, Seven Meditations was written after Malina and members of the company were imprisoned-and some tortured-by the Médici dictatorship in Brazil in 1973. Considered one of the company's most significant pieces, the play explores Sacher-Masoch's Six Houses of Bondage: Love, Money, Property, State, War and Death, with a seventh meditation on Revolutionary Change.
-a reading of excerpts from "Full Moon Poems", Judith Malina's last published book or from any of her writings. Including a discussion on the practices of the Living Theatre with the company
- a ritualistic street performance that the company can create based on the specific needs/ interests of the local community. We would love to collaborate with you by responding to an immediate injustice and building a "happening" around that issue in a site-specific format
Workshops:
- a non-violent direct action training facilitated by members of the company that may include elements of our brand of ensemble movement techniques
- a Theater of the Oppressed workshop facilitated by members of the company
- Living Theatre ensemble theater exercises facilitated by the company.