ROSENTHAl, Cindy Dale. " Living the contradiction: The Living Theatre’s revision of Sophocles’ ’Antigone’ through Brecht and Artaud "

art: theaterpacifismLiving Theater* bibliographieARTAUD, Antonin (1896-1948)

Ph.D. New York University, 1997. 266 p. ADVISER: Richard Schechner. ISBN 0-591-58662-2
DAI-A 58/09, p. 3367, Mar 1998

"The Living Theatre, founded in 1947 by Julian Beck and Judith Malina, is internationally known for its commitment to political (pacifist, anarchist) theatre that is also poetical. In the dissertation I examine the evolution and the mise-en-scene of the Living Theatre’s Antigone in relation to the political and artistic visions of the company’s leadership. A classical and canonical text, an adaptation of Sophocles and Bertolt Brecht, Antigone played in sixteen countries, and ran longer in the Living Theatre’s repertory (1967-1984) than any of the company’s more renowned collective creations.

My project analyzes how, why, and where Antigone fits—why the Living Theatre chose a text that (in its devotion to Brecht and Sophocles) distances the audience, when the goals of the revolutionary movements of the 1960s, and the LT’s historical model, Antonin Artaud, were to break down walls, and to celebrate individual, active participation".