Book presentation Julian Beck: “The Life of the Theatre” (in Croatian translation) by Zoran Senta, editor, Daf publishing house

And discussion “Situationists meet the Living Theatre”

Mon, 10.09.2012, 18h, Molekula

Discussion with theatre director Ivica Buljan and translator and editor Aleksa Golijanin

Language: Croatian

The discussion “Situationists meet the Living Theatre” establishes new lines of communication between Situationist theory of the 1960s presented by Guy Debord and the Living Theatre as presented by Julian Beck. Two books meet, Debords “Kriegspiel” and Becks “The Life of the Theatre”, they exchange historical roles, and question what would have happened if performing arts took on a political agenda and if the Situationists had not rejected the art programme that lies between radical action and representation. Guy Debord was one of the founding members of the Situationist International, an international group of political and art revolutionaries. The group agitated for radical social changes and their critical project of obsolescence of art resulted in the exclusion of the art fraction from the group and eventually with its self-destruction in 1972.

Julian Beck was an American actor, director, poet and abstract expressionist painter. In 1947 he founded the theatre troupe Living Theatre together with Judith Malina, with the intention of participating in the “beautiful non violent anarchy revolution” aimed at changing the world. The Living Theatre was conceived as a creative alternative to commercial theatre and greatly contributed to the off-Broadway-movement. The group was among the first in the U.S. to produce the work of influential European playwrights such as Cocteau, Lorca, Brecht and Pirandello, as well as modernist poets and playwrights such as Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Paul Goodman, Kenneth Rexroth and John Ashbery in the 1950’s. They toured extensively and produced hundred shows performed in 8 languages in 28 countries across five continents, often being tried or arrested for indecent exposure (i.e. nudity) and breaking of other social norms.

The Living Theatre had a major influence on other experimental theatre groups, with their main works being “Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights”, “Many Loves”, “The Connection” and “The Brig”.