On February 9, 1970, Ze Celso Martinez Correa e Renato Borghi They went to Paris for a meeting with Judith Malina e Julian beck, founders of the radical American experimental theatre company The Living Theatre.
“They had an enthusiasm and a natural way of softening their speech that contrasted with the desperation of what they reported. Their theater was closed. Their work was threatened by far-right paramilitary groups; and that, when they staged Brecht's Galileo, the actors carried weapons on stage. What? A weapon hidden in Galileo's robes? They want us to go to Brazil,” wrote Judith, about the meeting with the Brazilians. Two years earlier, in July 1968, the Communist Hunting Command, a gang of far-right thugs, had attacked the Galpão Theater in São Paulo, where Chico Buarque's play Roda Viva, directed by Zé Celso, was being performed, beating actors and actresses, humiliating the cast, and destroying the sets.
Recently released in the United States, the book The Diaries of Judith Malina (1969-1971) offers a dizzying dive into the memory of Brazilian theater under the aegis of AI-5, at the height of the terror of the military dictatorship in Brazil. As is known, Judith and Julian's troupe not only accepted Zé Celso and Borghi's invitation and came to Brazil, landing on July 25, 1970, but ended up in the dungeons of the military regime, imprisoned in Ouro Preto on July 1, 1971. A feminist, pacifist, intellectual of substance, and internationally renowned director, Judith Malina advocated breaking down the barriers between stage and audience, between actors and characters, between society and theater. Born in Kiel, Germany, the daughter of a rabbi, she emigrated with her family to the United States when she was 3 years old to escape the rise of Nazism.
On the day she was arrested, Judith heard a song by Roberto Carlos, "Jesus Cristo," on the car radio. The accusation for the artists' arrest was possession of marijuana – they were denounced by neighbors from Minas Gerais, whom they didn't even know. "Marijuana? I thought the DOPS was a political police force. What are they doing in our house?" the director wrote. She thought the police had come to her residence to ask some questions. "You're under arrest," the man said. They grabbed her and Julian by the arm and shoved them into a police van side-by-side, but in closed compartments. "I'm scared," she told her partner. "Be strong," he replied. "I love you."
They remained in prison until September 4, 1971, and flew back to the United States, where they continued to lead one of the great groundbreaking experiences in the performing arts worldwide with the Living Theatre and in association with La MaMa. Their 4-year-old daughter, Isha, was separated from her parents and sent to the United States. In prison, Julian Beck (1925-1985), Judith's partner, read Os Sertões by Euclides da Cunha. They attempted to stage a play with fellow inmates.
The Brazilian adventure of the Living Theatre, as documented by Judith Malina, is a profound radiography of the scene, the activism, the politics, the environment, and the dreams of the Brazilian arts that emerged in the 1960s amidst the “Brazilian Reality and Its Enormous Despair,” as she defined it. Judith recounts encounters with Raul Cortez, Walmor Chagas, Glauber Rocha, Sábato Magaldi, Sérgio Mamberti, Antonio Pedro, Oswaldo Mendes, Marilena Ansaldi, and experiences the early days of the Teatro Oficina. “Boal is intelligent, but hostile,” Judith reflects. She describes her participation in Umbanda rituals (“I am not familiar with the customs, even though I am familiar with the trance. I am traveling”) and analyzes the then-controversial architecture of Lina Bo Bardi.
Extremely important historical records emerge from Judith Malina's memoirs. For example, the description of the couple's encounter with the French writer, poet, and playwright Jean Genet (1910-1986) in São Paulo. Genet came to Brazil in 1970 to stage his play *The Balcony* at the Ruth Escobar Theatre, directed by the Argentinian Victor Garcia. It was an unparalleled theatrical event. The interior of the theatre was occupied by a 30-meter-high cylindrical funnel of transparent acrylic, and the audience sat on benches arranged in a spiral on walkways around the structure; the actors moved inside the funnel using hydraulic elevators. Judith described the play as "a dream of the constructivists" of Frederick Jacob Kiesler (1890-1965).
Jean Genet was then the cursed author of French theatre. Profane, rebellious, obscene, foul-mouthed. He abandoned the theatre in the middle of a performance after falling asleep in the audience. “The Living Theatre has a dual reputation, for its theatrical and political work. But now you are in an association with people who may even be genuinely interested in revolutionary thought, but who, in reality, are interested in seeing their pictures in the newspaper. They really care about seeing their names printed in the newspaper,” Genet warned Judith and Julian. “The press here is all against me because I am insolent – I told them: I don’t speak to a censored press because I don’t speak with or to the censor.”
Genet arrived amidst the Brazilian national football team's victory in the World Cup in Mexico and witnessed the players parading through the streets. He noted that he sensed a "deep sadness" among Brazilians, something that euphoria masked. He observed that people remained standing, applauding and chanting "Brazil, Brazil" as the heroes of the third championship passed by with their flags, but that soon after, that mask fell and their expressions closed again. "An observation of a playwright," Judith noted.
“I am, by temperament and disposition, against the military,” stated the Frenchman, famous for his opposition to all notions of morality. “Every time I walk down the street in the United States, I see a demonstration of the extreme right. The daily life of Americans is racist. Stories of discrimination are on buses, in airports,” said Genet.
The book also engages with the behavioral challenges of its time. Interested in Sacher-Masoch, Judith enters a kind of laboratory of sadomasochistic experiments, forming a "threesome" of passionate sex with the Argentinian actor Osvaldo De la Vega and the Brazilian actress Suzana de Moraes (eldest daughter of the poet and diplomat Vinicius de Moraes). There were touches of humiliation and self-discovery in the relationship. "Even so, we clung to each other and made love together, and Osvaldo made love to me loosely, but took her forcefully. But I didn't complain. I told her I love her and I really felt it. But I knew what had happened. I had to wait. I had to believe him. He kept reassuring me."
These experiences were commonplace in a generation that sought social deconditioning, the breaking of behavioral paradigms. But in Judith's revision, there is also a critical sense and a search for answers to questions that permeate public debate today, such as patriarchy.
The actors of the Living Theater were only released by the DOPS (Department of Political and Social Order) in 1971 due to the intervention of dozens of intellectuals from Brazil and around the world, such as the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and the Canadian essayist Marshall McLuhan, who sent telegrams to the Brazilian dictator Emílio Garrastazu Médici. Leading these efforts to shout to the world for their release was the tireless Ruth Escobar. The theater lived in a risky proximity to the world of resistance against the dictatorship – the actress Nilda Maria had been arrested on charges of hiding the guerrilla leader Carlos Lamarca. The American company, however, was the target of a trap: it was evident that the political police were trying to silence the troupe of foreign activists in some way, because of what they represented in terms of impulses for freedom and self-management.
Judith believed that marijuana had been planted in their house in Ouro Preto, and the neighbors were clearly suspected of collaborating. Strangers went to the police to report suspicious behavior, even though the house was open all the time and there was no hostility in the daily routine. Most of the photographs published in the book The Diaries of Judith Malina: 1969-1971 are by the Minas Gerais photographer Juvenal Pereira, who followed the theatrical troupe's movements through Ouro Preto at the time. "Clever, alert, charming, intelligent, vain, and a leader," recalls the photographer, who took the cover photo for the book in Ouro Preto, at the house where the troupe lived.
In 1991, Judith Malina played Grandma Addams in the film The Addams Family, directed by Barry Sonnenfeld. Judith continued working in theater and film and kept diaries throughout her life, until her final days. Her writings are precious not only for their astute observation but also for their style and narrative ability. On March 20, 2015, in her last entry, she wrote: “It’s the first day of spring and it’s snowing haphazardly. The snow doesn’t accumulate on the ground; it’s too hot for that. But there’s a white curtain between me and the sky.” Judith died on April 10, 2015.
THE DIARIES OF JUDITH MALINA: 1969-1971. Organized and edited by Kate Bredeson. Northwestern University Press, 2026. 304 pages, R$ 200 (Amazon Books)
EXCERPT:
"Brazilians always refer to themselves as 'The Brazilians' or 'We Brazilians.' They insist on the idea that it's impossible for Europeans, North Americans (and even Argentinians, for that matter) to understand 'Brazilian reality.' Brazilian reality is sufficiently recognizable. This is the special situation in which these people find themselves. Their special development, internal and external relations, economy, psychology, history: it's clear that all of this is, by the nature of Brazil's history and geography, very special. It's clear that it's unique, and it's clear that, as foreigners in this land, we can't even begin to grasp the true meaning of its special qualities. We can learn a little, but we can never know everything. But then, at this point, Brazilians create a commotion in their heads: we can't understand them completely, but the oppressor can't understand them completely either, so we have this in common with the oppressor. They were colonized, and we weren't (they're wrong, we are colonized, but they refuse to see it). Therefore, We are in the role of the colonizer. This distortion, this simple refusal to accept our camaraderie in the common struggle (because the "we" being "not us" must be "them") reveals a lack of conscious solidarity with the changing world and with the changing world.
