Antigone Brecht Living Theatre

Antigone performed in Bari, Italy in 1980 - a multi-cam shoot. Beautiful performances in Italian and English by Julian Beck, Judith Malina, Tom Walker, Hanon Reznikoff, and all members of this great ensemble. This performance reflects the Theatre's then - practiced triple influence of Meyerhold's epic/expressionist agitprop style blended with Grotowski's improvisatory action yoga for actors of his renowned Theatre of Poverty both of these iterations of Epic Theatre, per se - rooted in a foundation of Artaud's concept of Theatre of Cruelty. The Living Theatre company had gone to meet Grotowski's company in Rome in 1967 - and they made great exchange with each other. This film shows a possible apogee of the LT's adaptation of this highly formalized & evolved restaging of Antigone, itself based on the original late-60's Artaud-inspired epic/expressionist style conjoint with Brecht's "Distancing" treatment. The text is derived from Judith Malina's translation from the German of Bertolt Brecht's adaptation of Sophocle's Antigone. Unfortunately the video gets cut off sometime before the end of the piece which previously contained names of the rest of the ensemble. -- Jerome Lipani December 5, 2020