The Play Truly is the Thing

Karen Malpede is the author of one of the most important books on US theater published in the last seventy years. Titled People’s Theatre in Amerika, its discussion of radical theater in the United States is as revolutionary as the dramatic works being discussed. Her work was a major influence on subsequent politically and artistically radical theater in the wake of its publication in 1973. She went on to write several plays, articles and other theater pieces. In addition, she continues to organize against the capitalist state, its wars and other transgressions. Malpede’s recently published memoir Last Radiance: Radical Lives, Radical Deaths is a personal reflection on her life, with a special emphasis on her time in the 1970s and her decades-long relationship with actor, producer and director George Bartenieff.

It is a life that is simultaneously adventurous, rebellious, romantic and ultimately fantastic. The reader accompanies Malpede as she lives and works with the avant-garde troupe that was the Living Theatre’s Julian Beck and Judith Malina. The experimental nature of the Living Theatre’s work is discussed in terms of its effect on the cultural world and the actors themselves. Police actions against its perceived obscenity are referred to and protests against wars and oppression are described from a place within Malpede’s soul; the descriptions reveal the conscientious heart of a poet and the lustful mind and body of a lover. Her narrative reveals a world where lust and desire comingle with eros and enlightenment, creating a community of individuals lost and otherwise live in a manner determined to unearth the innermost thoughts and emotions of the humans involved, revealing many of them to a public often afraid to acknowledge their own intimate selves.

There’s a brief description of a poetry reading that took place on January 22, 1985, the night of Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration. The reader finds themselves in St. Mark’s Church in Manhattan, the site of too many poetry readings to count. Julian Beck, wearing a pink and red sweater greets the gathering, telling them “We need these gatherings of poets to let in a little light in these dark times….I begin with a warning.”(94) Beck follows his introduction by reciting his poem “The State Will Be Served Even by Poets.” It is litany of male poets who have served the needs of the state. It is not a list of congratulations, but a reminder that even art and artists can be co-opted and controlled; their art must be a rebellion and not an acceptance of the greedy and murderous ways of power and authority. The description Malpede writes helps reveal the essence of her life and the lives of those she lived and worked most intimately with. It is a life that many could not begin to imagine but will inspire others to emulate it in a manner unique to themselves.

The reader is introduced to her lovers and friends, from Beck and Molina to feminist Andrea Dworkin; Burl Hash to George Bartenieff. Sexual intimacies are remembered and detailed, the emotions of love intertwined with the blood of desire. The daily ins and outs of relationships are narrated with poetic and even passionate prose. George Bartenieff was Malpede’s greatest love. The final part of the book is a narration of his death by cancer and her caretaking; a caretaking that endedon the physical plane when she buried his body in the Grove on the Vermont farm where the Brad and Puppet theatre lives and creates. Those pages present a painful yet beautiful narrative that blends the nitty gritty of pallative care into a declaration of love worthy of Sappho. The nature of human love is revealed in these pages, as is the difficulty of recovery after the death of one who means so much. Then again, that recovery is indeed an aspect of the human love that has been lost to the world beyond our temporal knowledge.

Karen Malpede continues to write, engage in political activity against the spectre of Trumpism and its fascist nature, and share what seems to be a genuine joy at the world she both resides in and continues to help make. This memoir—written with great craft and beauty—is certainly a part of that endeavor. If the quote from Shakespeare’s Hamlet with which I titled this review is true and the purpose of theater is to “catch the conscience of the king” if only by provoking their audiences to think and perhaps to act, then the lives considered Last Radiance have done more than many others on this earth.

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