THEATER

LIVING ON To raise funds and to pay homage to an actor, writer, director, and co-founder of the Living Theatre, Judith Malina, producer Barbara Maier and Goodie magazine present “Revolutionary Acts: A Benefit for the Living Theatre.” Performances by iconic rebels such as Blondie’s Debbie Harry, drag performer Justin Bond, musician and playwright Eisa Davis, and singer Nellie McKay highlight the night. Inspired by “The Theater and Its Double” by Antonin Artaud, and Erwin Piscator’s philosophy of theater as a political prop, Ms. Malina founded the Living Theatre in 1947 with her husband, actor Julian Beck, who died in 1985. She continued to run the theater with Hanon Reznikov, an actor with the company, whom she married in 1988. (Reznikov died in May due to complications from a stroke.) In the 1950s and ’60s, the theater became known for its political commentary and avant-garde entertainment, staging the works of such writers as Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Bertolt Brecht, Luigi Pirandello, and Federico García Lorca. When the theater was seized by the government after not paying a debt of $5,000 in the early ’60s, Ms. Malina and her husband fled America, taking their company on a European tour. In 1968, the theater returned to stage its most well-known play, “Paradise Now,” a radical production exploring the possibility of collective, anarchist, nonviolent revolution. Other notable productions over the Living Theatre’s 61 years include guerrilla performances at the site of the attacks of September 11, 2001, and in Times Square in protest of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. 7 p.m., Joe’s Pub, 425 Lafayette St., between Astor Place and 4th Street, 212-967-7555, $30-$50.

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