Founded in 1947 as an imaginative alternative to the commercial theater by Judith Malina, the German-born protégée of Erwin Piscator, and Julian Beck, an abstract expressionist painter of the New York School, The Living Theatre has staged more than 80 productions performed in eight languages in 25 countries on four continents - a unique body of work that has influenced theater the world over.

During the 1950's in New York, The Living Theatre pioneered the unconventional staging of poetic drama - the plays of American writers like Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Paul Goodman, Kenneth Rexroth and John Ashbery, as well as European writers rarely produced in America, including Cocteau, Lorca, Brecht and Pirandello. Best remembered among these productions, which marked the start of the Off-Broadway movement, were Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights, Many Loves, The Connection and The Brig.

The difficulty of operating a unique, experimental enterprise within a cultural establishment ill-equipped to accept it led to the closing by the authorities of all The Living Theatre's New York venues: the Cherry Lane Theater (closed by the Fire Department in 1953), The Living Theatre Studio on Broadway at 100th Street (closed by the Buildings Department in 1956), The Living Theatre on 14th Street (closed by the I.R.S. in 1963), and decades later, The Living Theatre on Third Street (closed by the Buildings Department in 1992).

During the 1960's, the company began a new life as a nomadic touring ensemble. In Europe, they evolved into a collective, living and working together toward the creation of a new form of nonfictional acting based on the actor's political and physical commitment to using the theater as a medium for furthering social change. The landmark achievements of this period include Mysteries and Smaller Pieces, Antigone, Frankenstein and Paradise Now.

In the 1970's, The Living Theatre began to create The Legacy of Cain, a cycle of plays for non-traditional venues. From the prisons of Brazil to the gates of the Pittsburgh steel mills, and from the slums of Palermo to the schools of New York City, the company offered these plays, which include Six Public Acts, The Money Tower, Seven Meditations on Political Sado-Masochism, Turning the Earth and the Strike Support Oratorium free of charge to the broadest of all possible audiences.

The 1980's saw the group return to the theater, where they developed new participatory techniques that enable the audience to first rehearse with the company and then join them onstage as fellow performers. These plays include Prometheus at the Winter Palace, The Yellow Methuselah and The Archaeology of Sleep.

Following the death of Julian Beck in 1985, Judith Malina and company veteran-turned-co-director Hanon Reznikov opened The Living Theatre on Third Street in Manhattan, producing a steady stream of innovative works including The Tablets, I and I, The Body of God, Humanity, Rules of Civility, Waste, Echoes of Justice, The Zero Method, Anarchia and utopia. Since the closing of the Third Street space by the authorities, The Living Theatre company is dividing its time between creating new works commissioned in Europe, and performing them in New York and on tour.