Seven Meditations on Political Sado-Masochism

After their arrest in Brazil on charges of marijuana possession, Julian Beck and Judith Malina and the rest of the Living Theater regrouped in New York. In 1973 and 1974 the troupe wrote Seven Meditations on Political Sado-Masochism, a play that explored and denounced the treatment and torture of political prisoners in Brazil. Read a collector’s edition of the Seven Meditations on Political Sado-Masochism‘s script.

“When we left the jail, we asked the prisoners who were left behind, ‘What can we do for you? We are a poor theater group; we cannot send you money. That would be the first thing, of course, but since we can’t send you money, what can we do?’ All of them said, ‘Tell people how it is. Show them what they do to us.’ And so we evolved a piece called Seven Meditations on Political Sado-Masochism in which one scene was a reenactment of police torture very common in that prison where I was kept and in many others in Brazil at the time” – Judith Malina.