The Brig at the Living Theatre

The Living Theatre company will open its own permanent performance space, a 100-seat theatre called The Living Theatre, in a new building on the Lower East Side at 19-21 Clinton St. in Manhattan.

The Living Theatre will inaugurate its new permanent home with a new production of one of the company's most renowned and controversial productions, The Brig by Kenneth H. Brown, opening on 26 Apr 2007, following previews from 12 Apr and running through to 3 Jun 2007.

Written by a veteran who survived incarceration in a U.S. Marine Corps Brig during the Korean War, The Brig is a chilling portrait of the brutality of military prisons.

Directed by Judith Malina, The Brig features Johnson Anthony, Lewis Williams, Keshav Baggan, Gene Ardor, Antwan Ward, Jade Rothman, Satya Bhabha, Brad Burgess, Morteza Tavakoli, Albert Lamont, John Kohan, Jeff Nash, Bradford Rosenbloom, Brent Bradley and Joshua Roberts.

The Brig has not been presented in New York since The Living Theatre produced the play in 1963, when its won a Village Voice OBIE Award for Best Play.

The original production won the 1963 OBIE Award for Best Play. Following a surge of critical acclaim, congressman John Lindsay and then Democratic Party district leader of Greenwich Village Ed Koch called for the U.S. Congress to investigate the conditions in Marine Corps prisons. The theater was subsequently seized by the Internal Revenue Service and shut down to the public. During the ensuing trial, the court dismissed the tax charges against The Living Theatre but sentenced Judith Malina and co-Founder/Director Julian Beck to 30 and 60 days respectively for contempt of court.