Ruth Maleczech
| Ruth Maleczech | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Ruth Sophia Reinprecht January 8, 1939 Cleveland, Ohio, U.S |
| Died | September 30, 2013 (aged 74) Brooklyn, New York, U.S |
| Occupation | Actress |
Ruth Maleczech (January 8, 1939 – September 30, 2013) was an American avant-garde stage actress. She won three Obie Awards for Best Actress in her career, for Hajj (1983), Through the Leaves, (1984) and Lear (1990) and an Obie Award for Design, shared with Julie Archer, for Vanishing Pictures (1980), which she also directed. Her performance as Lear was widely acclaimed: her King Lear was portrayed as an imperious Southern matriarch.
Maleczech was born in Cleveland, Ohio as Ruth Sophia Reinprecht, to Yugoslavian immigrant parents, a steel worker and a seamstress, and raised in Phoenix, Arizona. Maleczech was the first in her family to attend college, beginning theater studies at UCLA at 16. From there she went to San Francisco to work, first, with Herbert Blau at The Actor’s Workshop, then with Ronnie Davis in what became the San Francisco Mime Troupe.
In San Francisco, she met and lived with Mabou Mines co-founder Lee Breuer. In 1964, they went to Paris and for six years earned money dubbing films, sufficient to fund their burgeoning theatrical experiments. In Europe, Maleczech and Breuer met David Warrilow and fellow ex-pats JoAnne Akalaitis and Philip Glass. In France, Maleczech and Akalaitis studied with the Polish director and drama theorist Jerzy Grotowski; Maleczech also spent a month in East Berlin studying, observing rehearsals and attending performances by Bertolt Brecht’s storied Berliner Ensemble.
Returning to the U.S., Maleczech co-founded the experimental N.Y.C. theater company Mabou Mines, in 1970, along with Akalaitis, Breuer, Glass and Warrilow. Shortly thereafter they were joined by Fred Neumann, whom they had known and worked with in Europe. Maleczech collaborated on nearly every piece Mabou Mines produced. She is possessed of “a theatrical vision…antithetical to almost everything contemporary American theater is about… [She is an] inspiration as an artist, a feminist and a creative spirit” (Women in Theatre).
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