We recently connected with Karen Malpede and have shared our conversation below.
Karen, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
From Nature. Nature is under terrific attack from human life. We on the verge of destroying the very planet that nurtures us. But nature endures. Nature continues; we know this because we
continue, too. Nature provides sustenance. Take a walk in the woods. If you live in a city as I do, take a walk in a park. Hug a tree, feel its pulse. Watch how your houseplants reach toward the
sun. It is in our nature to be resilient. And it is in our nature to nurture community among us. Feel for someone else. Give to someone else—that is incredibly sustaining. A tree in the forest
alerts other trees to a coming insect invasion, so the other trees can prepare themselves, sometimes by secreting toxins to dispel the invader. Trees communicate through their intricate pattern of roots—they are entangled under the ground and they work together to sustain the forest. So, are we entangled, one with every other, and so must we work together to sustain life. Find community. There is resilience in community.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I am a playwright, a director and a writer, and a peace and justice activist. These activities are entwined and feed off and inspire one another. I’ve written 22 produced plays, and my memoir <i>Last Radiance: Radical Lives, Bright Deaths</i> is out 10/28.
Before then, I wrote books about the theater. I write poetic plays about how people change and how people heal. That is what is special about my plays—their poetic language and their reparative journeys. People are changed by watching my plays. That is so exciting and special. I’ve met most of my dearest friends through the work I do. What is also exciting about what I do is that I have had the pleasure of working with fantastic actors, designers, and composers. I’ve met the most amazing other artists. One of my closest friends is considered to be one of the finest classical actors in Greece. She is also a TV star. She has directed one of my plays and starred in another. I watch an audience watch my work, and be changed by my plays in production. I sit or stand at the back of the audience, so I can gauge their attention. It has been scientifically proven that during a good, live performance, people begin to breathe together, which means, also, that their hearts beat together in rhythm.
In 1995, I co-founded Theater Three Collaborative with Lee Nagrin, a brilliant, Greenwich Village actor, dancer, and George Bartenieff, my husband, an actor/producer of international repute. So, I nurture community by working with the same people again and again, and by writing specific roles for them that I know they could play brilliantly—and they, too, have been changed.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
The love of animals. I rode horses as a young person. I learned from these big, gentle, wide-eyed animals how to gain the respect of creatures many times my size, how to be calm and cool and collected, how to fall off and get up and get back on. Since I stopped riding horses, I have had dogs. Dogs were Jane Goodall’s favorite animals, even though she made her mark on science and conservation by studying chimpanzees. Dogs are amazingly empathic animals, so are horses, but dogs can sleep in bed with you, hang out in the house, and they can live in the city where I have made my home. I have had a collie, a sheltie, and a string of four cocker spaniels. If you love an animal, you have a source of unconditional love. When the going gets tough, you take your dog for a walk—walking is a great way to become re-inspired, to think of a solution to an intractable problem, and your dog is right by your side the entire time. So the most important things: find someone to love, human or animal; if you fall off, get up and get back on, and keep on trekking. You will get where you are going, but only if you keep on keeping on.
Alright, so before we go we want to ask you to take a moment to reflect and share what you think you would do if you somehow knew you only had a decade of life left?
Guess what? I do only have one decade left to live (unless, of course, I live into my nineties, which, frankly, I have no desire to do.) I will spend it as I have spent my life: doing yoga, walking my beautiful cocker spaniel, Percy, in Fort Greene Park, eating organic, vegetarian food. I also expect to continue to make new friends, decades younger than myself, and to be with my old friends, whom I have known for decades.
I will continue watching my grandchildren grow up and talking with my daughter. Oh, yes, of course, I will continue to write plays, articles, another book, perhaps. I’ve always done these things. I even continue to ride horses whenever I get the chance—most recently, last Christmas in Ecuador.
I don’t teach much anymore, but I still do teach occasionally. I march and protest for Peace and Justice, of course. I’ve been marching for Gaza and for justice for immigrants in the US, most recently. And, I shall continue to miss, mourn, and memorialize my creative-partner-husband, the brilliant actor, George Bartenieff, who died three years ago at the age of 89 ½, in my arms, in our bed, after a series of illnesses, including multiple myeloma. His last performance, the year before, was in a play, Blue Valiant, which I wrote for him and Kathleen Chalfant (Best Actress, Venice Film Festival, 2023). George’s death was the inspiration for my memoir, <i>Last Radiance: Radical Lives, Bright Deaths</i>. Thoreau wrote, “Beware of having to change your clothes.” I love clothes and I change mine all the time, but I translate: “beware of having to do anything that takes you away from your authentic self.”
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.theaterthreecollaborative.org/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/karen.malpede/
- Other: https://www.amazon.com/Last-Radiance-Radical-Bright-Deaths/dp/3988321761
Image Credits
Karen Malpede
