Rachel Rosenthal, a renowned Los Angeles-based performance and theater artist who had a lasting legacy as an educator, including at UCLA, died of congestive heart failure on Sunday evening at her home in West Los Angeles. She was 88.
From her cross-country move to Los Angeles in the mid-1950s, Rosenthal had become a mainstay and bulwark of the city’s theatrical and artistic communities with her experimental avant-garde productions.
Rosenthal’s artistic endeavors rarely conformed to categorization. They free-formed into music, theater, dance and the visual arts, creating an interdisciplinary style that drew upon foundational themes like man’s relationship to the natural world, said Nahara Kalev, a UCLA master of fine arts alumna and close friend and pupil of Rosenthal.
While her career was bookended by explorations into improvisational theater, the middle of her artistic career featured solo shows as well as massive stagings that often included dozens of artists and, in the case of 1984’s “The Others,” dozens of animals.
Throughout her career, critical response to Rosenthal’s individual pieces fluctuated, but, even so, reviewers recognized her role in shaping contemporary experimental theater.
Her piece “Zone,” which premiered at UCLA in 1994, received a mixed review in a Los Angeles Times piece that still described Rosenthal as “the inimitable, bittersweet master of mood and insight.”
Sue-Ellen Case, a professor of theater at UCLA, said Rosenthal was known for pushing the boundaries of what was considered to be normal in the performative arts.
“She explored that fine line between our personal performance in our daily lives and our performances on stage,” Case said. “(Rosenthal) was really integral in bringing that connection to the forefront.”
Case recalled a performance where Rosenthal dressed up as a gorilla thinking about sophisticated thoughts while people jumped around in front of her and offered her bananas.
“The stuff she performed was radical, gender-bending and explosive,” Case said. “She was always breaking through our normative assumptions.”
The artist also left a lasting legacy as an educator through her time as a visiting faculty member at various institutions and her formation of innovative theater groups like the TOHUBOHU! Extreme Theatre Ensemble, which performs monthly theater shows of pure improvisation.
Kalev, who is also a member of TOHUBOHU!, credited Rosenthal for teaching her to listen to “the genie,” Rosenthal’s nickname for the artistic spirit that drives improvisation.
“There’s some basic principles at the heart of her work,” Kalev said. “Her real passion is in the present moment when you’re onstage and improvising.”
Rosenthal was born in 1926 in France to a Jewish family, moving to South America after the outset of World War II made conditions in Europe dangerous for her and her family.
Originally trained as a dancer, she spent her young adulthood in New York where she ran with a group of innovative avant-garde artists including John Cage and Merce Cunningham, before moving to the West Coast.
Her half-century at the forefront of the artistic sphere earned her a slew of awards and recognitions, including an Obie Award for her off-Broadway production, “Rachel’s Brain.”
In 2000, Los Angeles honored her as a living cultural treasure based on her contributions to the city’s artistic history. Rosenthal retired from the stage around the same time, but continued exploring art through different mediums.
Kalev said she transformed the upper studio in her home, which housed the multitudes of elaborate costumes Rosenthal used in her shows, into a massive space for the painting she would take up in her later years.
Outside of her art, Rosenthal was also well known for animal rights activism and took part in many protests against animal experimentation.
“Who gave us the right to say that we can do this to other species?” she told The Bruin during a 1997 rally at Meyerhoff Park. “We are all animals.”
Kalev said Rosenthal’s love of animals represents a compassion toward the world that will continue through her work, even after her death. TOHUBOHU! plans to continue its monthly shows in honor of Rosenthal, with its next performance scheduled for the end of May.
Rosenthal is survived by her nephew Eric Landau and her dog Fanny. Details on Rosenthal’s planned memorial have yet to be announced.