Joan MacIntosh: Interview, July 2008

Abstract

Richard and I both arrived in NY in the fall of 1967. I first saw him in early September when I went to NYU for a meeting about the scholarship I had received for the MFA program in Acting. Actually, a year before, one of my teachers at Beaver College had given me a Tulane Drama Review [Spring 1964] to read about The Living Theatre, in which Richard had interviewed Judith Malina, and reading that interview had completely changed my life. The world they spoke of was what I was looking for. “There must be more of that kind of theatre out there,” I thought. Anyway, the day I came to NYU to meet about my scholarship I first saw Richard, not knowing who he was. He had just arrived from Tulane and was lying on the floor of his empty office cubicle talking on the phone, propped up by an elbow, legs up in a kind of lotus position. Our eyes met. “Who is this man,” I thought. And then, on the first day of class, I saw him in the elevator. It was raining and he was wearing a raincoat, which I later learned was Robert W. Corrigan’s, and it was much too big for him. He had this long hair, which was wet, and a bushy mustache, and a potbelly. He was looking at me out of the corner of his eye. I thought he was some kind of pervert. Then the elevator door opened, we walked into the same classroom, he went up to the podium, and he said, “Good evening, class.”