Ruth Maleczech

Ruth Maleczech was an American actress of the avant-garde stage who entered UCLA at 16 to study theater and helped found the experimental New York company Mabou Mines in 1970 alongside JoAnne Akalaitis, Lee Breuer, Philip Glass and David Warrilow. Born in Cleveland and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, she first worked in San Francisco with the Actor's Workshop and the San Francisco Mime Troupe before spending six years in Paris, where she dubbed films and studied with Jerzy Grotowski. She took part in almost every Mabou Mines production and directed or adapted pieces such as Wrong Guys, Vanishing Pictures and Samuel Beckett's Imagination Dead Imagine. She received three Obie Awards for best actress, for Hajj, Through the Leaves and Lear, and a design award with Julie Archer for Vanishing Pictures. Her Lear, played as an imperious Southern matriarch, drew wide acclaim. She appeared in feature films and on series including Law & Order and ER, and she died in 2013.