In July 1957 Julian Beck and Judith Malina, the founders of The Living Theatre, were arrested with Dorothy Day and members of the Catholic Worker community for protesting the civil defense drills in New York City. They were sentenced to thirty days in jail. Julian Beck spent his confinement on Hart Island and in The Tombs in lower Manhattan, keeping notes for a journal at the time and amplifying them over the following two months. The experience led him to examine his role as an artist and subsequently commit his life and art to nonviolent anarchist revolution.
