George Bartenieff

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George Michael Bartenieff (January 24, 1933 – July 30, 2022) was an American stage and film actor known for his work in downtown New York’s avant-garde theatre and for his roles in both commercial and independent films and on television. Born in Berlin to Jewish dancer parents, his family fled the Nazis and settled in the United States. He made his stage debut at 14 in The Whole World Over (1947) and later trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, where he fell in love with Shakespeare.

Back in the United States, Bartenieff worked with Andre Gregory and appeared on Broadway in nine productions, Off-Broadway in nineteen, in eighteen films, and in twenty-one television episodes across fourteen programs. He co-founded Theatre for the New City and helped start the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade, and he also did street theatre and provocative performances, including a protest against the Lower Manhattan Expressway.

In 1970, with his wife Karen Malpede and other collaborators, he helped launch Theatre for the New City at the Westbeth complex. He stayed there for 24 years as performer, director, and producer, until financial concerns led him back to his own practice. He and Malpede then formed Theater Three Collaborative and created I Will Bear Witness, based on Victor Klemperer’s diaries.

Bartenieff won a Special Obie Award for Sustained Excellence in 1977 through TNC, earned a 2001 Obie for I Will Bear Witness, and received the 2006 Drama Desk Award for Stuff Happens. He taught at the City University of New York and at a Brooklyn high school. He died in New York City on July 30, 2022, at the age of 89.