PETA and animals have lost a great friend with the passing of the talented performance artist and teacher Rachel Rosenthal, who died at her home in Los Angeles last week.
Rachel’s provocative performances—which combined various media, including music, words, video, costumes, paintings, lighting, and dance—enraptured audiences from Carnegie Hall to Sydney to Brussels. They had a way of dancing around in the audience’s head for days after seeing them, much the way Rachel herself danced on stage.
Rachel’s innate empathy and life experiences (including fleeing the Nazis as a child in France) contributed, no doubt, to her desire to wake up the world through her art. A sometimes quiet yet often dramatic powerhouse of a person, Rachel was impressive for another reason as well: She practiced what she preached. A longtime vegetarian and animal rescuer, Rachel was famous for her many rescued rats, especially Tatti Wattles, who went with Rachel everywhere and was the subject of a whimsical book that was adored by children and adults alike. Rachel wrote this thought-provoking eulogy to Tatti after he died:
You were a beautiful creature, Tatti Wattles. I want to tell this to the world, for the world knows your kind as enemy, vermin, anonymous flesh pool to be used in abominable laboratory experiments or as food for snakes. I have known you as an individual, and I want to open people’s eyes to you as an individual—for it is only when we see others as individuals, unique, precious and irreplaceable that we will be ready to assume our full humanity. Only when we are capable of acknowledging that other creatures, human or not, have full rights under the sun—to live and die with dignity, respect and self-fulfilment—will we be able to claim all this for ourselves.
Rachel was also known for her Doing By Doing (D.B.D.) workshops, which included body exercises, breathing techniques, communication exercises, vocal experimentation, and improvisational dramatics. Her inspiration for these workshops was a special cat named Dibidi (“DBD”), whom Rachel wrote about in her chapter of my book One Can Make a Difference.
Dibidi had a terrible accident when she was 6 years old, falling off a porch and breaking her back. She was permanently paralyzed, but her will to live was undiminished. With Rachel’s assistance, she ran and jumped and even traveled. She lived for 12 more years, dying at the ripe old age of 18.
Rachel wrote:
Dibidi taught me the most important lesson in life: how to live with limitations. … During the years she was a paraplegic, I was developing acute degenerative arthritis in my knees. Inspired by her bravery, I continued to perform and live an active life in spite of my near-infirmity, just as she did. It is because of her that I have been able to teach so many people the importance of individual action, the beauty of loving relationships, and most of all, the importance of “Doing By Doing,” or D.B.D., the esoteric meaning of Dibidi’s name. And when I tell Dibidi’s story in my workshops, people always cry because this little cat’s soul and perseverance touches them like nothing else. They leave with the image of Dibidi to help them through their lives.
Rachel always left audiences wanting more—and wanting to do more. She took personal responsibility, something she challenged her audiences to do from the stage. She left those who watched her thinking through or rethinking their ideas about human behavior and obligations.
