Sheen, who is an actor as well as a political activist, remembers what happened one night when he was working with director Julian Beck at the Living Theatre. A large man came into theater demanding to see one of the actors. Beck calmly asked him to give him a message or leave, because he was creating a disturbance. The man hit Beck across the face and Beck fell down the stairs into Sheen. "Julian righted himself, took a deep breath, and then very calmly walked back up to the man and again in the same compassionate manner asked him to leave," Sheen wrote. "The man was so completely disarmed and shamed that he simply looked away ... going back down the stairs and out the door. In that instant the personal cost of nonviolence was as clear to me as the blood red imprint of the man's hand on the side of Julian's face."
