‘After I’m Dead’: A tribute to a remarkable woman

by Ike Allen June 29, 2022June 29, 2022

This fall, Vivien Straus will perform a one-woman play she wrote about her mother, MALT co-founder Ellen Straus, in the family’s historic barn. The last time the barn hosted a performance was in 1971, when the 14-year-old Vivien directed a 4-H skit titled “The Scooby Dooby Washtub Band.” (Denise Rocco-Zilber)

She fled Amsterdam as the Nazis invaded, followed a fellow Jewish refugee to his idyllic coastal ranch and went on to shape West Marin’s agricultural landscape by co-founding the Marin Agricultural Land Trust. Ellen Straus, who died in 2002, had a life as idiosyncratic and influential as she was gregarious and goofy.

This fall, Ellen’s daughter Vivien Straus, an actress, playwright and manager of the Straus Home Ranch, will pay tribute to her mother’s…