Marlene Rasnick, 57; Improv Artist, Advocate of Medical Marijuana

Marlene Rasnick, an improvisational theater performer, director and instructor who became a spokeswoman for medicinal use of marijuana after she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, has died of the disease. She was 57.

Rasnick died Nov. 18 at her Los Angeles home after a four-year battle in which she became a nationally publicized advocate of the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center.

The performer was among those who benefited from passage of Proposition 215, a 1996 initiative that permitted small amounts of marijuana to be grown and dispensed for medicinal purposes.

But last month, five months after the U.S. Supreme Court all but invalidated the California law, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration raided the marijuana club in West Hollywood and dug up its plants. Rasnick was among 960 members who, with a doctor’s consent, obtained marijuana there.

Smoking marijuana, Rasnick said in numerous interviews, eased the side effects of chemotherapy prescribed for her post-surgical cancer treatment.

“It takes away physical, negative symptoms,” she told CNN in 1998. “And it also gives me a little feeling of well-being. That’s, well, kind of nice and pleasant.”

Rasnick appeared on television advocating medicinal marijuana, telling “CBS This Morning” in 1999: “It calms me down. It takes the edge off the pain. It soothes the nausea.”

Last year, after the Supreme Court decision in a Northern California case threatened her supply of marijuana, Rasnick told The Times that the drug “has been my best defender, both from the disease and the therapy. Without it, I don’t know what I’d do.”

Born in Los Angeles, Rasnick studied theater arts at UCLA and, in 1973, co-founded Public Works Improvisational Theatre.

That year she performed and co-directed her first original play, “Purse Strings,” about the relationship of women and money. Rasnick specialized in autobiographical improv, mixing theater games, poetry and original songs to depict themes rooted in her own life.

Through the 1970s, she acted in and directed regular free-form improvisational performances based on titles or ideas suggested by her audiences.

After she met her husband, Lee Boek, in 1977, she began working with him on improvisational theater pieces. Their first joint creation was “Coming Close,” based on her own family. Among their other collaborations were “Tai Chiapas,” “A Whale’s Tale,” “Street Heat,” “The Spirit of Defiance,” “Shooting Someone Dancing,” “Up South” and, in July, “IM-PRO-VIZ-MO.”

Throughout Rasnick’s performing and directing career, she also taught workshops funded by the California Arts Council and others for several categories of people, including professional actors, urban youths, senior citizens and the deaf. In 1994, she taught for six weeks at the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal.

Rasnick utilized her theatrical skills regularly during her seven years as activities director at Sunset Hall Retirement Center. And, despite her illness, she continued to teach weekly Children’s Theatre Games workshops until a couple of weeks before her death.

She is survived by her husband.