Harold Clurman Harold Edgar Clurman (September 18, 1901 – September 9, 1980) was an American theatre director and drama critic. In 2003, he was named one of the most influential figures in U.S. theater by PBS.

Cheryl Crawford Cheryl Crawford (September 24, 1902 – October 7, 1986) was an American theatre producer and director. Biography Born in Akron, Ohio, Crawford majored in drama at Smith College. Following graduation in 1925, she moved to New York City and ...

Lee Strasberg Lee Strasberg (born Israel Strassberg; November 17, 1901 – February 17, 1982) was an American theatre director, actor and acting teacher. He co-founded, with theatre directors Harold Clurman and Cheryl Crawford, the Group Theatre in 1931 ...

Konstantin Stanislavski Konstantin Sergeyevich Stanislavski ( Alekseyev; russian: Константин Сергеевич Станиславский, p=kənstɐnʲˈtʲin sʲɪrˈgʲejɪvʲɪtɕ stənʲɪˈslafskʲɪj; 7 August 1938) was a seminal Soviet Russian ...

playwright A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays. Etymology The word "play" is from Middle English pleye, from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause"). The word "wright" is an archaic English ...

Clifford Odets Clifford Odets (July 18, 1906 – August 14, 1963) was an American playwright, screenwriter, and actor. In the mid-1930s, he was widely seen as the potential successor to Nobel Prize-winning playwright Eugene O'Neill, as O'Neill began to withdra ...

Sidney Kingsley Sidney Kingsley (22 October 1906 – 20 March 1995) was an American dramatist. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play '' Men in White'' in 1934. Life and career Kingsley was born Sidney Kirschner in New York. He studied at ...

Robert Ardrey Robert Ardrey (October 16, 1908 – January 14, 1980) was an American playwright, screenwriter and science writer perhaps best known for ''The Territorial Imperative'' (1966). After a Broadway and Hollywood career, he returned to his academic tr ...

Irwin Shaw Irwin Shaw (February 27, 1913 – May 16, 1984) was an American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and short-story author whose written works have sold more than 14 million copies. He is best known for two of his novels: '' The Young Lions'' ...

Stella Adler Stella Adler (February 10, 1901 – December 21, 1992) was an American actress and acting teacher.
''

Luther Adler Luther Adler (born Lutha Adler; May 4, 1903 – December 8, 1984) was an American actor best known for his work in theatre, but who also worked in film and television. He also directed plays on Broadway. Early life and career Adler was born on ...

, Clifford Odets' ''

Awake and Sing ''Awake and Sing!'' is a drama written by American playwright Clifford Odets. The play was initially produced by The Group Theatre in 1935. Summary and characters The play is set in The Bronx borough of New York City, New York, in 1933. It co ...

'', '' Waiting for Lefty'', ''

Paradise Lost ''Paradise Lost'' is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton (1608–1674). The first version, published in 1667, consists of ten books with over ten thousand lines of verse. A second edition followed in 16 ...

'', and the 1937–38 Broadway hit '' Golden Boy'', starring

Luther Adler Luther Adler (born Lutha Adler; May 4, 1903 – December 8, 1984) was an American actor best known for his work in theatre, but who also worked in film and television. He also directed plays on Broadway. Early life and career Adler was born on ...

and

Frances Farmer Frances Elena Farmer (September 19, 1913August 1, 1970) was an American actress and television hostess. She appeared in over a dozen feature films over the course of her career, though she garnered notoriety for sensationalized accounts of her l ...

. The Group Theatre included Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg, Cheryl Crawford, Stella Adler (a founding member),

Morris Carnovsky Morris Carnovsky (September 5, 1897 – September 1, 1992) was an American stage and film actor. He was one of the founders of the Group Theatre (1931-1940) in New York City and had a thriving acting career both on Broadway and in films un ...

,

Clifford Odets Clifford Odets (July 18, 1906 – August 14, 1963) was an American playwright, screenwriter, and actor. In the mid-1930s, he was widely seen as the potential successor to Nobel Prize-winning playwright Eugene O'Neill, as O'Neill began to withdra ...

,

Sanford Meisner Sanford Meisner (August 31, 1905 – February 2, 1997) was an American actor and acting teacher who developed an approach to acting instruction that is now known as the Meisner technique. While Meisner was exposed to method acting at the Grou ...

,

Elia Kazan Elia Kazan (; born Elias Kazantzoglou ( el, Ηλίας Καζαντζόγλου); September 7, 1909 – September 28, 2003) was an American film and theatre director, producer, screenwriter and actor, described by ''The New York Times'' as "one o ...

,

Harry Morgan Harry Morgan (born Harry Bratsberg; April 10, 1915 – December 7, 2011) was an American actor and director whose television and film career spanned six decades. Morgan's major roles included Pete Porter in both ''December Bride'' (1954–1959 ...

(billed as Harry Bratsburg), Robert Lewis,

John Garfield John Garfield (born Jacob Julius Garfinkle, March 4, 1913 – May 21, 1952) was an American actor who played brooding, rebellious, working-class characters. He grew up in poverty in New York City. In the early 1930s, he became a member of ...

(billed as Jules Garfield),

Canada Lee Canada Lee (born Leonard Lionel Cornelius Canegata; March 3, 1907 – May 9, 1952) was an American professional boxer and then an actor who pioneered roles for African Americans. After careers as a jockey, boxer and musician, he became an actor ...

,

Franchot Tone Stanislaus Pascal Franchot Tone (February 27, 1905 – September 18, 1968) was an American actor, producer, and director of stage, film and television. He was a leading man in the 1930s and early 1940s, and at the height of his career was known ...

,

Frances Farmer Frances Elena Farmer (September 19, 1913August 1, 1970) was an American actress and television hostess. She appeared in over a dozen feature films over the course of her career, though she garnered notoriety for sensationalized accounts of her l ...

,

Phoebe Brand Phoebe Brand (November 27, 1907 – July 3, 2004) was an American actress. Life Brand was born in Syracuse, New York in 1907 and raised in Ilion, Herkimer County, New York. Her father worked for Remington Typewriter Company as a mechanical e ...

, Ruth Nelson,

Will Geer Will Geer (born William Aughe Ghere; March 9, 1902 – April 22, 1978) was an American actor, musician, and social activist, who was active in labor organizing and other movements in New York and Southern California in the 1930s and 1940s. In C ...

,

Howard Da Silva Howard Da Silva (born Howard Silverblatt, May 4, 1909 – February 16, 1986) was an American actor, director and musical performer on stage, film, television and radio. He was cast in dozens of productions on the New York stage, appeared in mo ...

,

Sidney Lumet Sidney Arthur Lumet ( ; June 25, 1924 – April 9, 2011) was an American film director. He was nominated five times for the Academy Award: four for Best Director for ''12 Angry Men'' (1957), '' Dog Day Afternoon'' (1975), ''Network'' (1976 ...

, John Randolph,

Joseph Bromberg Joseph Edward Bromberg (born Josef Bromberger, December 25, 1903 – December 6, 1951) was a Hungarian-born American character actor in motion picture and stage productions dating mostly from the 1930s and 1940s. Knowledge of his past as a membe ...

, Michael Gordon, Paul Green,

Marc Blitzstein Marcus Samuel Blitzstein (March 2, 1905January 22, 1964), was an American composer, lyricist, and librettist. He won national attention in 1937 when his pro- union musical ''The Cradle Will Rock'', directed by Orson Welles, was shut down by the W ...

,

Paul Strand Paul Strand (October 16, 1890 – March 31, 1976) was an American photographer and filmmaker who, along with fellow modernist photographers like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, helped establish photography as an art form in the 20th century ...

,

Anna Sokolow Anna Sokolow (February 9, 1910, Hartford, Connecticut – March 29, 2000, Manhattan, New York City) was an American dancer and choreographer known for the social justice focus and theatricality of her work, and for her support of the developm ...

, Lee J. Cobb,

Roman Bohnen Roman Aloys Bohnen (November 24, 1901 – February 24, 1949) was an American actor. He is perhaps best known for his roles in the films ''Of Mice and Men'' (1939), '' The Song of Bernadette'' (1943), and ''The Best Years of Our Lives'' (194 ...

,

Jay Adler Jay Adler (August 4, 1896 – September 24, 1978) was an American actor in theater, television, and film. Early life Born in New York City, he was the eldest son of actors Jacob and Sara Adler, and the brother of five actor siblings, including st ...

, Luther Adler,

Robert Ardrey Robert Ardrey (October 16, 1908 – January 14, 1980) was an American playwright, screenwriter and science writer perhaps best known for ''The Territorial Imperative'' (1966). After a Broadway and Hollywood career, he returned to his academic tr ...

, Don Richardson and many others.

History

The Group Theatre's first production was Paul Green's ''The House of Connelly'' on September 23, 1931 at the

Martin Beck Theatre The Al Hirschfeld Theatre, originally the Martin Beck Theatre, is a Broadway theater at 302 West 45th Street in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. Opened in 1924, it was designed by G. Albert Lansburgh in a Moorish a ...

. The company asked the

Theatre Guild The Theatre Guild is a theatrical society founded in New York City in 1918 by Lawrence Langner, Philip Moeller, Helen Westley and Theresa Helburn. Langner's wife, Armina Marshall, then served as a co-director. It evolved out of the work of th ...

to help cover the $5,000 cost to perform. The Theatre Guild offered to pay the full amount if the group "removed

Mary Morris Mary Lilian Agnes Morris (13 December 1915 – 14 October 1988) was a Fijian born British actress. Life and career Morris was the daughter of Herbert Stanley Morris, a botanist, and his wife, Sylvia Ena de Creft-Harford. She trained at the Ro ...

and

Morris Carnovsky Morris Carnovsky (September 5, 1897 – September 1, 1992) was an American stage and film actor. He was one of the founders of the Group Theatre (1931-1940) in New York City and had a thriving acting career both on Broadway and in films un ...

from the cast and restored the tragic ending" from the more upbeat and hopeful rewrite Green produced. The group refused and instead raised half on its own, receiving support from Eugene O'Neill. The play was an immediate critical success and was recognized for the special ensemble performances which the group would develop. The group's production of John Howard Lawson's '' Success Story,'' which chronicled the rise of a youthful idealist who sacrifices his principles as he rises to the top of the advertising business, received very mixed reviews, with

Luther Adler Luther Adler (born Lutha Adler; May 4, 1903 – December 8, 1984) was an American actor best known for his work in theatre, but who also worked in film and television. He also directed plays on Broadway. Early life and career Adler was born on ...

and

Stella Adler Stella Adler (February 10, 1901 – December 21, 1992) was an American actress and acting teacher.
''

Dawn Powell's dark comedy ''Big Night'', rehearsed it for six months and asked for extensive revisions from the playwright. The result was a critical and box-office disaster that ran a scant nine performances. Harold Clurman, who took over the production late in the rehearsal period, later admitted the group's role in the fiasco. "The play should have been done in four swift weeks — or not at all. We worried it and harried our actors with it for months." Later, during the first full season (1933–34), '' Men in White'', written by

Sidney Kingsley Sidney Kingsley (22 October 1906 – 20 March 1995) was an American dramatist. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play '' Men in White'' in 1934. Life and career Kingsley was born Sidney Kirschner in New York. He studied at ...

, directed by Lee Strasberg and produced by

Sidney Harmon Sidney Harmon (April 30, 1907 – February 29, 1988) was a movie producer and screenwriter. Harmon was nominated for the 1942 Academy Award for Best Story for the movie '' The Talk of the Town''. He began his career working as a writer for radi ...

, became a financial success for the group. It won the

Pulitzer Prize for Drama The Pulitzer Prize for Drama is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It is one of the original Pulitzers, for the program was inaugurated in 1917 with seven prizes, four of which were a ...

. On the night of January 5, 1935, some members of the group participated in a benefit performance for the ''New Theatre Magazine''. Written by Clifford Odets and directed by Odets and Sanford Meisner, the one-act play '' Waiting for Lefty'' was performed at the Civic Repertory Theatre in New York City and became a theatrical legend. The play reflects a kind of street poetry that brought great acclaim to the group and to Odets as the new voice of social drama in the 1930s. Odets became the playwright most strongly identified with the group, and its productions of ''

Awake and Sing! ''Awake and Sing!'' is a drama written by American playwright Clifford Odets. The play was initially produced by The Group Theatre in 1935. Summary and characters The play is set in The Bronx borough of New York City, New York, in 1933. It con ...

'' and ''Paradise Lost'', both directed in 1935 by Harold Clurman, proved to be excellent vehicles for the Stanislavskian aesthetic. The following year, the group produced the Paul Green-

Kurt Weill Kurt Julian Weill (March 2, 1900April 3, 1950) was a German-born American composer active from the 1920s in his native country, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fru ...

anti-war musical '' Johnny Johnson'', directed by Strasberg. Group-Theatre-1938

The Group Theatre's most successful production was the 1937–38 Broadway hit '' Golden Boy''.

Elia Kazan Elia Kazan (; born Elias Kazantzoglou ( el, Ηλίας Καζαντζόγλου); September 7, 1909 – September 28, 2003) was an American film and theatre director, producer, screenwriter and actor, described by ''The New York Times'' as "one o ...

directed

Robert Ardrey Robert Ardrey (October 16, 1908 – January 14, 1980) was an American playwright, screenwriter and science writer perhaps best known for ''The Territorial Imperative'' (1966). After a Broadway and Hollywood career, he returned to his academic tr ...

's plays ''

Casey Jones John Luther "Casey" Jones (March 14, 1863 – April 30, 1900) was an American railroader who was killed when his passenger train collided with a stalled freight train at Vaughan, Mississippi. Jones was a locomotive engineer for the Illinois ...

'' and '' Thunder Rock'' in 1938 and 1939–40 for the Group Theatre. The group gathered at different summer locations to rehearse and train intensively for six of its 10 years in existence. The group spent the summer of 1931 at Brookfield Center, 1936 at

Pine Brook Country Club Pine Brook Country Club is a private lake association in Nichols, Connecticut, a village within the Town of Trumbull. It began when Benjamin Plotkin purchased Pinewood Lake and the surrounding countryside on Mischa Hill. Plotkin built an audito ...

, located near

Nichols, Connecticut Nichols, a historic village in southeastern Trumbull in Fairfield County, Connecticut, is named after the family who maintained a large farm in its center for almost 300 years. The Nichols Farms Historic District, which encompasses part of ...

. Other summer venues included

Brookfield Center, Connecticut Brookfield Center is a census-designated place (CDP) in the town of Brookfield, Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. It includes the Brookfield Center Historic District around the intersection of Connecticut Routes 25 and 133 133 may ...

(1931); Dover Furnace in

Dutchess County, New York Dutchess County is a county in the U.S. state of New York. As of the 2020 census, the population was 295,911. The county seat is the city of Poughkeepsie. The county was created in 1683, one of New York's first twelve counties, and later or ...

(1932); Green Mansions in

Warrensburg, New York Warrensburg is a town in Warren County, New York, United States. It is centrally located in the county, west of Lake George. It is part of the Glens Falls metropolitan area. The town population was 4,255 at the 2000 census. While the county is ...

in 1933; a large house in

Ellenville, New York Ellenville is a village within the town of Wawarsing, Ulster County, New York, United States. Its population was 4,135 at the 2010 census. Geography The village of Ellenville is about 90 miles northwest of New York City and 90 miles southwest ...

(1934); and Lake Grove in

Smithtown, New York Smithtown is a town in Suffolk County, New York on the North Shore of Long Island. It is part of the New York metropolitan area. The population was 116,296 at the 2020 Census. The census-designated place (CDP) of Smithtown lies within the town ...

in 1939. Despite its success and sweeping impact on the American theater landscape for many years to come, the group ended by 1941, and factors included the impending war, the lure of fame and fortune in Hollywood, the lack of institutional funding, and the friction of interpersonal relationships.

Broadway productions

Influence

After the war, in 1947, Robert Lewis, Elia Kazan, and Cheryl Crawford founded the

Actors Studio The Actors Studio is a membership organization for professional actors, theatre directors and playwrights at 432 West 44th Street between Ninth and Tenth avenues in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It was founde ...

, where the techniques inspired by Stanislavski and developed in the Group Theatre were refined. Under the leadership of Lee Strasberg, who later joined the Actors Studio and became its director in 1951, what is now referred to as The Method emerged as a lasting force in modern drama. Institutionally, the Group Theatre influenced the

Chelsea Theater Center The Chelsea Theater Center was a not-for-profit theater company founded in 1965 by Robert Kalfin, a graduate of the Yale School of Drama. It opened its doors in a church in the Chelsea district of Manhattan, then moved to the Brooklyn Academy ...

, a later theater in New York (1960s and 1970s), born of idealism and destroyed by lack of funding and friction between its co-directors.

Harold Prince Harold Smith Prince (born Harold Smith; January 30, 1928 – July 31, 2019), commonly known as Hal Prince, was an American theatre director and producer known for his work in musical theatre. One of the foremost figures in 20th century America ...

invokes the group in his foreword to the book '' Chelsea on the Edge: The Adventures of an American Theater.'' In the 1950s, many of the former members were called before the

House Un-American Activities Committee The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), popularly dubbed the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was an investigative United States Congressional committee, committee of the United States House of Representatives, create ...

(HUAC). Those who appeared as friendly witnesses, such as Elia Kazan, Clifford Odets, and Lee J. Cobb, avoided the fate of their colleagues who refused to name Communist Party members and, as a result, were

blacklist Blacklisting is the action of a group or authority compiling a blacklist (or black list) of people, countries or other entities to be avoided or distrusted as being deemed unacceptable to those making the list. If someone is on a blacklist, ...

ed. Elia Kazan would later state he abandoned his Communist views in part because of an agenda to transform the Group Theatre into a company devoted to promoting "Marxist ideology." Odets would share similar concerns after experiencing pressure from the party to change the direction of his writing. The Group Theatre is described in Robert Lewis's ''Slings And Arrows, Theater in My Life'', Elia Kazan's A Life, and Harold Clurman's ''The Fervent Years''.

References

{{Authority control Arts organizations established in 1931 1931 establishments in New York City Organizations disestablished in 1941 1941 disestablishments in New York (state) Defunct Theatre companies in New York City