FREE ESSAY ON THE GROUP THEATER

THE GROUP THEATER

The Group Theatre began as a small company that provided actors and actresses with a means
and a location to practice plays. Three people, Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg, and Cheryl
Crawford formed The Group Theatre. The Group Theatre escalated in 1931 and ended abruptly
in 1941 - prevailing through the years there were hits, periods of flops, financial
straits, depressing inactivity, and spiraling to as glittering of a success as any on
Broadway. This story however is also the story of growth and development throughout
American cultural life in the thirties. 
The year is 1928, and the tedious beginning of The Group Theatre began when Harold
Clurman answered the call of a real estate man, Sidney Ross, who was thinking of going
into theatrical production and was seeking an aide of some kind. Clurman then contacted
his friend, Strasberg, and the two of them outlined their ideas. The proposal was quite
simple, they wanted to work on a play that had no formal production plans, but the work
would be instructive to the actors, and a new theatre might be born of their modest
efforts. After many weeks of rehearsals their play was viewed by an exclusive audience,
and Waldo Frank, who had written the play advised Ross that the play should be run, the
members reviewed the idea and came up with their own proposal-they would rehearse another
play, and if the outcome was the same response they would head to New York. After six
weeks they performed the play to about 100 people, and got the same response, however
nothing happened, and the experiment was finished. 
Cheryl Crawford urged Clurman to prepare for future by finding actors for their more
permanent company. Some actors that were considered were Franchot Tone, Morris Carnovsky,
Meisner, and others. Since The Group Theatre had no money, no plays, the meetings of the
actors were to be entirely unofficial. The new idea of The Group Theatre was to establish
a theatre in which the philosophy of life might be translated into a philosophy of the
theatre. Also there were to be no stars in this theatre, not for the negative purpose of
avoiding distinction, but because all distinction was to be personified in the production
as a whole. Word got around that The Group Theatre was meeting and that it was a "revolt"
against The Theatre Guild and Clurman was questioned. When he explained the situation to
Miss Helburn, the confrontation ended-as it turned out, the Guild agreed that The Group
Theatre could rehearse The House of Connelly, and have one thousand dollars. Another
contributor was Maxwell Anderson, who gave The Group Theatre one thousand five hundred
dollars, more later, and Edna Ferber, who contributed five hundred dollars as long as her
niece Janet Fox could join the summer work. Fox lost her ambition, but Ferber gave The
Group Theatre the money anyways. The Group Theatre found a location in Brookfield Center,
Connecticut to rehearse, and all actors were given a notice that they were leaving in a
few weeks - it was the only contract anyone had, but no one ever asked for another. On
June 8, 1931, twenty-eight actors, some wives, two children, and three directors left The
Theatre Guild building for Brookfield Center, Connecticut.
That first summer was a time of learning, there were tiffs between actors, especially
with Franchot Tone, who was a well known actor on Broadway, the type of living style each
actor had established over time, and with the mental state at which all actors were in.
One example of a time when the mental state was profusely questioned was when the actors
had gone to visit a nearby farmhouse and when they returned they were told that they
would not rehearse because they were too relaxed to rehearse. None of the actors soon
forgot that day. The Group Theatre didn't actually get the name The Group Theatre until
August of 1931, when they returned to New York, when the three directors decided that
that should be their name, since that is what they had always referred to it as. 
Their first production opening took place on the evening of September 23, 1931, at the
Martin Beck Theatre, New York City. By two am there were reviews already appearing, and
they were qualified raves. Later, Clurman came to realize that their first production was
not all that well produced. The actors could have been louder, the larger roles could
have been performed better, the set and lighting could have been better - etc. In
December The Group Theatre performed their second production, 1931, and after rehearsing
for eight weeks, the play closed in nine days. The next play performed was Night over
Taos, what closed The Group Theatre's first season. After the end of their first season,
some actors dropped out of The Group Theatre. One of their first successes was Men in
White, which was performed in The Group Theatre's third season - after struggles and
struggles; they were beginning to get somewhere. Other hits included Awake and Sing, and
Waiting for Lefty, which came later in their active years. 
The Group Theatre began to meet hardships, after several flops, the loss of actors, the
small reception for the actors, and the loss of funding. Actors were being asked to take
pay cuts, and they in turn were leaving The Group. While performing Waiting for Lefty,
there was a line in the play which offended some viewers, The Group Theatre then had to
backtrack, and write a letter saying that that was the line of the playwright not them,
and that they were not responsible for what the playwright says. When adding up the
problems and failures that The Group Theatre faced it was amazing that they were still
open. 
Soon the remaining members and new members were feeling a strain on their productions,
they awoke sleepily, practiced hard, and managed to continue to open plays. One play that
they really enjoyed working on turned out to be a flop, and even though the company was
fighting to keep the play open, there was a larger fight going on inside of the company.
The relations between Clurman and Strasberg had grown increasingly strained-with no
single reason for its blame. Clifford Odets, who The Group Theatre bought playwrights
from, was postponing rewrites, and revisions, causing a strain on the production numbers.
At some point The Group felt that there was no organization in their association. Stella
Adler, a major actress in The Group had gotten fed up and went to the coast. Soon Clurman
left New York and went to Hollywood, where he was engaged by Walter Wanger to assist in
the making of a picture that Clifford Odets was writing. Shortly after, Wanger put most
of The Group Theatre under contracts, except Stella Adler, who was put under contract to
Paramount. Work went well in the studio, until Odets lost interest in the script. In
April of 1937, Cheryl Crawford resigned. Shortly following Cheryl Crawford's lead, Lee
Strasberg also resigned. Strasberg and Crawford began their own production company, with
some of the actors from The Group Theatre joining the Crawford-Strasberg Theatre. Their
Theatre never got much further than making their announcement. Clurman drudged ahead with
another summer session. Odets and Luther Adler left for New York in early July, and in
August Clurman also returned to New York. Two acts of Odets new play, Golden Boy, was
waiting Clurman in New York. Although the play went into rehearsal there was no money for
the play to be produced. Clurman returned to Hollywood to visit Stella Adler, making The
Group believe that Adler and Clurman were going on to produce Golden Boy without them.
This was not true, and the Group Theater's production of Golden Boy turned out to be a
success and restored Franchot Tone's faith in The Group. 
After two hundred and forty eight performances of Golden Boy, Odets again was losing
interest and was having confrontations with members of The Group Theatre. After the
production of Night Music, The Group was falling to pieces, as was Clurman. Clurman
believed in The Group Theatre, and their continued life was not much of an option. The
fundamental economic instability of The Group accounts for much of its chaotic inner life
and explains more about its real deficiencies than any analysis of personal traits of its
individual members. 
The Group Theatre was destined to fail because its premise went against the American
grain. The Group Theatre aimed to develop the individual through a collective discipline
and a collective approach to the individual's problems; and America's culture is
fundamentally individualistic. The young people of the thirties were seeking "the good
life" -They were eager not only to find it but also to fight for it. The artists in the
thirties like the artists in all times were driven by the hope and desire for a fulfilled
life. In the struggle of The Group Theatre, the struggle itself was for the moral and
material world-to carry on in such a way that the sense of The Group at its finest and
strongest could be transformed to the uses of their own lives.
Bibliography
Works Cited
Clurman, Harold. The Fervent Years. Hearst Magazines, Inc. 1945
Kingsley, Sidney. Ed Nena Couch. Introduction. Five Prizewinning Plays. 
Ohio State University Press, 1995
"Odets, Clifford." Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica 
http://encarta.msn.com/find/Concise.asp?ti=06C96000