The Group Theatre Against The World Analysis

The Group Theatre Against the World “When I started out, I didn’t have any desire to be an actress or to learn how to act. I just wanted to be famous.” A line said by the illustrious Katharine Hepburn that accurately helps to describe how she felt about her early career and about, more specically, the ideals of The Group

Theatre. This idea of fame and fortune simply for the novelty of it, lacking substance, goes directly against every single that the Group believed in and stood for as a whole. For the Group, life was about the work. The pure, raw, honest joy of the work. This is an examination of that work and how it affected American theatre artists, playwrights, and even theatre-goers forever.

The legacy of the Group still lives on

They wpuld each go on to become theatrical legends but it all started with putting their heads and hearts together to bring about change. Clurman, Crawford and Strasberg were all sick and tired of the light entertainment that plagued American theatre at the time during the 1930s. Productions full of pizazz and flash but lacking potency and relevance. The goal was to put gather together an emsemble that could produce and perfrom productions that would stir up change in the world of that day. The basis of the group was an ensemble mindset from the get go. The concern was for the actors to know each other and have healthy relationships off stage so their on stage relationshops seemed more believable and real per say, because well, they were. This was only part of the ensemble approach however, because this also meant that the fame of indivaiduals was secondary. Resulting in, no matter the size of the role, all of the actors always bowing together. This further pushed the idea of cohesiveness in the Group. This cohesiveness helped them to not only be believable but to pull off their polictical and emotional shows with ease. People believed it and responded ravingly. The Group was a

Odets was there from the very beginning. Harold Clurman himself approached Odets after seeing Odets on stage in a play produced by The Theatre Guild. Clurman aske dOdets if he would be interested in getting together for some meeting with other actors because he and some colleagues were looking to start a theatre. Odets accepted and the rest is history. From the very get go, every meeting from the groud up, Odets was there, watching The Group Theatre form. He started out as an actor and student of the theatre and then went on to write some of its most successful plays: one which received twenty-eight curtain calls to be exact, a little play you may have heard of once or twice by the name of “Waiting for Lefty.” Shortly after came the Broadway smash, “Awake and Sing!”, and though Odets raving success with plays done by The Group seemed to dissipate along with its own personal demise, he had already done more than enough to be solidified in history as a serious, groundbreaking oplaywright (and enough to sign a movie contract in Hollywood for his work!). Harold Clurman, Odets mentor as we know, after the premiere of “Waiting for Lefty” was cited as saying: "[Waiting for Lefty] ... was the birth cry of the thirties. Our youth had found its voice. It was a call to join the good fight for a greater measure of life ... to strike for the full stature of man." And that