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The Group Theatre was a theater collective, formed in New York in 1931 by Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford and Lee Strasberg. It was intended as a base for the kind of theater they and their colleagues believed in — a forceful, naturalistic and highly disciplined artistry. They were pioneers of what would become an "American acting technique," derived from the teachings of Konstantin Stanislavski, but pushed beyond as well. The company included actors, directors, playwrights and producers. The name "Group" came from the idea of the actors as a pure ensemble; there were to be no "stars."
In the ten years of its existence, the Group Theatre produced works by many important American playwrights, most notably Clifford Odets and Irwin Shaw. Its most successful production was the 1937-38 Broadway hit Golden Boy, starring Luther Adler and Frances Farmer.
The Group included Elia Kazan, Stella Adler, Robert Lewis, Frances Farmer, John Garfield (who was billed under the name Jules Garfield), Franchot Tone, Luther Adler, Phoebe Brand, Roman Bohnen, Ruth Nelson, Kermit Bloomgaarden, Will Geer, Howard Da Silva, John Randolph, Joseph Bromberg, Michael Gordon, Paul Green, Clifford Odets, Paul Strand, Morris Carnovsky, Sanford Meisner and Lee J. Cobb, among many others.
Early productions
The company's first production was Paul Green's "The House of Connelly" on September 23, 1931, at the Martin Beck Theater. It was an immediate critical success and was recognized for the special ensemble perfomances which the Group would further develop. Playwright Green, however, was not happy with the more hopeful, upbeat ending that the Group had imposed on his brooding work. 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, won generally favorable reviews for its script, and enthusiastic praise for Luther Adler's starring performance. Later, during the first full season (1933-34), "Men In White," written by Sidney Kingsley and directed by Lee Strasberg, became the Group's first financial success and also won the Pulitzer Prize.
The Group took on novelist Dawn Powell's dark comedy Big Night, rehearsed it for close to 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."
On the night of January 5, 1935, the Group gave a benefit performance of the one-act play, "Waiting For Lefty," by Clifford Odets, at the Civic Repertory Theatre in New York City. The play reflected a kind of street poetry that brought great acclaim to the Group, and to Odets as the new voice of social drama in the thirties. Odets became the playwright most strongly identified with the Group, and its productions of Awake and Sing and Paradise Lost, both directed in 1935 by Harold Clurman, proved to be excellent vehicles for the Group's Stanislavskian aesthetic.
Demise and later influence
Despite its success and sweeping impact on the American theater landscape for many years to come, by 1940, impending war, the lure of fame and fortune in Hollywood, the lack of institutional funding and the friction of interpersonal relationships within the Group eventually led to its demise. In the spring of 1941, Elia Kazan and Bobby Lewis accompanied Harold Clurman as he turned the key on the Group offices for the last time.
After the war, in 1947, Robert Lewis, Elia Kazan and Cheryl Crawford founded the Actors Studio, where the techniques inspired by Stanslavski 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.
In the 1950s, many of the former members were called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (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 blacklisted.
The Group Theatre is described in Robert Lewis' book Slings And Arrows, Theater in my Life, Harold Clurman's book, The Fervent Years, as well as Wendy Smith's authoritative history, Real Life Drama.
"Group Theatre"