Harold Clurman - Career

Career

Clurman began work as an actor in New York. He felt that the standard American theater, though successful at the box office (Smith 4), was not providing the experience which he wanted (Smith 11). He said, “I was interested in what the theater was going to say…The theater must say something. It must relate to society. It must relate to the world we live in.”

Together with the like-minded Cheryl Crawford and Lee Strasberg, he began to create what would become the Group Theatre. In November 1930, Clurman led weekly lectures, in which they talked about founding a permanent theatrical company to produce plays dealing with important modern social issues. Together with 28 other young people, they formed a group that developed a groundbreaking style of theater that strongly influenced American productions, including such elements as method acting, realism based on American stories, and political content. By building a permanent company, they expected to increase the synergy and trust among the members, who included Stella Adler, Morris Carnovsky, Phoebe Brand, Elia Kazan, Clifford Odets, and Sanford Meisner.

In the summer of 1931, the first members of the Group Theatre rehearsed for several weeks in the countryside of Nichols, Connecticut at the Pine Brook Country Club. They were preparing their first production, The House of Connelly by Paul Green, directed by Strasberg. Clurman was the scholar of the group — he knew multiple languages, read widely, and listened to a broad array of music (Smith 16), while Strasberg dealt with acting and directing, and Crawford dealt with the business side of things.

The first play which Clurman directed for the Group Theatre was Awake and Sing! by Clifford Odets, in 1935. The play's success led Clurman to develop his directing style. He believed that all the elements of a play—text, acting, lighting, scenery and direction—needed to work together to convey a unified message. Clurman would read the script over and over, each time focusing on a different element or character ("On Directing 74"). He tried to inspire, guide and constructively critique his designers, rather than dictate to them (“On Directing” 54). He would also use Richard Boleslavsky's technique of identifying the "spine," or main action, of each character, then using those to determine the spine of the play ("On Directing" 74). He encouraged his actors to find "active verbs" to describe what their characters were trying to accomplish ("On Directing 28"). He believed that Stanislavsky's system was good to know and study, but too time-consuming to use fully.

In 1937, tensions between Clurman, Crawford and Strasberg caused the latter two to resign from the Group; four years later, the Group Theatre permanently disbanded. Clurman went on to direct plays on Broadway, more than 40 in all, and write as a newspaper theatre critic (Smith 422).