Early Life and Education
Clurman was born on the Lower East Side of New York City to Jewish immigrant parents from eastern Europe. His parents took him at age six to Yiddish theater, here Jacob Adler's performances in Yiddish translations of Karl Gutzkow's Uriel Acosta and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Nathan the Wise fascinated him, although he did not understand Yiddish. .
He attended Columbia and, at the age of twenty, moved to France to study at the University of Paris. There he shared an apartment with the young composer Aaron Copland. In Paris, he saw all sorts of theatrical productions. He was especially influenced by the work of Jacques Copeau and the Moscow Art Theatre, whose permanent company built a strong creative force. He wrote his thesis on the history of French drama from 1890 to 1914.
Clurman returned to New York in 1924 and started working as an extra in plays, despite his lack of experience. He became a stage manager and play reader for the Theatre Guild. He briefly studied Stanislavsky’s system under the tutelage of Richard Boleslavsky (Carnickle 39), and became Jacques Copeau's translator/assistant on his production of The Brothers Karamazov, based on the 1880 novel by the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky.
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