Group Theatre
Group Theatre was a groundbreaking theater company established in New York City in 1931 by Lee Strasberg, Harold Clurman, and Cheryl Crawford. The group aimed to create a collective environment with a "no-star" system, featuring a diverse ensemble of twenty-eight actors, directors, playwrights, and producers who focused on plays with significant social relevance. Notable productions included Pulitzer Prize-winner *Men in White* and Clifford Odets' impactful works like *Awake and Sing!* and *Waiting for Lefty*. Drawing on the teachings of Russian acting pioneer Constantin Stanislavski, Strasberg developed a method that emphasized emotional and psychological authenticity in performances, which became a foundational approach in American acting. The Group Theatre's influence spread beyond its own productions, particularly through Strasberg's establishment of the Actors Studio, which further popularized this internal acting technique. Despite its dissolution in 1941 due to various challenges, including financial difficulties and the lure of Hollywood, the legacy of Group Theatre endures in American theater and actor training programs, shaping generations of actors and contributing to the evolution of the film industry.
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Group Theatre
Identification Theater company that introduced method acting
Date Established in the summer of 1931
Place New York, New York
The Group Theatre presented contemporary plays with social significance while also refining an American style of acting through its dissemination of Stanislavski-based acting, which evolved into method acting.
The Group Theatre was formed in New York City in 1931 by Lee Strasberg, Harold Clurman, and Cheryl Crawford. Wishing to have a “no-star” system, the Group Theatre was composed of twenty-eight actors, directors, playwrights, and producers banded together to produce plays they felt had immediate social impact. They produced new works throughout most of the 1930’s, among them 1933’s Men in White, which later won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and Clifford Odets’s Awake and Sing! (1935), Golden Boy (1937), and Waiting for Lefty (1935).
Members of the Group Theatre, and Strasberg in particular, studied with famous Russian acting teacher Constantin Stanislavski. Upon returning to the United States, Strasberg refined Stanislavski’s system into something called the method, whose basic tenets are that an actor must draw upon both sense and affective memory to best portray another character. The Group Theatre popularized this internal approach to acting throughout its productions, and Strasberg opened his own actor training school, the Actors Studio, to develop it further.
During the Group Theatre’s heyday in the mid-to-late 1930’s, the organization included notable stage and film stars Elia Kazan, Stella Adler, Will Geer, John Randolph, Odets, Sanford Meisner, and Lee J. Cobb. Despite the group’s impact on American theater, the war, financial struggles, the beckoning of Hollywood, and interpersonal frictions led to the disbanding of the company in the spring of 1941. Its influence continues to be felt in acting programs and conservatories across the United States.
Impact
Through both its productions and its adherence to the method, the Group Theatre changed American actor training forever. Its members taught the method’s emotional and internal-based tenets to the following generation of actors and acting teachers, and it remains the most prevalent actor-training technique in the United States. The group also worked with artists who went on to shape Hollywood and the American film industry.
Bibliography
Clurman, Harold. The Fervent Years: The Group Theatre and the Thirties. New York: Da Capo Press, 1983.
Hull, S. Loraine. Strasberg’s Method as Taught by Lorrie Hull: A Practical Guide for Actors, Teachers, Directors. New York: Hull-Smithers, 2004.
Smith, Wendy. Real Life Drama. New York: Grove Press, 1994.