The Fervent Years

by Clurman, Harold

• ISBN13: 9780306801860
• ISBN10: 0306801868
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1983-03-21
• Publisher: Da Capo Pr

Summary

The Group Theatre was perhaps the most significant experiment in the history of American theater. Producing plays that reflected topical issues of the decade and giving a creative chance to actors, directors, and playwrights who were either fed up with or shut out of commercial theater, the "Group" remains a permanent influence on American drama despite its brief ten-year life. It was here that method acting, native realism, and political language had their tryouts in front of audiences who anticipatedindeed demandeda departure from the Broadway "show-biz" tradition. In this now classic account, Harold Clurman, founder of the Group Theatre and a dynamic force as producer-director-critic for fifty years, here re-creates history he helped make with Lee Strasberg, Elia Kazan, Irwin Shaw, Clifford Odets, Cheryl Crawford, Morris Carnovsky, and William Saroyan. Stella Adler contributed a new introduction to this edition which remembers Clurman, the thirties, and the heady atmosphere of a tumultuous decade.

Author Biography

The lateHarold Clurman was the author of Lies Like Truth, The Naked Image, On Directing, The Divine Pastime, and All People Are Famous, and was the editor of numerous theater anthologies.

Table of Contents

Introduction to the Da Capo Edition	vi
Foreword to the 1957 Edition	viii
Foreword to the First Edition	ix
PART I: SEEDS
The Tower of Babel	1	(16)
First Steps	17	(14)
Getting Together	31	(8)
PART II: BEGINNERS
Honeymoon	39	(15)
Hallelujah!	54	(16)
Growth	70	(16)
Ferment	86	(12)
Hard Going	98	(14)
PART III: SECOND WIND
The Winter of Our Discontent	112	(14)
Success	126	(11)
Transition	137	(9)
PART IV: CONSUMMATION
Awake and Sing	146	(14)
Complications	160	(11)
Treading Water	171	(7)
Millennial Interlude	178	(6)
Breakdown	184	(15)
PART V: NEW PHASE
We Run for Cover	199	(10)
Renewal	209	(15)
Era of Plenty	224	(9)
High Point	233	(20)
PART VI: FAREWELL TO THE THIRTIES
Ebb Tide	253	(15)
Collapse	268	(13)
And Now---	281	(18)
Epilogue: 1945--1955	299	(15)
Epilogue: 1974	314	(7)
Index	321