Konstantin Stanislavski writes at a desk

Konstantin Sergeyvich Stanislavski

Born in Moscow in 1863, Konstantin Sergeyvich Stanislavski had a tremendous affect on the art of acting. Having experience as an actor, producer and director, he asserted that the theatre could not be meaningful unless it moved beyond mere external representation, which was the style of acting at the time. Over a span of forty years, he created an approach that brought the psychological and emotional aspects of acting to the forefront.

In the United States today, Stanislavski’s theories are the primary source of study for many actors. Among the many great actors and teachers to use his work were Stella Adler, Marlon Brando, Harold Clurman, Sanford Meisner, Bobby Lewis, Uta Hagen, Marian Seldes, Wynn Handman, and Lee Strasberg. Many artists continue to demonstrate the potency of Stanislavski’s powerful ideas in their work.

Harold Clurman

Harold Clurman has been called the most influential figure in the history of the American theater. Born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1901, Harold Clurman had his first exposure to theater at the age of six when his parents took him to see the great Yiddish actor Jacob Adler. While attending the Sorbonne in Paris, Clurman first began to formulate his vision of a new American theater.

Between 1935 and 1980, Clurman directed over forty plays, including Clifford Odets’ Awake and Sing! and Paradise Lost, Carson McCullers’ The Member of the Wedding, George Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House, Eugene O’Neill’s Touch of the Poet, Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, Jean Giraudoux’s Tiger at the Gates, and Arthur Miller’s Incident at Vichy. He wrote seven books, including The Fervent Years (a history of The Group Theatre) and On Directing. From 1953 until his death in 1980 he was the drama critic for The Nation. As the passionate and talented leader of The Group Theatre and as one of the century’s most eminent theater critics, Clurman invigorated American theater with his political and artistic idealism. Harold’s papers are archived at the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin.

Group photo of members of the Group Theater's ensemble of actors

The Group Theatre

In the summer of 1931, three young idealists, Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford, and Lee Strasberg, were inspired by a passionate dream of transforming the American theater. They recruited 28 actors to form a permanent ensemble and conceived the Group Theatre as a response to what they saw as the old-fashioned light entertainment that dominated the theater of the late 1920s. In over ten years and through 26 productions (every one of them an American play by an American writer), The Group Theatre not only met these goals, but altered the course of American theater forever.

The Group was based on an ensemble approach to acting and was the first company in America to be trained as such. When the Group produced Waiting for Lefty by Clifford Odets, originally Awake and Sing!, Golden Boy, Rocket to the Moon and Paradise Lost, the Group’s plays included William Saroyan’s My Heart’s in the Highlands, Kurt Weill and Paul Green’s Johnny Johnson and Maxwell Anderson’s Night Over Taos.

During his time with the group, Lee Strasberg came up with his own acting techniques which were based on the innovative “System” of the Russian master Konstantin Stanislavski and began to instruct the members in what he called “my method of acting,” or later, “the Method.” Stella, displeased and uncomfortable with Lee’s way of working, traveled to Paris in 1938. There she met with Stanislavski, and they worked together daily for five weeks. Stella remains the only American acting teacher to have had direct contact with Stanislavski.

In Memoriam:

We celebrate the memory of these notable teachers and leaders who have also shaped the history of our organization.