The Group Theatre

Group Theatre, The (New York). After about a year of discussions, the Group Theatre was founded in 1931 by Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford, and Lee Strasberg. An early announcement described the company as “an organization of actors and directors formed with the ultimate aim of creating a permanent acting company to maintain regular New York seasons.” All three founders had been associated in one capacity or another with the Theatre Guild, and their breakaway was to a large extent a protest over the Guild's essentially apolitical policies. The founders, especially Strasberg and Clurman, were committed leftists and felt the theatre should provide a stage for more sharply oriented political plays. In retrospect, the rupture was seen to mark the beginning of the Guild's decline. The new company's first effort was The House of Connelly (1931), followed by such notable productions as Men in White (1933), Awake and Sing! (1935), Waiting for Lefty (1935), Johnny Johnson (1936), Golden Boy (1937), Rocket to the Moon (1938), The Gentle People (1939), and My Heart's in the Highlands (1939). The Group Theatre ceased production in 1940 and disbanded. Although most of the playwrights whose works were mounted had already established their reputations, the company was the first to present Clifford Odets and Marc Blitzstein to playgoers. The many theatrical figures whose careers were boosted by the company included Luther Adler, Stella Adler, John Garfield, Elia Kazan, and Franchot Tone, who provided much of the financial backing in the early seasons. A detailed history of the company was written by Clurman in The Fervent Years (1945).