Here’s a true blast from the past, a video of Harold Clurman speaking at the Mark Taper Forum in LA, sometime in the late 1970’s.
“The reason the theatre is mediocre, it has been for a long time, is the state of our world, the state of our country, it’s mediocre. it’s afraid to move this way or that way. i know i’m right. i may not know the theatre, but i know the country.
it is afraid to move. it is afraid to progress. it is afraid to be enthusiastic. it’s afraid to be wrong. afraid to move on afraid to have enthusiasm. it’s afraid to take a chance it’s afraid to have courage
this always makes me angry because life is a losing game and you might as well enjoy it. after all they say you’re gonna die. once in a while it occurs even to me. so it’s a losing game, but what an adventure. what fun this flop is.
Harold Edgar Clurman (September 18, 1901 – September 9, 1980) was an American theater director and drama critic, most famous for being one of the three original founders of the New York City’s Group Theater. He was drama critic for The New Republic (1948–52) and The Nation (1953–1980).
I was excited to see him speaking in this video, as i’ve only read about him and read some of his books.
- On Directing
- The Fervent Years: The Group Theatre And The Thirties
- The Collected Works of Harold Clurman (The Applause Critics Circle)
Thanks to actor Allan Rich for posting this “My Mentor Harold Clurman” video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2iGQV_H4PQ . PBS had a show about Harold in their American Masters series, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/clurman_h.html , unfortunately the PBS videos don’t currently work online.
from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Clurman
At the age of twenty Harold moved to Paris, where he shared an apartment with composer Aaron Copland. In Paris, he saw all sorts of theatrical productions, and was especially influenced by the work of Jacques Copeau and the Moscow Art Theatre. Clurman returned to New York in 1924 and found work as an extra in plays, then became a stage manager and play reader for the Theatre Guild. He briefly studied Stanislavsky’s system under the tutelage of Richard Boleslavsky and became Jacques Copeau’s translator/assistant on his production of “The Brothers Karamazov.”
Clurman began to realize that the standard American theatre, though successful at the box office was not providing the captivating experience that he wanted. Together with the like-minded Cheryl Crawford and Lee Strasberg, he began to create what would become the Group Theatre. In November 1930, Clurman began leading group discussions, describing his desire to found a permanent theatrical company that would produce plays dealing with important modern issues.
In the summer of 1931, the first members of the Group Theatre rehearsed for several weeks in the countryside to prepare for their first production, The House of Connelly by Paul Green, directed by Strasberg. Clurman was the scholar of the group–he knew multiple languages, read widely, and listened to a broad array of music while Strasberg dealt with acting and directing and Crawford dealt with the business side of things.
