Theatre Retrospective
Clurman, Harold
Harold Clurman Theatre Retrospective The dean of America's theatre men reflects on drama The reputation of 42nd Street as a great theatrical thoroughfare is only intersected by that of...
...Clurman what conclusions he would draw from his long experience in the theatre...
...We demand immediate accomplishment...
...These are the hits which occasion the greatest clamor and receive the most publicity: success...
...But actors' training in schools and studios has recently raised the qualitative level of the teamwork or ensemble playing...
...With us, the theatre is still chiefly a show shop...
...What was missing was material which honestly set forth our way of life, and organizations which would encourage and incorporate the writing of sound native plays...
...Building a new country out of the wilderness demanded workers, not players...
...It thus becomes something "on the side," and slightly extraneous to our more important pursuits...
...What has troubled me most in the later days of my kctivity as a director is the sheer funk that haunts the rehearsal period...
...They all behave as if their every day in the theatre was their last...
...The theatre is a collective manifestation through which a community-^ a particular people, tribe, class, or nation-realizes itself, transforms the profound stores of its unconscious into its own consciousness...
...It is a group art in which every element is an ingredient of a common vision, a unity, and a consummation of a shared faith...
...The reviewer is gradually pressed into writing for the quotations that bedizen the blatant and costly ads announcing 'Vows," "thunderbolts," "knockouts," and "unforgettable experiences," often followed by a summation at the end of the season that declares that the season has been a bust...
...Spoiled by the spectacular success of our civiliza tion, we are still a youthfully impatient people...
...In this atmosphere, reviewing, especially in the dailies, hardly constitutes criticism...
...We fear failure like mortality...
...In the theatre at least, we are all innocents...
...They have always existed as a necessary evil against which you must fortify yourself...
...The need to play, to rise above the . humdrum, or, as Graig put it, "to fly," is within us all...
...Then, too, there developed the drive to establish companies away from New York as the theatre's central "market," a movement that has grown rapidly in more recent years...
...They are generally treated as if they were obliged to maintain a high box-office rating, rather than to evolve a significant body of work according to the bent of their disposition and thought...
...The true critic considers himself a part of the total theatre phenomenon-responsible, first of all, to its artists and to the public at large in all its serious concerns...
...It is a state of mind corrosive of sane endeavor...
...There was a time when O'Neill was in limbo...
...Inflation has reduced almost everyone involved in production to the position of dealer, broker, or salesman...
...Even the crassest commercial manager has within himself that which hankers for something he does not find in his ledger or his bank...
...In 1931 Mr...
...It is obvious that theatre which does not please its audience cannot endure, but it is of the essence to know why and in what manner an audience is pleased, what actually stirs it, what the result is of its having been moved...
...The vitiating forces exert noxious influences, not only in the making of theatre, but also in its appreciation...
...The theatre is incorrigible in the sense that it is always subject to corruption...
...The dullest spectator desires to transport himself for at least a few hours away from the lassitude of the commonplace...
...it is a famous temple...
...These companies were, and are today, often semi-subsidized by federal, civic, and corporate agencies...
...Whether or not the state theatres of England, France, Sweden, Norway, Germany-to go no further- achieve excellence, or even prosperity, in every decade of their existence, it is inconceivable that they should ever close...
...The lowliest mummer wants to see himself not as a mere posturer, but as a mythical creature in an imagined world...
...Judgment of the theatre consists of an evaluation of what the Play (the stage event as a whole) contributes to our social and moral health...
...The same is true of the actor...
...Genius is at all times rare...
...It fulfills a need inherent in mankind...
...Everyone is atremble from the word go: "Will we make it...
...It is a corruption which undermines not only its spirit, but also its craft...
...The theatre is always on the threshold of possibility and the path to a longed-for perfection...
...Careful organizational and financial management are required to sustain all such enterprises...
...The answer to the perennial and rather boring question, "What is wrong with the theatre...
...Such worse than any of the mischief caused by journalistic criticism (always a convenient target for derision) is the effect that our distorted sense of the theatre has on its personnel-playwrights, actors, directors, and others...
...Harold Clurman Theatre Retrospective The dean of America's theatre men reflects on drama The reputation of 42nd Street as a great theatrical thoroughfare is only intersected by that of Broadway-and 42nd Street has the better song...
...The theatre is not a bar...
...The director, elevated to an exalted position through his first success, grows cautious in his choice of future scripts, for should he fail to follow up on his run of luck, he would no longer be in demand...
...We ought to remind ourselves that no period in theatrical history-not the Classic Greek, the Elizabethan, or the French Neo-classic--produced masterpieces only...
...Clurman was a founder of the Group Theatre and in the years since has directed outstanding productions of Golden Boy (2937), The Member of the Wedding (2950), A Touch of the Poet {1954), and many other plays...
...We give little thought to the time, patience, and steady practice needed for substantial achievement...
...A could only sum everything up by saying that the theatre is indestructible-and incorrigible...
...The theatre had to sneak in...
...He was * only "redeemed" by the Off-Broadway revival of The Iceman Cometh and the posthumous productions of Long Day's Journey Into Night and A Touch of the Poet...
...Has it got a chance...
...I do not refer to the fact that the theatre-at least since the Elizabethan age-has been widely thought of as a "business...
...The director requires a sound script and the right cast, and none of these and other coordinate factors are completely within his control...
...Tragedy, comedy, or farce of excellence will always afford humanity the purest pleasure...
...The Puritans considered it a hotbed of license and vice...
...It's more often the playwrights who are the monsters of egotism...
...The reason for this, I have come to believe, is that while the old Puritans have all but become extinct, there remains a considerable, though unconscious, Puritan hangover in our thinking about the theatre...
...That is why the seer of the modern theatre, Gordon Craig, was moved to exclaim: "Art is not a pick-me-up, it is a communion...
...It established "legitimacy" for itself very slowly in the large cities on the Eastern seaboard-and then chiefly among the gentry...
...It is essentially a celebration, and as its chroniclers tell us it has often served as a form of religious rite-akin to worship...
...We seek the "best: buys...
...as theatre craftsmen, they remain perpetually unfledged...
...The only exception is Neil Simon...
...Inherent in all this is a certain characteristically American trait...
...We fluctuate from bursts of elation to seasons of despondency-both ephemeral because superficial...
...The American Puritan prejudice against the theatre went deeper than the conviction that it led to sin...
...But when I speak of corruption, I do not think of depravity, but of elements antithetical to the theatre's nature...
...They are gamblers with other' people's money...
...Though it periodically lapses into the doldrums, the theatre constantly keeps renewing itself...
...All the constituents of the pro duction are interdependent...
...Using the recent, dedication of the Harold Clurman Theatre as our pretext, we asked Mr...
...The director who has had a series of hits is touted as a prodigy, and is sought after as if he were the prime mover in the happy outcome: This is rarely so...
...I should add, apropos of actors, that though they are the most vulnerable in the theatrical constellation, they are not as vain as they are held to be...
...We view it as "entertainment," in the frivolous connotation of the term...
...A person professionally committed to the stage was an idler and a wastrel...
...They were not always wrong...
...This is especially so with producers, who are rarely people with long experience or intimate knowledge of the actual process of creation for the stage...
...This would not be so bad if he did not feel himself chiefly responsible to his newspaper and to the readers more eager to scan reviews than to see plays...
...The increasing dependence on the director's magic may explain why there are fewer towering talents on the stage now than in earlier times...
...The producer and his colleagues follow the proceedings as if they expected an immediate guarantee of fabulous notices...
...When these considerations-which relate to the very core of the theatre's nature-are overlooked, then the theatre's true corruption begins...
...I cannot accept the contention that the status of the director in our theatre has risen because of the absence of great actors...
...With the opening of the Harold Clurman Theatre, it also becomes the only street to have a theatre named after America's most distinguished drama critic...
...Indestructible because the theatre, even under the worst circumstances-severe censorship or total suppression-has always been present...
...theatre fundamentally is that rots the foundation in the conduct of it...
...I have spent many hours telling actors and other collaborators of mine: Dp not give credence either to glowing notices or to "pans.'' Reviews of either kind are almost always mistaken...
...We do not seem to build anything solid, a stable theatrical culture-which exists in most of Europe, even in artistically fallow periods...
...Or in the classic phrase of one old-time producer, "You must always keep the stofe open...
...Foreign actors-Kean, Rachel, Salvini, Duse, Bernhardt-had set high standards...
...is not solely to be found in its commercialism...
...Despite this remarkable progress, a lingering dissatisfaction persists throughout the theatrical community...
...it is consumer reporting, usually as exaggerated in blame as in praise...
...The reviewer thus comes to see himself as engaged in trade...
...The theatre has always been the realm of inner freedom where we may all somehow conceive ourselves as heroes...
...Bom in 1901, he saw his first play in 1908 and was at the 1920 debut of Eugene O'Neil's Beyond the Horizon, which marked the coming-of age of American theatre...
...What counts is the maintenance of a tradition of high aim...
...Great advances were made in the early twentieth century with O'Neill and other similarly motivated writers, along with such new organizations as the Provincetown Players, the Washington Square Players (which in 1919 became the Theatre Guild), and the Neighborhood Playhouse...
...This induces the public to read him in the same frame of mind...
...They are inseparable from their countries' fabric and identity...
...Economics inevitably plays a role in the social arts-architecture and theatre require large collaborative forces...
...They crave help and are grateful to those who provide it...
...Despite all good intentions, the predicament of the theatre today is to some extent due to inflation in costs of production and therefore in prices of admission...
...Harold Clurman began his theatre career in 1924 as an extra in a production at the Greenwich Village Theatre...
...They all are made to appear as either shining vessels or wretched imposters...
...Though many are accorded star billing (how crucial it seems to them), there are, as a matter of fact, precious few real stars today: those whose mere presence in a play assures a run of ten or twelve weeks...
...By the late nineteenth century, excellent actors abounded oh our stage under a few able directors...
...It would seem that the purpose of the theatre is to spawn "stars...
...Under the theatre's spell we are never pessimists...
...For all the years one might have devoted to making these ideas clear, there is still very little practical understanding of what the theatre signifies, what it really is...
...It is more likely that a general erosion of personality-of pristine daring, fortitude, valor-due to the basic conformism (beneath the superficial non-conformism) of contemporary society, underlies the infrequency of true grandeur in the acting profession...
...If one contemplates the fate of some of our leading playwrights, one finds a general decline from their dazzling advent, not only in popularity, but also in public and critical esteem...
...I return to my initial premise: It is ignorance of what the...
...What I have chiefly gathered from my days in the theatre- apart from the excitement of its adventure-is that no matter when I inveigh against it for failing to answer its mission, I speak with tongue in cheek, only half sincere...
...On receiving signal recognition, the actor usually leaves the stage as soon as possible for other areas of the entertainment field, including the production of TV commercials...
Vol. 12 • April 1979 • No. 4
