The Group Theater 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 dedicated to dramatizing the life of their times. They conceived The Group Theater as a response to what they saw as the old-fashioned light entertainment that dominated the theatre of the late 1920s. They envisioned theater that would mount original American plays to mirror, even change, the life of their troubled times. Over ten years and 26 productions (every one of them an American play by an American writer), The Group Theater not only met these goals, but it altered the course of American theater forever.

The Group Theater was based on an ensemble approach to acting, and it was the first acting company in America to be trained as an ensemble. First seen in the work of the Moscow Art Theater, the ensemble approach proposed a highly personal and cooperative method. Instead of concentrating on individual actors the company focused on a cast believable as a whole. If the actors could have close relationships off-stage, then their onstage relatoinship would not only seem real, but would actually be "real." As the members of the ensemble grew more intimate with each other, they successfully reflected this familiarity onstage. By the time the curtain came down on their first production ("The House of Connelly"), The Group Theater knew they had succeeded. What was important was not simply the enthusiastic response, but that the audience and reviewers had recognized that this one performance signaled a shift in American theater.

The Group Theater believed that what they were doing had great political significance. While disregarding temptations to become personally famous, they embraced a sense of cooperation that was reflected in the plays they chose. However, It was not until Clifford Odets, then an actor in the group, wrote "Awake and Sing!" that the group truly found its voice. His highly charged plays, which were often expressed in the language and circumstances of working-class characters, mirrored the essence of what the group wanted to be and do, fulfilling the dream of a theater speaking to and for its audience. Both audience and critics responded enthusiastically, and such works as "Awake and Sing!," "Waiting for Lefty," and "Paradise Lost" were among the most memorable productions of the decade.

Based on the innovative "System" of the Russian master Konstantin Stanislavski, Lee Strasberg came up with his own version. He originally called it "my method of acting;" others later referred to it as "Method Acting." This technique engendered a series of physical, relaxation and other psychological exercises intended to help an actor. In a part that called for fear, for example, an actor would be instructed to remember the feeling of fear from a prior personal experience in order to bring the emotion honestly to the stage. These exercises were meant to break down the actor's barrier between life on- and life off-stage.