Harold Clurman, co-founder of The Group Theater, has been called the most influential figure in the history of the American theater. Between 1935 and 1980, he 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 Theater) and On Directing; and from 1953 until his death in 1980, he was the drama critic for The Nation. As the passionate and talented leader of The Group Theater, Clurman invigorated American theater with his political and artistic idealism.

Born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1901, Harold Clurman had his first exposure to theatre at the age of six when his parents took him to see the great Yiddish actor Jacob Adler. Although the young boy knew no Yiddish, he later said of this first play, "It was a transforming experience. I immediately had a passionate inclination toward the theater." The vitality of the Yiddish Theater and its community of actors would long influence Clurman. After leaving home, he attended Columbia and later the Sorbonne in Paris, where he wrote his thesis on the history of French drama from 1890 to 1914. It was then that Clurman first began to formulate his vision of a new American theater.