Harold Clurman Directs "The Three Sisters"

Source: Educational Theatre Journal, Vol. 28, No. 4, Reunion: A Self-Portrait of the Group
Theatre (Dec., 1976), pp. 457-460
Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3206153
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457

/ DOCUMENTS

Lee StrasbergDirects The Case of Clyde Griffiths

The following brief excerpt is from a verbatim report transcribed by Tony Kraber
during rehearsals of the production of Erwin Piscator's version of Theodore Dreiser's
novel, An American Tragedy. Produced ulnderthe title The Case of Clyde Griffiths,
it was directed by Lee Strasberg tandran for ninleteen performances in the spring of
1936. The important role of the Speaker, who comments on the social, psychological and intellectual implications of the action, was played by Morris Carnovsky.
This script is a very important and distinguished addition to modern dramatic
adaptation. It does not call for psychological progression, but essentially for full,
precise, actor's energy and the strictest kind of relationship to stage space. In trying
to show the individual in a wider relationship, new technical devices have to be
used. This problem has not been solved by our Western playwrights, so the theatres
are turning more and more to the Oriental theatre for help and technical devices.
The Speaker in this play is one such device, as is the roadway in Meyerhold's production of The Forest. This script stems from the same theory as Die Massnahme
of Brecht and Eisler-to make clear to, rather than to affect, an audience. How should
the play start? It should be clear to the audience who the Speaker is. One suggestion
was that a factory be improvised-a whistle blows-people come out-one of them
is the Speaker, who then begins to talk to the audience. Another was that the Speaker
be one of the audience, and get out of a seat in the audience to speak.
The Speaker's opening speech is as if synchronized with music or movement.
The speech must not be propagandistic, but affable, and the emphasis is a mental
one. These two ideas seem to work against each other, but I think you'll find they
won't when we actually come to working out the play.
The characters in the play will use "narrative emotion"-the Speaker just the
opposite; he must use real, present emotions. The Speaker is the soul of the peoplehe feels everything the people feel but with full consciousness.
I haven't spoken much about characterization. We must build up circumstances
in our own minds so that we can best start the scenes. The play is clear no matter
how it is done (i.e. well or badly), but will it be interesting? Out of our experience
we find an image, then justify it; it will not arise from any psychological necessity
of the scene. Pictures, one-word visualizations will be useful. Our plays have to
begin with a collective idea shared by everyone, not just the director. Only in this
way can the inner truth be realized. Plays put on by virtuoso directors have no human content.

Harold ClurmanDirects The Three Sisters

H-aroldClurmlanchose The Three Sisters for the conipany to work on during the
summer of 1939 when a play of Irwin Shawo'sthat they had planned to do turned out
to be lunsatisfactory. "This was the mnomentto produce the long-promised revival

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458 / ETI, December 1976

of a classic," Clurman wrote in The Fervent Years. Despite an excellent cast and the
promise of a new acting versioni of tile play by Odets, the moment did lnot turn out
to be propitious. Cliurmansays his work "became halting, illdecisive." He thouglit
perhaps the play too delicate for his "ratheroviolent approach," anldhe felt a general
"loss of hIeartdiue to a foreboding about the fulture." The war had just begun in
Europe; there were problems abozit monley for productionl, feuds lhad developed
among m1iemlbers
of the cast, anlldthe whole life of the Grolip seemed in jeopardy.
Tie productionlwas never comlpleted,btt the more
thaire fifty pages of typewritten
notes taken during thlework on the show that last summer the Group was together
comprise a fascinating, intimate recordof the period and of tiredirector.
The play will be directed by myself with Stella. Ordinarily, I don't like to have
a collaborator. But I feel that her background for this play and a knowledge of
certain acting problems will be invaluable to me. That much is set. It's particularly
the women's parts which are not set. However, I don't want to delay another day or
two to get to work. So bear in mind, I know this is not the best way to proceed,
but under the circumstances I can see no other course. It doesn't mean that anybody
is being tried out. It means I'm actually not certain. Tonight you will read as follows:
Vershinin
Andrey
Natasha
Masha
Olga
Rodde
Fedotik
Irina
Kuligin
Tusenbach
Solyonny
Anfisa
Ferapont
Chebutykin

Morris Carnovskv
LutherAdler
Ruth Nelson
Stella Adler
FrancesFarmer
Harry Bratsburgh
Leif Ericson
Phoebe Brand
Philip Loeb
Sandford Meisner
Elia Kazan
EleanorLynn
Art Smith
Lee J. Cobb

As you start to read, you are all naturally being much more sensitive than the
play calls for you to be. Supposing these characters weren't in a Chekhov play.
They are just guys. They want what they want. They are very normal, the normal
people you could meet. In the next few days one of the things that will help you get
this right is to find out what you don't like about your part or what your part has
too much of. I want you to play against whatever you don't like about your part.
Do everything opposite and you will come closer to playing what is there than you
would if you play what is there.
'hese people are fundamentally full-bodied, energetic, full of the juice of life, of
humor, passion, and appreciation. As you observe the tragedy of these people, it is
certainly not that they are depressed, but rather that they are wonderful, healthy
people whose health and fullness is not given a full opportunity to expand in the

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459

/ DOCUMENTS

world in which they live. If we were to begin with a sense of their being frustrated,
then you would not get the right feeling from this play. You should get a feeling of
openness and sunshine. They want to live. Our own fullness will get close to the
Russian character. Basically, it's an energetic play and has much of the quality we
have. When they protest, when they say how miserable 1 am, how beautiful it
is, it's not passive. There is a going forward. There's a booming quality about it.
I am using very crude symbols, but you will understand what I mean. This atmosphere is muscular, gay, warm, free, extroverted. There are one or two exceptions
to this, but the idea that Chekhov deals with introverted people is false from the
actor's point of view.
When I read the play, I felt its beauty; I had many generalizations; I had seen
the play twice. I remember saying that to me The Three Sisters is a very American
play because it deals with young people. This reminds me of an American town,
with its high school, its teachers, its Rural Board-much of the atmosphere in a
small town in 1925. Main Street, U.S.A., has a general relationship to the small town
life of this play. I began to see that this play, which I felt had no conscious idea, had
a real thesis for me, living in 1939. The thesis touches Chekhov, but maybe is different
from his view. In a sense it is a torch which Chekhov has lit. I take the torch from
him, and though it still remains his torch, I feel I have grasped it.
As I read the play, here is the image that becomes for me the central image of the
play. I shall attempt in various ways to work it out in concrete theatrical form. I
thought of a phrase-"The Three Sisters are the light that shines in the darkness."
They are radiant beings. If they are the central radiant image, then the people who
are close to them stand in the full light and those farther removed fall farther into
the shadow. Suddenly it occurred to me that from that image, I get the light in the
house that comes from their handling things with a certain care and love. There's
a certain suffusion, a glow that would be present in the lighting. Because I had
this image in my mind as I read, my mind began to leap towards those words in the
play which bear it out. I notice Vershinin saying, perhaps accidentally, "it's dark
here but your eyes shine." Tusenbach says at another point, "you're tired but you
seem to throw a light, as though your paleness sheds a light through the dark air."
The light which comes from dissatisfaction and melancholy is an expression of an
aspiration which makes the play glow. It's aspiration from which the center of the
whole play, in its physical and its characteraspects, can be understood.
Now I believe that Chekhov wrote this play out of a deep experience of Russian
life and out of a feeling in himself very much akin to this. Out of the boredom
and darkness of Russian life, he began to see and feel the beauty of the people around
him. Despite the fact that most of his plays are about the tragedy and the humor of
this black life, he had a sense that this aspiration, this light, would ultimately
triumph. I would almost say this is an optimistic play in the deepest sense, in the
sense that the good in these girls and in the people close to them will someday shed
light all over. The people who will help spread the light are our guarantee of the
future. Am I clear? Myself, I am conceited enough to believe that the Group Theatre
is like the three sisters in, shall we say, a surrounding darkness.

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460

/ ETI, December1976

The play then is a foretelling of a future glory. But how? Through love of the
present hidden glory in these humble, suffering, sometimes confused, sweet and loving people. The play is delicate and yet strong in its philosophy. It's a mature play
and a quiet one. The time is coming when we in the Group while we do everything,
produce all sorts of plays, we must learn to have some of this delicacy in our
strength, this quietness in our maturity. We must learn to be all these things without shouts or ostentation. We must learn to be some of the things we talk about.
Delicate, sensitive. We must learn to accept life and the problems we are given in
life more, not merely argue about them. We must learn to understand and not merely
to preach. Because The Three Sisters is a play of youth, Chekhov is, I feel, an exercise for spiritual and technical achievement.

Robert Lewis Directs My Heart's in the Highlands

William Saroyan's first play was directed by Bobby Lewis as a special project for
the Group Theatre in the spring of 1939. In his talk at the reunion in Minneapolis
lie tells the full saga of this important production. He generously let me copy a small
section of his original rough directorial notes. The first thoughts of the young director, they show his use of the Stanislavsky approach and his socially aware interpretation.
The Spine: The Spine must be found in these themes. Artists must be heard. They
are important, even though they may be vague and not seem as practical as the big
world of business. Their genius can often be more prophetic of the way to a better
world.
The People want their art and they will pay for it. Art is a product exchangeable with the material things earned by People. Artists and the People have that
kinship of exchange. Something is wrong when this exchange is frustrated, when it
must be dependent on money and those who have it. Other forces frustrate this exchange of poetry for money.
Wherever the artist goes and whatever he does, his home is always where he
creates, where there is joy and grief. He cannot be locked up or driven away, for
whenever he can create, there he has a home.
The People flourish with art. They need it and sprout with it like a tree. The poet
says, "I must have readers." The old man says, "Play too. Away my bugle." And
in the end, the two go off to something wonderful with the People waving them on
with song, maybe even in the audience.
The villain is the Atlantic Monthly, the crassness and businesses and money and
all the values with which the world measures itself and tortures its poets.

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