Waiting for Lefty & Other Plays

Waiting for Lefty & Other Plays
Author: Clifford Odets
Publisher:
Total Pages: 436
Release: 1993
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780802132208

Six plays deal with unions, an anti-Nazi group, work, loneliness, the depression, and the American obsession with success.

Golden Boy

Golden Boy
Author: Clifford Odets
Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.
Total Pages: 92
Release: 1964
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780822204565

THE STORY: The Acting Edition contains notes showing how nearly all scene changes may be made with a minimum of effort. People are inclined to laugh at Joe, a moody young Italian with cockeyed notions. At heart a musician--he has a real talent for

The Country Girl

The Country Girl
Author: Clifford Odets
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service, Inc.
Total Pages: 84
Release: 1951
Genre: Actors
ISBN: 9780822202431

THE STORY: The title character is Georgie Elgin, a faithful, forgiving woman, whose long years of devotion to her actor husband, Frank, have almost obliterated her own personality. The life of an actor's wife is not as glamorous as many imagine. So

Waiting for Lefty

Waiting for Lefty
Author: Clifford Odets
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service Inc
Total Pages: 36
Release: 1962
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780822212157

THE STORY: The action of the play is comprised of a series of varied, imaginatively conceived episodes, which blend into a powerful and stirring mosaic. The opening scene is a hiring hall where a union leader (obviously in the pay of the bosses) is trying to convince a committee of workers (who are waiting for their leader, Lefty, to arrive) not to strike. This is followed by a moving confrontation between a discouraged taxi driver, who cannot earn enough to live on, and his angry wife, who wants him to show some backbone and stand up to his employer; a revealing scene between a scheming boss and the young worker who refuses to spy on his fellow employees; a sad/funny episode centering on a young cabbie and his would-be bride, who lack the wherewithal to get married; a disturbing scene involving a senior doctor and the underpaid young intern (a labor activist) whom the doctor has been ordered to discharge; and, finally, a return to the union hall where the workers, learning that Lefty has been gunned down by the powers-that-be, resolve at last to stand up for their rights and to strike-and to stay off their jobs until their grievances are finally heard and acted upon by those who have so cynically exploited and misused them.

The Big Knife

The Big Knife
Author: Clifford Odets
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service, Inc.
Total Pages: 84
Release: 1976
Genre: American drama
ISBN: 9780822201151

THE STORY: We witness the last few days of Charlie Castle, a top movie star and an idealist, whose years of compromise with his beliefs for the sake of a Hollywood career have resulted in the slow destruction of his personality. We see his struggle

Clifford Odets

Clifford Odets
Author: Margaret Brenman-Gibson
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
Total Pages: 788
Release: 2002
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781557834577

(Applause Books). Clifford Odets through his plays, which include "Waiting for Lefty" and "Awake" and "Sing!", was the champion of the oppressed, avenger for the poor. He and his plays, as presented by the influential Group Theatre, were the conscience of America during the Depression. Author Margaret Brenman-Gibson, a respected psychoanalyst and close personal friend, penned what is considered the classic biography of Odets. Based on exhaustive research, including access to his personal papers, plus her own insights into the man and his career, it is at last back in prtin. The book is richly annotated, with a thorough bibliography, personal chronology, a list of Odets' works, published and unpublished, and a section of rare photographs.

On Directing

On Directing
Author: Harold Clurman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 332
Release: 1997-04-03
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0684826224

Originally published: New York: Collier Books, 1972.

Napoli, Brooklyn

Napoli, Brooklyn
Author: Meghan Kennedy
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service, Inc.
Total Pages: 73
Release: 2019-03-15
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0822238314

In 1960 Brooklyn, the Muscolinos have raised three proud and passionate daughters. But as the girls come of age in a rapidly changing world, their paths diverge—in drastic and devastating ways—from their parents’ deeply traditional values. Despite their fierce love, each young woman harbors a secret longing that, if revealed, could tear the family apart. When an earth-shattering event rocks their Park Slope neighborhood, life comes to a screeching halt and the Muscolino sisters are forced to confront their conflicting visions for the future in this gripping, provocative portrait of love in all its danger and beauty.

The Fervent Years

The Fervent Years
Author: Harold Clurman
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 1983-03-22
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9780306801860

The Group Theatre was perhaps the most significant experiment in the history of American theater. Producing plays that reflected topical issues of the decade and giving a creative chance to actors, directors, and playwrights who were either fed up with or shut out of commercial theater, the "Group" remains a permanent influence on American drama despite its brief ten-year life. It was here that method acting, native realism, and political language had their tryouts in front of audiences who anticipated--indeed demanded--a departure from the Broadway "show-biz" tradition. In this now classic account, Harold Clurman, founder of the Group Theatre and a dynamic force as producer-director-critic for fifty years, here re-creates history he helped make with Lee Strasberg, Elia Kazan, Irwin Shaw, Clifford Odets, Cheryl Crawford, Morris Carnovsky, and William Saroyan. Stella Adler contributed a new introduction to this edition which remembers Clurman, the thirties, and the heady atmosphere of a tumultuous decade.