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Awake and Sing!
AUDIENCE CONTEXT GUIDE
for Olney Theatre Center’s
2014 production
I
ntroduction
Plays, like people, are a product of their
time, their parents, and their upbringing.
Coming out of the Great Depression and
the rise of professional acting companies,
Awake and Sing! found a place in the
American consciousness and has drawn
audiences back again and again. In this
guide, we will explore the play’s origin
story as well as its legacy.
In this Context Guide, we hope to give
you a sense of the people and events that
influenced the development of Awake and
Sing!. This guide includes background on
playwright Clifford Odets and the Group
Theatre, an overview of the historical
events surrounding the play, a look at the
history of the American family drama, and
an interview with director Serge Seiden.
For further insight into the world of
the play, including pictures, videos, and
articles, please visit our blog at www.
olneyawakeandsing.wordpress.com.
If
you have any questions or comments
about this Context Guide, the blog, or
the production itself, please send us a
message at [email protected].
From the “Krazy Kat” comic strip by George Herriman.
Table of Contents
Introduction
The Playwright:
Clifford Odets and the Group Theatre
3
The 1930s
5
Staging the Family:
2
2
The Evolution of the American Family Drama
6
After The Group: Further Innovation
8
A History of Awake and Sing!
10
Artist Spotlight: Serge Seiden
13
The Playwright
“
Clifford Odets and the Group Theatre
EARLY
YEARS
My chief influence as a
playwright was the Group
Theatre acting company,
and being a member of that
company ... And you can
see the Group Theatre acting
technique crept right into the
plays...” — Clifford Odets
Clifford
Odets
was
born
in
Philadelphia
in
1906,
the
son
of Russian- and
Romanian-Jewish
immigrants.
He
was raised in the
Bronx.
Odets
dropped out of high
school at 17 to pursue acting. In 1929,
he joined the prestigious Theatre Guild,
resulting in two roles on Broadway: as
a non-speaking robot in R.U.R. and the
understudy for Spencer Tracy in Conflict
by Vincent Lawrence. Tracy never missed
a performance.
THE GROUP THEATRE
Through his acting career, Odets met
casting director Cheryl Crawford, who
introduced him to then-script reader
Harold Clurman. With director Lee
Strasberg, Crawford and Clurman
founded the Group Theatre, of which
Odets was a member actor, in 1931.
Odets began writing plays at Clurman’s
urging and became the primary playwright
for The Group Theatre.
Although it only lasted for ten years,
The Group’s ensemble-based approach
to disciplined, naturalistic work had a
huge impact on the American theater.
The Group popularized the Stanislavski
system of acting, which co-founder
Lee Strasberg later developed into The
Method. After the dissolution of The
Group, members including Elia Kazan,
Stella Adler, and Sanford Meisner
continued to shape acting and directing
as we know them today.
RISE TO
FAME
Odets’ first play
to be produced,
Waiting for Lefty,
was
a
one-act
performed
in
January of 1935 at
a benefit for New
Theatre Magazine.
The play, depicting
a taxi drivers’ strike, was greeted with
explosive enthusiasm and 28 curtain
calls. Odets was suddenly internationally
famous—he appeared on the cover of
Time in 1938—and a poster child for
the radical politics that Lefty advocated.
In the same year, the Group produced
Awake and Sing!, a highly influential play
in the development of Jewish theater and
the American family drama.
Clifford Odets on the cover of Time
Continued on Page 4
3
Continued from Page 3
THE MOVE TO
HOLLYWOOD
LATER YEARS
Starting in 1936, Odets went to
Odets’ final play, The Flowering Peach,
Hollywood to pursue screenwriting, drawn had its Broadway premiere in 1954. The
by the financial advantages, although play was a finalist for the 1955 Pulitzer
he continued to write plays. He worked Prize, and was the preferred choice of the
within the studio system and wrote many jury, but Joseph Pulitzer Jr. chose Cat On
scripts that were further developed by A Hot Tin Roof instead.
other writers. Odets was not credited for
In 1963, at age 57, Clifford Odets died
many of these works but did accept credit
of
stomach cancer. The 2006 revival of
for screenplays including 1936’s The
Awake
and Sing! at Lincoln Center drew
General Died At Dawn and 1957’s Sweet
Smell of Success, in addition to two films renewed interest to Odets’ work, winning
he also directed: None But The Lonely the Tony for Best Revival of a Play.
Heart (1944) and The Story On Page Revivals of Odets’ early plays became
One (1959). In 1937, he married movie more popular as the economic crash in
highlighted
their
continued
star Luise Rainer. They divorced in 1940, 2008
relevance.
and in 1943 he married another actress,
Betty Grayson, until their 1951 divorce. In
1962, Odets signed on to write teleplays
for NBC and finished three of the scripts,
but he died before any of that work was 25.0%
produced.
HUAC
In 1952, Odets was called before
the House Committee on Un-American
Activities. Between 1934 and 1935, he
belonged to the Communist Party for less
than a year. He avoided being blacklisted
by giving names that had already been
given by his friend and former colleague
Elia Kazan. According to his son, Walt,
Odets was tormented by the perception
that he had cooperated with HUAC. “By
taking the Fifth, you are positing that you
have engaged in criminal activity,” Walt
Odets said in a 2010 interview with The
Jewish Chronicle. He explained that his
father did not plead the fifth because he
had nothing to hide. Instead, Clifford
Odets criticized the proceedings and
only gave names that others had already
given.
4
20.0%
No major legislation
addresses the
Depression.
15.0%
10.0%
5.0%
0%
Widespread bank The Group
failures
Theatre is
founded.
Stock market
collapses.
t
en
m
oy
pl
em
Un te
ra
1929
The Irish
Sweepstakes
lottery is
established.
1930
1931
The 1930s
Money in the Great Depression
Item
Average Amount c. 1935
Equivalence Today
Average house
$6,300
$109,000
Average car
$580
$10,010
Gallon of milk
47¢
$8.13
5 lb. of flour
25.3¢
$4.33
1 lb. of apples
5.1¢
86.5¢
A dozen oranges
30.1¢
$5.19
Loaf of bread
8¢
$1.38
Postage stamp
3¢
52¢
Average annual salary $1,500
FDR is
elected.
Beginning of the
New Deal
Awake and Sing! takes place
Hitler is elected
chancellor of
Germany.
100,000 votes are cast
for Communist Party
candidate William Z.
Foster.
Prohibition is
repealed.
1932
$25,950
1933
Clifford Odets joins
the Communist
Party. He leaves 8
months later.
A taxi strike inspires
Odets’ Waiting for
Lefty.
1934
1935
Beginning of the
Spanish Civil War
Japanese ship sinks
USS Panay in China;
they apologize and
pay an indemnity.
1936
1937
1938
55
S
taging the Family
The Evolution of the American Family
The American family drama—a
standard convention seen in American
classics and new work alike—evolved out
of European realism, influenced by writers
including Chekhov, Strindberg, and Ibsen.
Henrik Ibsen is regarded as the father of
the genre, codifying the 19th-century
naturalistic approach with plays like A
Doll’s House, Hedda Gabler, and Ghosts.
By the early 20th century, American
realism had taken root and taken off, as
demonstrated by the success of realistic
family dramas including Odets’ Awake
and Sing!, Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s
Journey Into Night, and the later works of
Arthur Miller and Tennesse Williams.
ODETS’ TAKE ON REALISM
Ellen Schiff writes that rather than
glamorizing his characters’ experiences,
Clifford Odets was “one of the earliest with
the courage to dramatize instead what
is true.” She concludes that although
he did not invent social realism, Odets
popularized it. Even Harold Clurman was
wary of Odets’ “messy kitchen realism”
when he first read what became Awake
and Sing!. According to John Frick’s “The
‘Playwright of the Proletariat,’” it was the
rise of the professional acting company
that aided “a rediscovery and revaluation
of realism.” Odets’ work brought that
trend to the forefront by combining it with
left-wing politics.
Even compared with earlier naturalistic
theater, Awake and Sing! stood out with
language that critic Alfred Kazin called
“brilliantly authentic.”
His dialogue,
simultaneously lyrical, blunt, and rooted
in character, felt fresh and exciting to
audiences without breaking the theatrical
illusion. “His role in changing the
direction of the American theater
6
can arguably be compared to Shaw’s
in England and Ibsen’s, Strindberg’s,
Chekhov’s, and Gorki’s on the continent,”
Schiff concludes.
DEFENDING THE FORM
As the American family drama rose to
dominate mainstream stages, its worth
as a convention did not go unchallenged.
In 1956—the same year that Waiting
for Godot introduced a new form to the
American stage—Arthur Miller‘s essay
“The Family in Modern Drama” defended
the genre. Miller argues that while “the
modern American audience is so quickly
at home with the form, “playwrights have
gotten impatient with it... Why does
Realism always seem to be drawing us
all back to its arms? We have not yet
created in this country a succinct form to
take its place.”
“
Why does Realism always
seem to be drawing us all
back into its arms? We
have not yet created in this
country a succint form to
take its place.”
— Arthur Miller, 1956
To Miller, it is no coincidence that
American realistic plays like Awake and
Sing! focus on familial relationships. The
intimacy of these relationships allow
for an emotional intensity and honesty
that would not ring true outside the
domestic setting. Frick observes that the
Bergers serve as “a microcosm of the
social situation,” tackling huge political
issues from an angle of intimate, human
specificity. In this way, Odets is not limited
to “small horizons” as Harold Clurman
initially worried, but he is empowered to
challenge our largest assumptions about
society from a grounded, familiar place.
LEGACY
In the nearly eighty years since
Awake and Sing! first premiered on
Broadway, playwrights of all stripes have
experimented with theatrical form and
changed the ways we view the stage,
but the influence of the American family
drama is omnipresent. Playwrights from
David Mamet to Tony Kushner to Donald
Margulies have cited Clifford Odets as
a forefather. In 1999, June Schlueter
wrote that “Americans’ belief that the
nuclear family is the structural given of
American life and verisimilitude the formal
given of American theater has sustained
a tradition that has defined the American
stage at least since Eugene O’Neill.”
Together, realism and the family remain
intertwined and essential to the field of
American drama, influenced by many
others but never leaving Odets’ “messy
kitchens” too far behind.
“
Americans’ belief that
the nuclear family is the
structural given of American
life and verisimilitude the
formal given of American
theater has sustained a
tradition that has defined
the American stage...”
— Dr. June Schlueter
Set rendering by scenic designer Jack Magaw.
7
After The Group:
Lee Strasberg
went on to direct
The Actor’s Studio,
a prestigious acting
school. Out of the
Group’s roots in
Stanislavski, he
developed and
promoted Method
acting. The
Method has been
highly influential in
naturalistic acting
ever since.
Cheryl Crawford
founded the American
Repertory Theatre in
1946 before working
with Group colleagues
Elia Kazan and Robert
Louis to found The
Actor’s Studio, which
trained Marlon Brando,
James Dean, Jane
Fonda, Bea Arthur, and
many others.
Harold Clurman,
original director of
Awake and Sing!,
became an influential
critic and director.
Awake and Sing!
was the first play
he directed for the
Group. He also
wrote seven books
about theater,
including chronicling
the history of the
Group.
Sanford Meisner developed the Meisner
8
Technique, a procedure of self-investigation
for actors. He taught at the Neighborhood
Playhouse and The Actor’s Studio. Students
included Diane Keaton, Gregory Peck, and
David Mamet.
Further Innovation
Elia Kazan, after acting
professionally, was a cofounder of The Actor’s Studio.
In addition to his Tony-winning
direction on stage, he became
the Oscar-winning director
of films including A Streetcar
Named Desire, On The
Waterfront, and East of Eden.
He introduced mainstream
audiences to actors including
Stella Adler, pictured above as James Dean, Marlon Brando,
Bessie in the premiere of Awake
Julie Harris, and Andy Griffith.
and Sing!, studied with Stanislavski Kazan was criticized for being
in Paris, leading her to part ways a cooperative witness in his
with Strasberg’s interpretation.
HUAC hearing.
After a brief Hollywood career, she
acted, directed, and taught in New
York, founding the Stella Adler
Studio of Acting in 1949. Notable
alumni include Robert De Niro,
Judy Garland, Elizabeth Taylor,
Elaine Stritch, and Warren Beatty.
9
A History of
Awake and Sing!
WRITING AND REWRITING
When Clifford Odets wrote the script
that became Awake and Sing! in 1933,
its title was “I Got The Blues.” He
began it from a place of frustration,
underemployed as an actor and stuffed
into a chilly apartment. Over the course
of two years, Odets worked on the play,
hoping that The Group would produce
it. Lee Strasberg was dismissive of the
script, but Harold Clurman saw potential
in it. They had a well-received trial
rehearsal of I Got The Blues at Green
Mansions in the Adirondacks, but Group
founders Clurman, Strasberg, and Cheryl
Crawford still had reservations. Among
them were Bessie’s cruelty, a pessimistic
last act, “gross Jewish humor” and the
script’s “messy kitchen realism.” In the
rewriting process, Odets addressed most
of these concerns. The “messy kitchen
realism,” however, became a hallmark of
his style.
With The Group still hesitant to
produce, Odets received an offer from
producer Frank Merlin. Although Merlin
had financial backing, Odets had written
the play for The Group’s actors and
considered them irreplaceable. Merlin
dropped the project. The actors of The
Group, who were desperate for new
material, agreed to consider the new
draft, and their enthusiasm brought the
play back to the founders’ attention.
PREMIERE
On February 19, 1935, following the
success of Waiting for Lefty, Awake
and Sing! finally premiered on
10 Broadway at the Belasco Theatre in
a production directed by Harold Clurman.
The cast included Luther Adler (Moe),
Stella Adler (Bessie), Morris Carnovsky
(Jacob), John Garfield (Ralph), Sanford
Meisner (Sam), Phoebe Brand (Hennie),
J.E. Bromberg (Uncle Morty), and Roman
Bohnen (Schlosser). Critical responses
were positive, but more mixed than
the responses to Waiting for Lefty the
same year. Awake and Sing! ran for
184 performances but reopened two
months after closing for 24 additional
performances. Just a few years later,
when Awake and Sing! was first revived
on Broadway, critics gave it, as Harold
Clurman wrote, “the reception of an
honored classic.”
REVIVALS
New York productions of Awake and
Sing! have opened off-Broadway in 1970,
1979, 1993, and 1995; they have come
to Broadway in 1938, 1939, 1984, and
2006. In 1961, it graced the stage at the
Teatro Oficina in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and in
1972, a TV adaptation aired on PBS. The
2006 Lincoln Center production, starring
Mark Ruffalo (Moe), Zoe Wanamaker
(Bessie) and Lauren Ambrose (Hennie)
and directed by Bartlett Sher, won two
Tonys, including Best Revival of a Play,
out of its eight nominations. In 2007,
Stockard Channing starred as Bessie in a
production at London’s Almeida Theatre,
directed by Michael Attenborough.
Awake and Sing! has seen many regional
productions across North America,
especially following the economic crash of
2008. I Got the Blues, the original script,
premiered at Depaul University in 1998.
“
Ever since Awake and Sing!,
messy kitchens have been
serving as a common locus of
American drama.”
— Ellen Schiff
Bessie (Mia Katigbak) and Jacob (Alok
Tewari) in the National Asian American
Theatre Company’s 2013 production of
Awake and Sing! Photo by William P.
Steele.
11
Costume rendering by designer Caitlin Rain.
12
Pictured opposite: Director Serge Seiden. Photo by Mark Seiden.
A
rtist Spotlight:
Serge Seiden, Director
Susanna Pretzer, Dramaturg:
You have directed a wide range
of work. As a director, what drew
you to Awake and Sing!?
Serge Seiden: I am so thrilled to
be directing a Clifford Odets play.
Awake and Sing! is a dream play for
me to direct, because it so perfectly
fits into the core of the canon of
American realistic drama, which is
the acting style that I teach. I have
been teaching it at Studio Theatre
for 17 years and this is the first time
that I’ve gotten to actually direct a
full-length, full production of one of
these great American classics. It’s
a real treat. It’s not something that
everyone gets to direct. I’ve mostly
directed contemporary American
plays, so to direct one from the core
of the canon is really special and I’m
very excited to do it.
SP: How do you think Awake and
Sing! fits into the tradition of American
realism?
SS: This is really interesting—I was
actually just talking about this with my
acting teacher and the founder of Studio
Theatre, Joy Zinoman. The tenets of
realistic acting have to do with techniques
that came from Stanislavski and were
then transmitted to the people in the
Group Theatre. One of the tenets is
given circumstances—as a technique,
that is that the events that transpired
offstage have to be carried into the scene
onstage and have an impact on how the
scene is played. Number two is that props
and stage business are crucial tools for
revealing the inner lives of the characters
through subtext. So, business reveals
subtext.
What’s wonderful about Awake and
Sing!—and other Clifford Odets plays,
but particularly Awake and Sing!—is that
it is written with these tenets of realism
completely integrated. You can’t correctly
interpret the scene you are working on
unless you understand what the given
circumstances are. And every character is
written to have props and stage business
to help the actor reveal the characters.
That’s a small example of the connection
between this play and realistic acting.
SP: How has Awake and Sing!
influenced this style of playwriting
since its premiere in 1935?
SS: When you watch and listen to Awake
and Sing!, you can hear how playwrights
Continued on Page 14
13
Continued from Page 13
like Williams and Miller saw this 1935 play
or read it and used many of the things
they learned from Awake and Sing! in
their own plays.
Comparing the characters, you could
almost say that Glass Menagerie is
Williams’ version of Awake and Sing!. It
has the same kind of central character
trying to decide what to do with his life,
it has the same sister, the same kind of
mother. In Glass Menagerie the father is
gone, but in Awake and Sing!, the father
is weak. It’s different because Williams’
play is more condensed, with a smaller
cast, but the themes are similar. Both
plays are about young men deciding how,
given their circumstances, to experience
their dreams. Williams gives a completely
opposite answer, though. Tom decides to
do what Hennie does, to go off and seek
adventure. In Awake and Sing!, Ralph
stays to share in the burden of his family.
There are echoes of Awake and Sing! and
its characters in Miller, too, especially in
Death of a Salesman.
It’s also interesting that Odets was not
a very educated man when he joined
the Group Theatre, but you can hear
in Awake and Sing! his delight in, for
example, Shakespeare. He pulls into his
play echoes of the plays that he studied
when he was with the Group Theatre.
There’s an incredible set of lines we were
just doing in rehearsal where Morty says
to Ralph, “Is that any way to speak to your
mother?” And Ralph turns to Morty and
says, “Was that any way to speak to your
father?” And that parallel line is just like
in Hamlet.
SP: What is the biggest challenge for
you in directing Awake and Sing!?
SS: The biggest challenge would be to
have an ensemble of actors who are all
working in the same style. In a normal
regional theater situation where all the
actors come from different places and
they’re plopped together, it would be
14 very difficult to have an ensemble.
“
That idea, of a young
person wanting to make
up their own mind about
what to do with their life,
never changes. That’s
a universal situation, it’s
just that the stakes in
his [Ralph’s] particular
situation are so high.”
— Serge Seiden
But the brilliance of the casting of this
production is that most of the actors
have known each other and have worked
together for many, many years, and so
there is a great sense of ensemble among
them already that we’re taking advantage
of. That would be a challenge, but it isn’t
here.
SP: What do you think draws theaters
and audiences back to Awake and
Sing! after nearly eighty years? What
relevance does it have today?
SS: There’s a topical relevance in that over
the last six or seven years of very slow
economic growth, there was a parallel, to
some extent, of young people graduating
from college and not being able to get a job
and having to live with their parents. That
is the situation that Ralph and Hennie find
themselves in. Obviously it’s much more
dire; in 1933, 24% of Americans were
out of work, and in 2012 it was more like
8.5%. So the comparison isn’t really fair,
because it was so much more extreme,
but there are some topical echoes. Even
today, it’s hard for young people to find a
career, and they’re a little bit stymied.
But in Awake and Sing!, the story is
really about a young man who is pulled
in many directions, trying to decide which
path he should take. Should he take the
revolutionary path that his grandfather
is pushing him towards? Should he go
into business like his capitalist uncle,
a dress manufacturer? There’s Moe,
who says “pick a racket, any racket, and
shake down the cocoanuts.” Should he
follow the romantic path that his sister is
following? He has a girlfriend, Blanche;
should he go off and marry her and live
a romantic dream? Or should he stay at
the job he’s in and do what his father did,
just be stalwart and hope that something
comes of it. So Ralph has at least five
different paths that he could take, but he
says, “I want to make up my own mind.”
That idea, of a young person wanting to
make up their own mind about what to do
with their life, never changes. That’s a
universal situation, it’s just that the stakes
in his particular situation are so high. But
I think everybody can identify with that.
SP: What would you like the audience
to have in mind coming into the show?
What do you hope they’ll come away
with afterwards?
SS: I hope that they will be patient,
because the play was written at a time
when going to the theater was an event
and the play was meant to last for two
and a half hours. You were going there
to spend a good length of time with these
people and get to know them. So many
contemporary plays now are 90 minutes
and you’re out, no intermission. At Studio
Theatre this season, there’s not one play
with an intermission out of eleven plays.
So the audience should be patient with
the play and treat it like a miniseries. It’s
going to be three episodes of an HBO
series in one night, sort of like bingewatching. That’s kind of how they should
approach the evening.
When they leave, I hope that they will not
feel like “that was an old chestnut.” I’d
like for them to leave feeling like they saw
something very fresh and contemporary.
I hope it will resonate with them as much
as it did at its premiere, so that they could
not even realize that it is an old play.
Left to right: Rick Foucheux, Paul Morella, Naomi Jacobsen (center),
Alex Mandell, and Laura C. Harris.
15
Still curious?
Read, watch, and listen more at
www.olneyawakeandsing.wordpress.com
This context guide was created by Susanna Pretzer,
Dramaturgy Apprentice, and edited by Jason King Jones,
Associate Artistic Director and Director of Education, 2014.
Cover image: photo by William Roege (1930); back cover image: Works
Project Administration poster, 1936-7.