"A straightforward, tasteful, and articulate account of what it is to bring a play to palpitating life upon a stage" ("The New York Times Book Review").
In this classic guide to directing, we are taken logically from the choice of the play right through ever aspect of its production to performances and beyond. Harold Clurman, director of such memorable productions as "A Member of the Wedding" and "Uncle Vanya," describes the pleasures and perils of working with such celebrated playwrights and actors as Marlon Brando, Arthur Miller, Julie Harris, and Lillian Hellman. He also presents his own directing notes for ten of his best-known productions.

This comprehensive volume contains nine of the most important, most indispensable plays of the modern theatre. What Harold Clurman has done in this seminal collection is to create for us a portrait of the progress and turmoil of the twentieth century. Ranging from the eerie realism of Pinter's sinister Birthday Party, to the absurd literalism of Ionesco's conformist city in Rhinoceros, to the baroque fantasy world of Genet's brothel in The Balcony, to the tragic hilarity of Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, these nine plays, each entirely distinct, together form an incisive, compelling, and sometimes heartbreaking mosaic of our time.

The Group Theatre was perhaps the most significant experiment in the history of American theatre. 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 theatre, 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.

For six decades, Harold Clurman illuminated our artistic, social, and political awareness in thousands of reviews, essays, and lectures. His work appeared indefatigably in The Nation, The New Republic, The London Observer, The New York Times, Harper's, Esquire, New York Magazine, and more. The Collected Works of Harold Clurman captures over six hundred of Clurman's encounters with the most significant events in American theatre - as well as his regular passionate embraces of dance, music, art and film. This chronological epic offers the most comprehensive view of American theatre seen through the eyes of our most extraordinary critic. 1102 pages, hardcover.

This classic collection—the only one-volume selection of Arthur Miller's work available—presents a rich cross section of writing from one of our most influential and humane playwrights, containing in full his masterpieces The Crucible and Death of a Salesman. This essential collection also includes the complete texts of After the Fall, The American Clock, The Last Yankee, and Broken Glass, winner of the Olivier Award for Best Play of 1995, as well as excerpts from Miller's memoir Timebends. An essay by Harold Clurman and Christopher Bigsby's introduction discuss Miller's standing as one of the greatest American playwrights of all time and his importance to twentieth-century literature.