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The Juggernaut of Production

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 February 2022

Extract

In the autumn of 1958, Lee Strasberg told the members of The Actors’ Studio that he was feeling worried and belligerent about the emphasis on individual excellence that seemed to have become the entire raison d'etre of the Studio, an emphasis which he considered to be taken at the expense of the concept of the ensemble. “We lose the sense,” he said, “of serving the theatre.” His worry, seen then or now, could be easily understood by the most casual observer of the American theatrical scene. His belligerence, then and now, can not be so easily understood, since it is not readily apparent to the naked—or should I say hungry?—eye.

Belligerence implies the will to change, and in the case of those who would lead American theatre, the will to do more than change a way of work. The word belongs to the vocabulary of war.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1963 The Tulane Drama Review

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References

1 The New Republic, December 1, 1962.

2 The Observer, January 6, 1963.

3 Courage-Modellbuch, 1949.

4 Marx, Karl, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, 1844, tr. by Bottomore, T. B.Google Scholar; incorporated in Fromm's, Erich Marx's Concept of Man (Frederick Ungar, 1961), p. 132.Google Scholar

5 Theaterarbeit (Henschelverlag Kunst und Gesellshaft).

6 Brecht, ed. by Demetz, Peter (Prentice-Hall, 1962), p. 1.Google Scholar

7 Brecht, , Poems on the Theatre, tr. Berger, John and Bostock, Anna (Scorpion Press, 1961), p. 10.Google Scholar

8 Martin Esslin, Brecht (Doubleday, 1961), p. 131.

9 “Ibid., p. 133.

10 Brecht, , A Short Organum for the Theatre, tr. Bentley, Eric, in Playwrights on Play-writing (Hill & Wang, 1960), p. 94.Google Scholar

11 Esslin, , Brecht, p. 133.Google Scholar

12 Brecht, , Poems on the Theatre, p. 12.Google Scholar

13 Ibid., p. 14.

14 Esslin, , Brecht, p. 138.Google Scholar

15 Brecht, , Poems on the Theatre, p. 19.Google Scholar

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17 Cole, Toby and Chinoy, Helen Krich, Actors on Acting (Crown, 1949), p. 413.Google Scholar