Recalling Adler years later, Clurman described her at this time as “poetically theatrical, reminiscent of some past beauty in a culture I had perhaps never seen, but that was part of an atavistic dream. Clurman maintained that the discipline was healthy, but Adler felt that the women in the company were coerced into going along with the men. Although she has written that Clurman was her savior, Adler hated having to submerge her personality into the ensemble, rotating between starring roles and bit parts. Over its ten years and twenty productions, they not only met these goals but altered the course of American theatre forever.’ According to an article on Stella Adler by Judith Laikin Elkin:Ĭlurman invited Adler to join the new theater, initiating a love-hate relationship between the highly individualistic star and the communally committed Group. Their vision was of a new theatre that would mount original American plays to mirror – even change – the life of their troubled times. They conceived the Group theatre as a response to what they saw as the old-fashioned light entertainment that dominated the theatre of the last 1920’s. They recruited 28 actors to form a permanent ensemble dedicated to dramatizing the life of their times. The Group Theatre original founders Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg and Cheryl Crawford were ‘inspired by a passionate dream of transforming the American theatre. Harold Clurman invited Stella to join the Group Theatre.įrom 1931 Stella worked as an actor and teacher with the Group Theatre which was set up in the summer of 1931 and ran until 1941. Clurman wrote several books including a classic on theatre directing called ‘On Directing’. Clurman studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and returned to America where he attended the American Laboratory Theatre before setting up the Group Theatre and going on to direct over forty plays including Clifford Odets’ Awake and Sing and Paradise Lost, Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov and Incident at Vichy by Arthur Miller. It is believed that his first introduction to theatre was to see the great Yiddish actor Jacob Adler perform, who was Stella’s father. Harold Clurman went on to become one of American’s greatest theatre directors. It was at the American Laboratory Theatre that Stella first met Harold Clurman, and actor and teacher Lee Strasberg who had come for drama lessons. Approximately 500 students attended the Lab during its seven years of operation from 1923 until 1930 and much of the spread of Stanislavski’s influence in America is due to the subsequent activities of Lab-trained personnel’, one of whom was Stella Adler. The training the actor received at the Lab was rigorous, comprehensive and carefully coordinated.
In his book The Fervent Years, theatre director Harold Clurman, who became Adler’s second husband from 1943 to 1960, identifies the American Laboratory Theatre as the school ‘where, for the first time, the technique of acting according to the Moscow Art Theatre was being taught to American students’. They had both worked at the Moscow Art Theatre with Konstantin Stanislavski, the Russian theatre director, producer, actor and teacher, who is considered the founding father of actor training. Stella was very influenced by the work of the American Laboratory Theatre, a drama school and theatre company set up in 1923 by two former actors from the Moscow Art Theatre in Russia who moved to America: Richard Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya. With the Group, her roles included Sarah Glassman in Success Story, Adah Menken in Gold Eagle Guy, Bessie Berger in Awake and Sing and Clara in Paradise Lost.
In 1931, when Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg, and Cheryl Crawford created The Group Theater, Stella was invited to join as a founding member. Following her Broadway debut, she joined the American Laboratory headed by Richard Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya, both former members of the Moscow Art Theater. Spent her young adult life performing throughout the United States, Europe and South America, appearing in more than 100 plays in vaudeville and the Yiddish theatre. According to the Stella Adler Studio of Acting, Stella: Stella’s father Jacob Adler was considered one of the greatest Yiddish actors of his time. Stella first appeared on stage at the age of four in a production of Broken Hearts presented by her parent’s theatre company. Her parents Sarah and Jacob Adler were both classical Yiddish stage actors and had their own acting company. Stella was born in New York City in the United States in 1901. Stella Adler (1901-1992) was an actor, director, educator and acting teacher who had a powerful influence on actor training. ‘In life, as on the stage, it’s not who I am but what I do that’s the measure of my worth.’