Activity

And the actors? We couldn’t sleep that night. We straggled north through the silent streets—Harold Clurman among us—found a Child’s that was open all night, and lingered over our suppers, not talking too much, stunned by what had occurred. None of us was ever to be the same again, and I suppose we …

With that, Joe Bromberg came forward; he played Agate Keller, a man who’d lost one eye in an industrial accident. Clifford gave Agate a rousing summation. “Working class, unite and fight! Tear down the slaughterhouse of our lives. Let freedom really ring.” Then on to attack the union’s leadership: …

So we went forth from the Group Theatre like the apostles of Jesus, teaching, instead of brotherly love and the Ten Commandments, the art of Stanislavski as filtered through Strasberg. South of Fourteenth Street was our Corinth and Antioch and Caesarea. We assumed it as our duty to enlighten the un…

I wrote in my diary: “I know the source of his sickness. The capitalist system. The fascism which keeps the gambler gambling long after he wants to or has the money—or blood—to pay with. [Certainly a lurid description of my father’s modest trading.] The revolution I want is a society where everybod…

THAT SPRING was when it began. I’ve found a notebook from that time, and it’s full of a new passion. There are jottings about steelworkers walking off a job, tools held high (I’d read about that), about a job in a cement factory in the dead of winter and its hardships (I’d not suffered this cold), …