Word: theater
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...THEATER...
...October 10, 1986 speech in Sanders Theater during Harvard's 350th anniversary celebration, Secretary of Education William Bennett labelled the Core Curriculum a "smorgasbord." He advocated a more structured plan which would steep undergraduates in numerous courses covering "The classical and Jewish-Christian heritage, the roots of American and European History...and the great works of Western art and literature...
...first substantial recognition was as an actor playing a "Proletariat Thunderbolt" in the Group Theater's legendary Waiting for Lefty in 1935. More recently he has been dismissed as an "extinct volcano." Between those two notices he became what no American had ever been before, the dominant directorial force in both theater and film. His productions of A Streetcar Named Desire and Death of a Salesman defined Broadway's highest aspirations in the 1940s, and On the Waterfront did the same for American movies of the 1950s. In that period he also conceived and co-founded the most influential teaching...
...with his Greek parents when he was four); his lack of social status at Williams College, which he worked his way through as a fraternity-house waiter; and his lack of visible talent at the Yale Drama School. He acquired his nickname, Gadget (latterly Gadg), because the Group Theater people found him such a handy little guy to have around, "doing whatever I had to do to gain the tolerance, the friendship, and the protection of the authority figures in my life." He admits that it was this adaptability that led him to join a Communist cell, which contained some...
Harold Clurman, a director of the Group Theater, informed Kazan that his only gift was excessive energy. But that, of course, is a quality too often underestimated by intellectuals. Combined with his survivor's shrewdness in observing the behavior that betrays motives, it is what gave his productions both realism and driving power. Above all, it is what enabled him to survive the contempt heaped on him after his HUAC testimony. This is how he remembers his interior monologue at the time, addressed to his critics: "You can't hurt me; you haven't penetrated my guard; I can beat...