The Naked Image

" "The theatre must not regard itself simply as an arena for the exhibition of a prize 'product' but as the ground for the cultivation on the broadest possible basis-technical and spirit- ual-of the artists and the world view it hopes to have emerge." Observations on today's theatre world by Harold Clurman carry more weight than those of any other spokesman in America. For more than three decades, he has watched the de- velopment of the theatre here and abroad, has been director and critic, a formative figure in the Group Theatre of the 1930's, and a vital force in appraising the new playwrights who have revolutionized the theatre in the late fifties and early sixties.The larger portion of The Naked Image is de- voted to these new playwrights, from the obvious giants like Brecht through the whole roster: Albee, Beckett, Giraudoux, Rolf Hochhuth, Ionesco, LeRoi Jones, John Osborne, Pinter, Weiss, Tennessee Williams, and many others. He writes of the theatre across America, with emphasis on such group theatres as Tyrone Guthrie's in Minneapolis, the Actor's Workshop in San Francisco, the Lincoln Center in New York, and similar enterprises. In a survey of the theatre abroad, he remarks on the prole- tarianization of the English stage and British playgoers who now "prefer the raw to the smooth, the stink of the streets to the musti- ness of the salons." He also includes firsthand accounts of the contemporary theatre in Paris, Moscow, Warsaw, and Tokyo.The book is delightfully discursive on a diver- sity of theatrical topics. At the same time, it is serious and significant, vitally important to anyone who regards the theatre as more than mere transitory entertainment. It is Clurman's deep conviction that the concern of the modern theatre is the modern world and, in fact, that the theatre is the world's mirror. He believes, too, that every true theatre must sooner or later produce its own native playwrights and that "what we must demand from all plays is that they speak to us, move us in ways which most intimately and powerfully stir our senses and our souls, penetrate to the core of what is most truly alive in us."HAROLD CLURMAN gained wide recognition for his work with the Group Theatre and for his direction of many distinguished productions on Broadway and abroad of plays by Anouilh, Giraudoux, O'Neill, Shaw, Miller, Hellman, Inge, Williams, and others. He has lectured widely and for the past fifteen years or more has been the theatre critic of The Nation. His articles and essays have also appeared in The New York Times, Partisan Review, the London Observer, and other publications. He is the author of Lies Like Truth and The Fervent Years and is now at work on a book on theatre direction, also to be published by Macmillan."-Publisher