Clifford Odets

Clifford Odets was an American playwright, screenwriter, and director whose socially engaged dramas helped define the Group Theatre and 1930s Broadway.

Waiting for Lefty: Clifford Odets’s 1935 one-act play presents a taxi drivers’ strike through a series of linked scenes. Its labor uprising made Odets a leading voice of theatrical protest.
Group Theatre: A New York theatre company founded in 1931 to develop ensemble acting and socially engaged American plays. Odets became its best-known playwright through works written for its ensemble.
Harold Clurman: An American theatre director and critic who co-founded the Group Theatre and championed psychologically grounded acting. Clurman helped guide the company that first staged Odets’s major plays.
Hollywood blacklist: The exclusion of people from American film and broadcasting industries because of alleged communist ties, especially during the Cold War. Odets testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee and named former associates.
Social realism: An artistic approach that depicts ordinary people and social conditions with attention to material circumstances. Odets’s early plays made social realism forceful and commercially visible on Broadway.
Awake and Sing!: Clifford Odets’s 1935 drama follows a working-class Jewish family in the Bronx during the Great Depression. Its family portrait shows how economic pressure shapes private hopes.
Great Depression: A worldwide economic crisis beginning in 1929, marked in the United States by mass unemployment and hardship. Its poverty and labor conflicts supplied the circumstances of Odets’s early dramas.
Lee Strasberg: An American actor and director who co-founded the Group Theatre and later led the Actors Studio. His direction helped establish the acting style associated with Odets’s early productions.
House Un-American Activities Committee: A United States House committee that investigated alleged subversion, including communist influence in Hollywood. Its 1952 questioning of Odets shaped his public reputation and career.
American drama: The body of theatrical writing produced in the United States, shaped by its languages, histories, and social conflicts. His plays became a central reference point for twentieth-century American playwrights.

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