Odets, Clifford
Odets, Clifford( 1906–63),born in Philadelphia and reared in the Bronx, quit school at 15 to become an actor. After acting with the Theatre Guild, he became a founder of the Group Theatre (1931), and was catapulted to fame by its production of his one-act play Waiting for Lefty (1935), dealing with a taxi strike. This success was followed by the production of Awake and Sing (1935) and the one-act play Till the Day I Die (1935), about the struggle of the German Communists at the beginning of the Hitler regime. These plays brought Odets a reputation as the leading proletarian playwright at the time, although he was less concerned with the problems of the worker than with the “fraud” of middle-class civilization, deprived by its economic insecurity of its former status and becoming aware that most of its cherished ideals no longer correspond to realities. Further realistic plays written for the Group are Paradise Lost (1935);...
[The entire page is 311 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Oxford University Press Titles
