A Noise

Within
Study
Guide

Awake
and Sing!
California’s Home for the Classics

By Clifford Odets
California’s Home for the Classics
Photo by Craig Schwartz

California’s Home for the Classics On the Wings of Fate! 09/10 Season
 A Noise

Awake and Sing!

Within
Study
Guide
By Clifford Odets

Table of Contents

3 Cast of Characters
4 About the Play: Synopsis
6 About the Playwright
7 Clifford Odets—A Timeline
8 The Group Theatre
10 HUAC and the Hollywood Blacklist
11 I Got the (Biblical) Blues: Clifford Odets, American
Judaism and the Poetic Politics of the Group Theatre
13 The Great Depression
14 Staging Awake and Sing!
A Conversation with Director Andrew Traister
15 In the Classroom: Before and After the Play
Photo by Craig Schwartz

16 Visual Arts: Depression-Era Photography

17 Music: The 1930s
18 Resource Guide
19 About Theatre Arts
20 About A Noise Within

Funding for A Noise Within’s Educational Programs is provided in part by:

The Ahmanson Foundation, Alliance for the Advancement of Arts Education, The Annenberg Foundation,
Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, B.C. McCabe Foundation, Anonymous, The Catherine C. Demeter Foundation,
Disney Worldwide Outreach, Employees Community Fund of Boeing California, The Green Foundation, Kiwanis Club of
Glendale, Lockheed Financial Credit Union, Los Angeles Breakfast Club Foundation, Los Angeles County Arts Commission,
Metropolitan Associates, National Endowment for the Arts- Shakespeare for a New Generation, The Kenneth T. and
Eileen L. Norris Foundation, The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation, Steinmetz Foundation, The Waterman Foundation,
Weingart Foundation, WWW Foundation, Wells Fargo Foundation, The Capital Group Companies Charitable Foundation.

2 A Noise Within 2009/10 Repertory Season

 Cast of Characters
Photo by Craig Schwartz

BESSIE BERGER, as she herself states, is not only the mother in

this home but also the father. She is constantly arranging and
taking care of her family. She loves life, likes to laugh, has great
resourcefulness and enjoys living from day to day. A high degree
of energy accounts for her quick exasperation at ineptitude. She is
a shrewd judge of realistic qualities in people in the sense of being
able to gauge quickly their effectiveness. In her eyes all of the
people in the house are equal. She is naïve and quick in emotional
response. She is afraid of utter poverty. She is proper according to
her own standards, which are fairly close to those of most middle-
class families. She knows that when one lives in the jungle one
must look out for the wild life.

MYRON, her husband, is a born follower. He would like to be a

leader. He would like to make a million dollars. He is not sad or
ever depressed. Life is an even sweet event to him, but the “old
days” were sweeter yet. He has a dignified sense of himself. He
likes people. He likes everything. But he is heartbroken without
being aware of it.

HENNIE [Bessie & Myron’s daughter] is a girl who has had few
friends, male or female. She is proud of her body. She won’t ask
favors. She travels alone. She is fatalistic about being trapped, but
will escape if possible. She is self-reliant in the best sense. ‘Till the
day she dies she will be faithful to a loved man. She inherits her
mother’s sense of humor and energy.

3 A Noise Within 2009/10 Repertory Season


Awake and Sing! was presented by the
Group Theatre at the Belasco Theatre
on the evening of February 19, 1935,
with the following members of the
Group Theatre Acting Company:
MYRON BERGER Art Smith
BESSIE BERGER Stella Adler
JACOB Morris Carnovsky
HENNIE BERGER Phoebe Brand
RALPH BERGER Jules Garfield
SCHLOSSER Roman Bohnen
MOE AXELROD Luther Adler
UNCLE MORTY JE Bromberg
SAM FEINSCHREIBER Sanford Meisner
Theatre Lore
Why do actors say “break a leg”?
Perhaps the saying comes—in a
complicated way—from the use
of “leg.” In theatre, a “leg” is a
part of the mechanics that open
and close the curtain. To break
a leg is to earn so many curtain
calls that opening and closing
the curtain over and over during
final applause causes the curtain
mechanics to break. At the outset
of theatre tradition, players acted
outdoors, where there were no
stages or curtains. Applause came
in the form of foot stomping,
which could indicate another
origin of this phrase.
4 A Noise Within 2009/10 Repertory Season
RALPH [Bessie & Myron’s son] is a boy with a clean spirit. He
wants to know, wants to learn. He is ardent, he is romantic, he is
sensitive. He is naïve too. He is trying to find why so much dirt
must be cleared away before it is possible to “get to first base.”
JACOB, [Bessie’s father] too, is trying to find a right path for
himself and the others. He is aware of justice, of dignity. He is an
observer of the others, compares their activities with his real and
ideal sense of life. This produces a reflective nature. In this home
he is a constant boarder. He is a sentimental idealist with no power
to turn ideal to action. With physical facts—such as housework—he
putters. But as a barber he demonstrates the flair of an artist. He is
an old Jew with living eyes in his tired face.
UNCLE MORTY [Bessie’s brother] is a successful American
businessman with five good senses. Something sinister comes out
of the fact that the lives of others seldom touch him deeply. He
holds to his own line of life. When he is generous, he wants others
to be aware of it. He is pleased by attention—a rich relative to
the Berger family. He is a shrewd judge of material values. He will
die unmarried. Two and two make four, never five with him. he
can blink in the sun for hours, a fat tomcat. Tickle him, he laughs.
He lives in a penthouse with a real Japanese butler to serve him.
He sleeps with dress models, but not from his own showrooms.
He plays cards for hours on end. He smokes expensive cigars. He
sees every Mickey Mouse cartoon that appears. He is a 32-degree
Mason. He is really deeply intolerant finally.
MOE AXELROD [A boarder] lost a leg in the war. He seldom
forgets that fact. He has killed two men in extra-marital activity. He
is mordant, bitter. Life has taught him a disbelief in everything, but
he will fight his way through. He seldom shows his feelings: fights
against his own sensitivity. He has been everywhere and seen
everything. All he wants in Hennie. He is very proud. He scorns the
inability of others to make their way in life, but he likes people for
whatever good qualities they possess. His passionate outbursts
come from a strong but contained emotional mechanism.
SAM FEINSCHREIBER [Courting Hennie] wants to find a home. He
is a lonely man, a foreigner in a strange land, hypersensitive about
this fact, conditioned by the humiliation of not making his way
alone. He has a sense of others laughing at him. At night he gets
up and sits alone in the dark. He hears acutely all the small sounds
of life. He might have been a poet in another time and place. He
approaches his wife as if he were always offering her a delicate
flower. Life is a high chill wind weaving itself around his head.
SCHLOSSER, the janitor, is an overworked German whose wife ran
away with another man and left him with a young daughter who
in turn ran away and joined a burlesque show as chorus girl. The
man suffers rheumatic pains. He has lost his identity twenty years
before. ❖
About the Play: Synopsis

Photo by Craig Schwartz

“All of the characters in The entire action takes place in an apartment in the Bronx,
New York City.
Awake and Sing! share a
fundamental activity: SYNOPSIS
a struggle for life amidst The Berger family apartment in the Bronx houses three
generations in the same working-class Jewish family. It is in
petty conditions.” this apartment that Bessie Berger, indomitable matriarch,
—Clifford Odets oversees the lefist leanings of her father Jacob, and attempts
to influence the romantic yearnings of her son (Ralph) and
potential matches for her daughter (Hennie). Adding to this
family stew are “fat tomcat” brother Morty whose successful
business tactics do not redeem his social value, and husband
Myron, a born follower.

When the seemingly inescapable poverty of the Great

Depression forces Bessie to rent out a room in the apartment
to petty bookie and World War I veteran Moe Axelrod,
she encounters a new challenge as he positions himself as
suitor to young Hennie. Competing for Hennie’s affections
is Sam Feinschreiber, a lonely “foreigner in a strange land”,
but Hennie has her own ideas for love — ideas which, when
pursued, lead to serious consequences.

Bessie attempts to protect her family from high hopes and

fruitless idealism, grounding her perceptions of reality in the
cold truth of struggle. However, the Berger family has a will
of its own and does not always support Bessie’s iron-fisted
policies, as those who seek to provide a sense of freedom
and hope for Ralph and Hennie enact their own redemptive
yet heartbreaking plans. ❖

5 A Noise Within 2009/10 Repertory Season

About the Author

Clifford Odets was born on July 18, 1906 in Philadelphia.

Shortly thereafter, his parents Lou Gorodetsky (who later changed
the family name to Odets) and Esther Geisinger moved to the
Bronx, where Odets was raised. He dropped out of the New
York Public School system to pursue acting. In the process,
Odets became one of the founders of the Group Theatre—a
company whose acting philosophy drew from Russian theatre
artist Konstantin Stanislavsky. The Stanislavsky method is what is
now known as “method acting”, and the Group Theatre is largely
considered to be the birthplace of modern New York theatre.

Odets was cast in a handful of productions with the Group

Theatre, but his biggest success came when one of the Group
Clifford Odets co-founders, Harold Clurman, convinced Odets to make an attempt
at playwriting. Awake and Sing! was Odets’ first play, and it
was completed in 1935 in anticipation of the Group premiering
the work. However, Clurman’s counterpart Lee Strasberg held
the production due to personal doubts about the piece. Odets
wrote another play shortly afterwards. This is perhaps his best
known play—Waiting for Lefty, which chronicles a series of
interconnecting vignettes about the drivers union at a fictional taxi
cab company. Waiting for Lefty enjoyed immediate success, as it
not only dealt with socio-economic issues that resonated with the
American public during the Great Depression, but it also lent itself
to being performed in non-theatrical spaces such as back alleys,
lobbies of corporate offices, and even real union halls.

Shortly after the success of Waiting for Lefty, Odets moved to

Hollywood to transition into film work. However, one of his first
California successes was the stage play The Flowering Peach. It
Plaque at Clifford
Odets’ gravesite. was the Pulitzer Prize favorite for 1955, but due to pressure from
the Pulitzer family, the award went to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof which
ironically was considered by the panel to be the weakest play that
year. He also sold a great number of screenplays, and directed the
films The Story on Page One starring Rita Hayworth, and None but
the Lonely Heart, starring Ethel Barrymore and Cary Grant.

In 1952, Odets was called in front of the House Un-American

Activities Committee. While he was unapologetic in his work about
his socialist leanings, Odets denied all Communist affiliation when
confronted with Senator McCarthy himself, and even “named-
names” to escape the blacklist.

He was married to Academy-Award winner Luise Rainer and Bette

Grayson, and also had a rather public affair with actress Frances
Farmer. He died of colon cancer in 1953 and is buried in Glendale,
California at Forest Lawn Cemetery. ❖

6 A Noise Within 2009/10 Repertory Season

Clifford Odets: Timeline

First cover of Time magazine, Great Depression, The Golden Gate Bridge on opening day, May 27, 1937, Betty Grayson.

1906 • Odets born in Philadelphia

1912 • President Woodrow Wilson elected • Oceanliner Titanic sinks
1914 • World War I begins • Panama Canal officially opens
1918 • World War I ends • Theatre Guild founded in New York
1923 • Odets leaves school to begin his acting career • Time magazine published
for the first time
1927 • The Jazz Singer premieres as the first talking “talkie” — a film with
accompanying sound
1929 • Odets moves to New York City and understudies for Spencer Tracy • On Black
Tuesday, October 29th, the U.S. stock market crashes. This launches The Great
Depression
1930 • Pluto discovered and declared the smallest planet in our solar system.
(The classification of “planet” has since been revoked.) • The Group Theatre is
founded • The Star Spangled Banner is officially declared as the national anthem
1932 • Franklin Delano Roosevelt elected President
1935 • Odets’ first performed play Waiting for Lefty, opens at the Civic Theatre to rave
reviews • Awake and Sing! (actually written before Waiting for Lefty,) opens
at the Belasco Theatre • Paradise Lost opens, and Time magazine runs an
interview with Odets about the play • Babe Ruth announces his retirement from
professional baseball. He was playing for the Boston Braves at the time and had
a career record of 714 home runs. • Amelia Earhart flies solo across the Pacific
Ocean from Honolulu, Hawaii to Oakland, CA • Roosevelt forms the Works
Progress Administration, to create jobs and combat The Great Depression
• April 14, 1935—Black Sunday, the worst storm of the Dust Bowl • Elvis Presley
is born on January 8
1936 • Odets’ first film, The General Died at Dawn, released
1937 • The Golden Boy premieres • Golden Gate Bridge opens in San Francisco, CA
1939 • World War II begins with the invasion of Poland by the Germans • Gone With
the Wind premieres
1943 • Odets and Bette Grayson married
1945 • World War II ends • Harold Truman elected President
1949 • The Big Knife premieres • NATO treaty signed
1951 • Odets and Grayson divorced • The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger published
1954 • The Flowering Peach premieres • Polio vaccine introduced by Dr. Jonas Salk
1957 • On the Road, by Jack Kerouac published
1960 • John F. Kennedy elected President • To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
published
1962 • Odets signs NBC teleplay contract • Cuban missile crisis
1963 • Odets dies and is buried in Glendale, CA • Martin Luther King, Jr. delivers the
“I have a dream” speech • President John F. Kennedy assassinated

7 A Noise Within 2009/10 Repertory Season

The Group Theatre
Original Playbill from the Group Theatre.
The Group Theatre, founded in 1931 by
Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford, and Lee
Strasberg, was one of the most influential
theatre companies in American history.
The New York City based group had two
main principles. First, their approach to
acting was originally based in the teachings
of Konstantin Stanislavski. Stanislavski
emphasized “Emotional Memory”, the
process of an actor using his own experience
or imagination to recreate an emotion so
that he is living those feelings in the present
on stage. Eventually, the Group’s method
grew beyond “Emotional Memory” and
became more nuanced, eventually adopting
the name “The Method.” “The Method”
became the basis of realistic acting taught
at most American theatre schools today.
Second, the ensemble was of the utmost
importance and no one individual in the
company could be a star — hence the name,
the “Group.” Some of the more prominent
original members included: Elia Kazan, Stella
Adler, Howard Da Silva, Paul Green, Clifford
Odets, Morris Carnovsky, Sanford Meisner,
Anna Sokolow, and Lee J. Cobb.
The Group’s first commercial success came
during their first full season (1933-1934) with
the production of Sidney Kingsley’s Men
in White directed by Lee Strasberg. Not
only did the show have an extremely long
8 A Noise Within 2009/10 Repertory Season
Cover of
Harold
Clurman’s
book about
the Group
Theatre,
depicting a
rehearsal.
run earning The Group some much needed
capital, but it also won that year’s Pulitzer
Prize for Drama. Shortly thereafter, Odets
and Green began writing original material for
The Group, which brought about a thematic
shift in the work being produced — The
Group became the forefront theatre for the
new genre of social/political drama of the
1930s. Plays produced at The Group in this
era include Odets’ Waiting for Lefty, Awake
and Sing! and Paradise Lost as well as Paul
Green’s Johnny Johnson.
When America joined World War II, money
was diverted to the war effort and it became
evident that there was more money to be
made in Hollywood. Consequently, due to
a lack of funding and personnel, The Group
closed in 1941. After the war, Robert Lewis,
Elia Kazan, Cheryl Crawford, and eventually
Lee Strasberg founded The Actor’s Studio
where The Method was further adapted and
refined. In the 1950s, nearly all the members
of The Group were called in front of the
House Un-American Activities Committee
and while Odets, Kazan, and Cobb
cooperated with Senator McCarthy, most
of the others were blacklisted and spent
the following decades in theatrical exile or
working under pseudonyms. ❖
The HUAC and the Hollywood Blacklist

HUAC Trials

Throughout the Great Depression and World War II,

The American Communist Party membership grew substantially,
filling quickly with big names in the entertainment industry—the
same groups of people often championing liberal causes today.
However, when World War II ended and the Cold War began,
“the Communists” became the enemy, including the ones within
“Are you now or America’s borders.
have you ever been In October of 1947, a select group of film industry employees were
a member of the called to testify before the House Committee on Un-American
Communist Party?” Activities—HUAC—which was investigating a theory that American
communists or sympathizers were using the American film industry
to plant propaganda. Several celebrities, including Danny Kaye,
John Huston, Humphrey Bogart, and Lauren Bacall, founded the
Committee for the First Amendment to fight back against the
government’s persecution of Hollywood. Ten of the artists called
before the committee refused, on first amendment grounds, to
answer the now infamous question, “Are you now or have you ever
been a member of the Communist Party?” They were consequently
held in contempt of Congress. Full proceedings were begun
against The Hollywood Ten in the House of Representatives.

9 A Noise Within 2009/10 Repertory Season

 Front Page of The Los Angeles Star with a report on the HUAC

The first signs of the Blacklist appeared on November

17, 1947 when the Screen Actor’s Guild mandated that
all SAG officers take a non-Communist pledge. Just a
week later, members of the Motion Picture Association
of America met in New York at the Waldorf-Astoria
and issued “The Waldorf Statement” declaring that the
Hollywood Ten would be fired/suspended without salary
until they were cleared of both contempt and Communist-
affiliation charges.

The Hollywood Ten were sentenced to serve a one-year

prison sentence, beginning in 1950, however, while in
jail, director Edward Dmytryk announced publicly that he
had been a member of the Communist party and knew of
others who had been as well. He was released early from
prison so that he could testify again in front of HUAC
and thus began the process of “naming names,” trying
to save himself by giving up the identities of people with
communist affiliations. People named were added to the
The Hollywood Ten blacklist, effectively ending their careers, causing them to
escape to Europe to work, or forcing them to be billed
under a pseudonym.

The blacklist began to die down in the 1960s when The

New York Times revealed the true names of several
prominent directors who had been working all through
the 1950s under pseudonyms on box-office hits that were
clearly not communist propaganda. ❖

1 0 A Noise Within 2009/10 Repertory Season

“I Got the
(Biblical) Blues”
Clifford Odets, American Judaism
and the Poetic Politics of the Group Theatre
by Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr., Ph.D.
Loyola Marymount University
Fun Fact
The Coen brothers
film “Barton Fink”
was inspired by
Odets’ difficulty
adapting to writing
screenplays instead
of stage plays.
1 1 A Noise Within 2009/10 Repertory Season
Founded in 1931 and growing out of
the Little Theatre Movement of the first
decades of the twentieth century (itself
a direct outgrowth of the advent of
naturalism and the effects of World War
I, a changing economy and a changing
cultural scene), the Group Theatre was
dedicated to introducing Stanislavski’s
method to American audiences and
actors and to producing socially relevant
drama. Known as “America’s Moscow
Arts Theatre,” the founders were not
only out to revolutionize theatre, they
wanted to motivate revolutionary social
action. Their names have become
synonymous with American acting: Lee
Strasberg, Stella Adler, Sanford Meisner,
Cheryl Crawford, Harold Clurman,
and Lee J. Cobb, among others. Their
resident playwright was Clifford Odets,
who wrote specifically for the Group,
knowing which actors would play which
roles and writing to their strengths.
Odets and the Group developed some
of the most vital drama seen on New
York stages in the thirties.
The Group Theatre took its name quite
seriously. Dedicated to ensemble acting,
it took the name because the founders
planned on making the company a
true ensemble without “stars”, billing
the actors alphabetically and paying
everyone the same amount.
They premiered some of the great
dramas of the twentieth century and
the Group’s legacy is immeasurable.
Ironically, despite these high ideals, the
Group was done in by internal tensions
within the group and the siren call of
Hollywood leading its members to seek
success on the other coast.
Although best known for Stanislavski-
based realism, at the time the Group
and Odets came under criticism
for being too poetic and not very
realistic. Original reviews of Odets’
groundbreaking 1935 play Waiting
for Lefty called it “street poetry” and
focused as much on the lyricism as the
on the realism. Odets, I would argue, is
the link from Eugene O’Neill to Arthur
Miller and Tennessee Williams, all four
of whom are praised as realistic writers,
yet all of whom very rarely actually
wrote realistically. O’Neill wrote a
wide variety of dramas and Miller and
Williams developed the “memory play”
and magical realism. Odets, the socialist
realist, falls firmly in this camp as well.
American critic and artist Mordecai
Gorelik calls Odets a “lyrical dramatist,
not a realist.” In his book New Theaters
for Old, Gorelik refers to Odets’ work as
“left wing symbolism,” noting he has “a
tendency to substitute lyricism for the
clash of drama” (241; 242). Furthermore,
the Group Theatre, he argues, tends “to
think in terms of poetic aspiration rather
than dramatic development” (243).
Lastly, Gorelik states Odets “is perhaps
the most gifted of American lyrical
dramatists — a fact which accounts for
several failures. Odets has never been
able to strike the balance between his
amazing intuitive grasp of the American
scene and the oversimplified pattern
into which he forces his material” (242).
In short, Odets, that quintessential
American realist writing for the theatre
company most known for psychological realism is
actually a lyrical, political poet!
Odets was born Philadelphia to immigrant parents,
but grew up in the Bronx and that is both the world
he knows and the one he presents on stage. In Awake
and Sing! the Bergers live on Longwood — one of
the streets Odets grew up on. He dropped out of
high school to pursue acting, even beginning with the
Group as an actor but turning to playwriting in 1935
when Harold Clurman encouraged him to do so. He
first wrote Awake and Sing! under the title I Got the
Blues (one of Hennie’s lines). Strasberg didn’t like the
play, though, so Waiting for Lefty became Odets’ first
performed work. The title change, however, indicates
Odets’ own shift in focus from the inherent sadness
and frustration of his characters to a call for joy and
celebration that one is alive.
Awake and Sing! is very much a Jewish play, embracing
and celebrating the New York Jewish experience. It
is also rooted in scripture. The title comes from Isaiah
26:19:
“Your dead shall live; your dead bodies shall
arise. Awake and sing, you that dwell in the
dust; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and
the earth shall cast forth the dead…”
The scripture reveals a celebration of the victory of
Israel over the enemies of God, which draws the title
Awake and Sing! into sharp contrast with its original
title I Got the Blues, and is suggestive of Ecclesiastes
as well:
“LIVE! Rejoice in thy youth, young man!” (11:9).
Although the original script was explicitly Jewish, with
lines in Yiddish and Bessie objecting to Ralph’s girl
because she was a shiksa, for production purposes
Odets stripped away much of the explicit Judaism,
leaving it only implicit in the text. We might read
this as also categorical of the Group Theatre, many
of whom were Jewish actors working under Anglo
names — Jules became John, Hershell became Harry,
Mort became Mike. Interestingly, it was to the New
Testament, however, that Gorelik turned to locate the
Biblical center of the Group, arguing that all Group
Theatre shows have the same theme: Matthew 16:26
“What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world
but loses his own soul?” This assertion obviously
includes Awake and Sing!
1 2 A Noise Within 2009/10 Repertory Season
Awake and Sing! can also be seen as the quintessential
Group Theatre play and model for much American
drama that follows. Ralph wants to be somebody. He
has big dreams that he ultimately cannot live up to.
The Group Theatre specialized in plays about people
who wanted to be somebody but got lost along the
way. Awake and Sing! is also emblematic of the Group
because it is a true ensemble show — there is no real
lead character and all the roles are equally important,
even if some are smaller than others.
The play is left-leaning and very much politically
aware of what is occurring in the United States at the
time. Like the earlier Waiting for Lefty, Odets’ play
about a cab driver’s strike, Awake and Sing! is highly
sympathetic to the working class and very concerned
about their exploitation. Jacob and Morty’s debate
about workers in the second act shows the dark side
of the American dream, another major theme of
the Group’s work that would become a major trope
of American drama (similar to Miller’s Death of a
Salesman). Morty might have worked his way up from
an ice wagon, but others have been exploited and even
killed for trying to get fair wages. His success rests on
the exploitation of others.
Jacob also mentions Kentucky, Pittsburgh and
Passaic, which might not mean much to contemporary
audiences, but those of the time would have
recognized them as places where union organizers or
workers were killed. Jacob’s answer to the dangers
to the working man and woman is social activism and
empowerment, especially as embodied in the hopes of
the younger generation: “You want to make yourself a
certain kind of world.”
The Group Theatre lasted only a decade, but its legacy
lives to this day in the form of the Actors Studio, and
the institutions named after Stella Adler, Sanford
Meisner, and Lee Strasburg, not to mention the
continued dominance of American “Method Acting”
in Hollywood and New York. Odets went on to write
more plays and screenplays, even being nominated for
the Pulitzer for some of his later work (although due
to pressure from Joseph Pulitzer Jr. the prize went to
Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which the
jury considered the weakest of the five short-listed
nominees). Called in front of HUAC in the fifties, he
disavowed his leftist youth and, like Elia Kazan, named
names. Although he was not blacklisted, these actions
darkened Odets’ reputation in theatrical and literary
circles. He died of colon cancer at the age of 57 and is
buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, less than
two miles from A Noise Within. ❖
THE GREAT
DEPRESSION
Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother, a
depiction of destitute California pea
pickers during The Great Depression has
become one of the best known images
representing The Great Depression.
This graph represents US unemployment between 1910 and
1960. The period of The Great Depression is highlighted.
Source: wikipedia.org.
Did You Know?
1 3 A Noise Within 2009/10 Repertory Season
Many comparisons have been made between the
U.S. recession that began in 2008 and the mother of all
financial meltdowns: The Great Depression. Several key
features link these two precarious time periods: instability
in financial markets, high unemployment, low volume of
sales of homes and consumer goods, and widespread
worry and fear.
Beginning with the US stock market crash on “Black
Tuesday” October 29, 1929, The Great Depression
marked a period of declining middle class wealth, and
forced unemployed Americans onto welfare, into long
lines for handouts for food, shoes, clothing, and other
assistance. Although The Great Depression began in the
US, it spread quickly throughout the world, due to the
financial interconnectedness of global economies. The
Great Depression remains to this day the most severe and
longest-lasting economic depression to date.
Although economic recovery, largely spurred by govern-
ment work projects instituted by Franklin Roosevelt, came
by the 1930s, true economic recovery was not seen until
World War II was in full bloom in1940.
Initially during The Great Depression, prices of durable
goods, crops, and gasoline fell as purveyors tried to
spur consumer sales. However, this decline was quickly
converted into sharply rising inflation—one of the hallmarks
of a severe recession. At the same time, unemployment
rose to over 20 percent.
In Awake and Sing!, the Berger family tries to cope with
The Great Depression as best it can—and their attempts
to economize are typical of families worldwide during the
period. Also typical are Bessie’s machinations to ensure
that her children make wise marital decisions in hopes of
assuring them some measure of financial stability. The threat
of total loss during this period was a very real one—and
nearly every family in the U.S. during The Great Depression
was merely steps away from utter ruin. ❖
British economist Lionel Robbins most likely
coined the term “The Great Depression,”
which was also the title of his 1934 book.
Staging Awake and Sing!
A Conversation with Director Andrew Traister
ANDREW TRAISTER, Director
of Awake and Sing! has directed
A Noise Within’s critically-
acclaimed production Waiting
for Godot, for the past 3
seasons. In addition, he directed
The Rainmaker in 2008, and
has worked for numerous other
regional theatres including
The Old Globe, Arizona
Theatre Company, Milwaukee
Repertory, Intiman Theatre,
Oregon Shakespeare Festival,
San Diego Repertory Theatre.
He has taught theatre at
Cornish College of the Arts,
California Institute of the Arts,
SUNY Binghamton, and SUNY
Brockport. From 1987-89,
Traister was the Artistic Director
of Alaska Repertory Theatre. In
1980, he was the recipient of an
NEA Directing Fellowship.
1 4 A Noise Within 2009/10 Repertory Season
You’ve spoken before (in our online videos) about Awake and Sing!
and how it fits into the fabric of theatre in the US. Could you share
a bit of that with us?
Awake and Sing! is one of the most important American plays
in terms of what it birthed, what came afterwards in the Group
Theatre and method acting in the United States.
What makes this play a good play in terms of the actual writing?
The characters in the play are so multi-layered that, as we kept
exploring during the rehearsal process, we kept finding new depth
to them. It’s trying to find all of the various colors and attributes to
the characters to make them as alive as we can, and convey how
they’re trying to fight to survive in this particular situation. The
depth of these characters points to the strength of Odets’ writing.
I see. So do you have any particular insight into the play as its
Director?
The play holds particular significance for me personally. I grew up
in the Bronx in a Jewish home, in an apartment in the Bronx with
family living upstairs. There are other similarities. For example,
always on Sunday we either went to visit family or had them come
and visit us.
Are there any challenges inherent in having this close of a
connection to the material?
For me, the Mother and Father in Awake and Sing! are so similar to
my parents that it’s a challenge to communicate my vision of them
to the cast without just saying, “Try to imitate my Mother,” or “Try
to be just like my Father,” and to try to convey to the actors—as
best I can—how my personal history informs my interpretation of
the play.
And, of course, the time period is so essential, too.
Yes. The Great Depression is such a unique time period—whether
you were Jewish, or Christian, or Muslim, Russian, Polish…everyone
in the lower middle class was going through the same thing. They
were losing jobs, having to take people into their homes in order
to survive. I’m inspired by what this family did in order to survive,
and how well Odets captured these people in this period. The
accuracy of the characters is perfect—he truly captures the spirit of
survival that characterized the time period.
It sounds like it’s been a very thoughtful experience so far.
Hard work, but yes—a satisfying experience, and my hope is that
the proof will be in the performances. ❖
Andrew Traister, Director of Awake and Sing! was interviewed in March of 2010
by A Noise Within Education Director Samantha Starr.
 In the Classroom: Before and After the Play
Photo by Craig Schwartz
1934 Packard. During Act II, Morty says, “…buy
yourself a Packard.” This car was considered the
most expensive luxury automobile of the 1930s.
Costing approximately $5300, a Packard cost more
than the average, modest-sized house, which was
only around $3000.
English Language Arts Standards, Grades 9 & 10: Word Anaylsis, Fluency, and Systematic Vocabulary Development 1.1, Literary Response and Analysis 3.1, 3.3,
3.4, 3.8, 3.10, 3.12, Listening and Speaking 1.1, 1.11, Speaking Applications 2.4.
1 5 A Noise Within 2009/10 Repertory Season
These discussion prompts are provided to assist teachers in
preparing students to see Awake and Sing!, and to continue the
learning experience after the performance.
BEFORE THE PLAY
1. Read the Biblical quote from Isaiah, “Awake and sing, ye that
dwell in the dust, and had the earth shall cast out the dead.” Ask
students to examine what possible meanings the quote has for
them.
2. The Jewish mother is a well-known stereotype. Jot down some
pre-conceived notions that the class may have about Jewish
mothers.
3. Give a brief overview of The Great Depression. What kinds
of hardships did families during the time period of the play
experience in their daily lives? How did they try to cope?
4. In what ways did Jewish families in particular cope with
economic hardship? Was being Jewish an asset to them during
hard times, or something to try to overcome?
AFTER THE PLAY
1. Why do you think Clifford Odets changed the title of this play
from “I Got the Blues” to “Awake and Sing!”?
2. The Isaiah quote had particular meaning for Odets, and his
character Jacob. What does the quote mean to Jacob, and what
might it have caused him to do?
3. In what ways does the character Bessie cleave closely to
stereotypes of the Jewish mother? In what ways does she differ?
4. Do you think that Jacob’s death was accidental, or suicide?
Why or why not? How did the actor convey this message using
his voice and physical gestures? Using the text, what clues in the
lines spoken by Jacob leading up to his death can support your
point of view?
5. Do you think racism was a factor in the Bergers’ lives in terms
of coping with their economic situation? Did they themselves
show any signs of racism against other cultures? Which ones?
6. Do you think that Hennie was right in trying to conceal her
secret from her family? What do you imagine will happen to her
after the play ends? ❖
Visual Arts: Depression-Era Photography

The design for Awake and Sing! draws

upon the photography work of journalists
and art photographers during the era
of The Great Depression in the United
States. When beginning his work, A Noise
Within scenic designer Michael Smith
uses a technique called a “tear book” to
gather many ideas and resources from
which to draw inspiration. He searched
for photographic imagery focused on the
location of the play (The Bronx,) and of
Jewish Americans or Hebrew markets with
cultural items for sale and lettering. Color,
texture, and iconic shapes are all taken into
consideration when creating the tear book,
which directly informs the set design for the
show. In the case of Awake and Sing!, many
enlarged photographs themselves surround
the stage, which act as contextual reference
points for the audience. In addition, the
period lighting, furniture, linens, and all
set decoration were sourced directly from
original photographs of the period.

ACTIVITY
Tear sheet collage: Gather photographic
representations of the Depression, using
one particular focus. For example, focus
on either images of jobless men, families
with young children, farm workers, political
slogans, or cultural groups such as Jewish
Americans. Incorporate iconic images
that capture the essence of the era of
The Great Depression. To add dimension,
consider adding cartoons, online resources,
newspapers, postcards, posters, and
3-dimensional items like fabrics, buttons,
or pins. When finished, ask students as a
group to share their artwork and articulate
their perspective to the class, noting the
ways in which color, tone, shape, and form
influenced their choices. ❖

CA VISUAL ARTS STANDARDS: Grades 9-12 Proficient: Creative Expression 2.0, 2.2, 2.4, Historical and Cultural Context 3.0, 3.3, Aesthetic Valuing 4.0, 4.1-3, 4.5.

1 6 A Noise Within 2009/10 Repertory Season

Music: The 1930s

In most forms of entertainment, music plays the role of directing

the emotions of the viewer. Whether the medium is theatre, film,
or video games, music is in the background helping the viewer to
emotionally interpret the images in front of them. In Awake and
Sing!, the music will emotionally reflect what is going on inside the
Berger family household, and convey a clear sense of the 1930s
time period. Several selections are used for the play from famous
Hazzans (Cantors)—or singers who lead Jewish religious services.
Other selections are popular music of the day.

CLASSROOM CONNECTION: Suggested Activities

Soundtrack:
Imagine that you are a sound designer for Awake and Sing! at a
theatre, but set the piece in a different time period—such as the
year 2010. Using contemporary songs, create your own soundtrack
for your own production of Awake and Sing!. There should be at
least one song for each of the following: 1. Pre-show music to set
the scene, 2. Bessie confronts Hennie about her pregnancy, and
3. Jacob’s death. Think about important elements such as change
of locale, passage of time, or important shifts of mood. Make a
mix CD or playlist for a portable digital music device that contains
Enrico Caruso, tenor. all of your selected songs. Then, either write a summary of your
choices to be included in the CD liner notes. Share finished projects
together in a class music festival when finished.

Listen and Respond:

Gather musical selections from the 1930s to play for the class.
Suggested artists include Jewish Hazzans such as Yossele
Rosenblatt, or recording artists Sophie Tucker, Belle Baker, Enrico
Caruso (including selections from Bizet’s Pearl Fishers,) or Irene
Dunne’s Lovely to Look At.

Listen to each and respond either orally or in written form to the

following for each musical example:
1. What is the tonality of the piece? Does it sound primarily major
or minor? Would you say that the tonality affects the emotions
conveyed by the piece? What would they be, and how do these
fit within the scene they accompany or introduce from the show?

2. What is the tempo of the piece? Is it allegro or andante? What

Cover of Belle Baker’s published song affect does the tempo have on the pacing—does it indicate some
I’m Sorry I Made You Cry type of physical or emotional momentum in the play? If so,
describe the feelings you think the piece intends to convey to the
listener with regards to tempo.

3. If you had to choose a color for each piece of music, what would
it be? Would this color be dark, light, or medium in tone? Would
the color be heavily saturated or somewhat transparent?

MUSIC STANDARDS-Grades 9-12 Proficient: Artistic Perception 1.4, 1.5, Aesthetic Valuing 4.2, Connections, Relationships, Applications 5.1 and 5.3

1 7 A Noise Within 2009/10 Repertory Season

Resource Guide

BOOKS
Clurman, Harold. The Fervent Years: The Group Theatre and the Thirties. New York: Da Capo Press, 1983.
Gorelik, Mordecai. New Theatres for Old. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1962.
Hagen, Uta: Respect For Acting. Wiley, 2008.
Herr, Christopher J. Clifford Odets and American Political Theatre. Westport: Greenwood, 2003.
Sarna, Jonathan, ed. The American Jewish Experience. Teaneck: Holmes & Meier, 1997.
Schiff, Ellen, ed. Awake & Singing: Six Great American Jewish Plays. Rev. ed. New York: Applause, 2004.
Stanislavski, Constantin: An Actor’s Handbook. Routledge, 2004.
Stanislavski, Constantin: An Actor Prepares. Routledge, 1989.
Stanislavski, Constantin: Building a Character. Routledge, 1989.
Stanislavski, Constantin: Creating a Role. Routledge, 1989.
Terkel, Studs. Hard Times: An Oral History of the Depression. New Press, 2000.
Wenger, Beth S. New York Jews and The Great Depression: Uncertain Promise. Syracuse University Press, 1999.

WEBSITES
American Jewish Archives: http://www.americanjewisharchives.org/aja/aje/index.html
Photo essay on the Depression: http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/depression/photoessay.htm
Overview of the Depression on About.com: http://history1900s.about.com/cs/greatdepression/
Searchable database of famous gravesites, with photos: http://www.findagrave.com/

VIDEO
The General Died at Dawn, directed by Lewis Milestone (1936)
None But the Lonely Heart, directed by Clifford Odets (1944)
Starring Cary Grant and Ethel Barrymore who won Academy Awards for their performances
Deadline at Dawn, directed by Harold Clurman (1945)
The Sweet Smell of Success, directed by Alexander Mackendrick (1957)
The Story on Page One, directed by Clifford Odets (1959)
Wild in the Country, directed by Philip Dunne (1960) Starring Elvis Presley
Barton Fink, directed by Ethan and Joel Coen.
Starring John Turturro, John Goodman, Michael Lerner,
Judy Davis, and John Mahoney.

Unemployed man in Detroit

during The Great Depression.

1 8 A Noise Within 2009/10 Repertory Season

About Theatre Arts
Being an Audience
Member
Today, movies and television
take audiences away from
what was once
the number one form of
entertainment: going to the
theatre. But attending a live
performance is still one of
the most thrilling and active
forms of spending time.
In a theatre, observers are
catapulted into the action,
especially at an intimate
venue like A Noise Within,
whose thrust stage reaches
out into the audience and
whose actors can see, hear,
and feel the response of the
crowd. Although playhouses
in the past could sometimes
be rowdy, participating in
the performance by giving
respect and attention to
the actors is the most
appropriate behavior at
a theatrical performance
today. Shouting out (or even
whispering) can be heard
throughout the auditorium,
as can rustling paper or
ringing phones.
After A Noise Within’s
performance of Awake and
Sing!, you will have the
opportunity to discuss the
play’s content and style with
the performing artists and
directors. You may wish to
remind students to observe
the performance carefully
or to compile questions
ahead of time so they are
prepared to participate in
the discussion.
1 9 A Noise Within 2009/10 Repertory Season
Theatre Vocabulary
These terms will be included in pre- and post-performance discussions
at A Noise Within.
blocking: The instructions a
director gives his actors that tell
them how and where to move in
relation to each other or to the
set in a particular scene.
character: The personality or part
portrayed by an actor on stage.
conflict: The opposition of people
or forces which causes the play’s
rising action.
dramatic irony: A dramatic
technique used by a writer in
which a character is unaware of
something the audience knows.
genre: Literally, “kind” or “type.”
In literary terms, genre refers to
the main types of literary form,
principally comedy and tragedy.
It can also refer to forms that are
more specific to a given historical
era, such as the revenge tragedy,
or to more specific sub-genres
of tragedy and comedy such as
the comedy of manners, farce or
social drama.
motivation: The situation or
mood which initiates an action.
Actors often look for their
“motivation” when they try to
dissect how a character thinks or
acts.
props: Items carried on stage
by an actor to represent objects
mentioned in or implied by the
script. Sometimes the props
are actual, sometimes they are
manufactured in the theatre shop.
proscenium stage: There is
usually a front curtain on a
proscenium stage. The audience
views the play from the front
through a “frame” called the
proscenium arch. In this scenario,
all audience members have the
same view of the actors.
set: The physical world created
on stage in which the action of
the play takes place.
setting: The environment in which
a play takes place. It may include
the historical period as well as the
physical space.
stage areas: The stage is divided
into areas to help the director to
note where action will take place.
Upstage is the area furthest
from the audience. Downstage
is the area closest to the
audience. Center stage defines
the middle of the playing
space. Stage left is the actor’s
left as he faces the audience.
Stage right is the actor’s right
as he faces the audience.
theme: The overarching message
or main idea of a literary or
dramatic work. A recurring idea in
a play or story.
thrust stage: A stage that juts
out into the audience seating
area so that patrons are seated
on three sides. In this scenario,
audience members see the play
from varying viewpoints. A Noise
Within features a thrust stage.
About A Noise Within

A Noise Within’s mission is to
produce the great works of world
drama in rotating repertory,
with a company of professional,
classically-trained actors. A Noise
Within educates the public through
comprehensive outreach efforts and
conservatory training programs that
foster a deeper understanding and
appreciation of history’s greatest
plays and playwrights.
As the only company in southern
California working in the repertory
tradition (rotating productions using
a resident ensemble of professional,
trained artists), A Noise Within
is dedicated solely to producing
classical literature from authors such
as Shakespeare, Molière, Ibsen,
Shaw, and Euripides.
The company was formed in 1992
by founders Geoff Elliott and Julia
Rodriguez-Elliott, both of whom
were classically trained at the
acclaimed American Conservatory
Theatre in San Francisco. They
envisioned A Noise Within after
recognizing a lack of professional,
classical productions and education
in Southern California and sought
out and assembled their own
company of actors to meet the
need. All of A Noise Within’s
resident artists have been classically
trained, and many hold Master of
Fine Arts degrees from some of the
nation’s most respected institutions,
such as Juilliard, Yale, and the
American Conservatory Theatre.
In its seventeen-year history, A
Noise Within has garnered over
500 awards and commendations,
including the Los Angeles Drama
Critics’ Circle’s revered Polly
Warfield Award for Excellence and
the coveted Margaret Hartford
Award for Sustained Excellence.
In 2004, A Noise Within accepted an
invitation to collaborate with
the Los Angeles Philharmonic
for a tandem performance of A
Midsummer Night’s Dream at the
Hollywood Bowl.
More than 25,000 individuals
attend productions at A Noise
Within, annually, and between
performances at the theatre and
touring productions, the company
draws over 10,000 student
participants to its arts education
programs every year. Students
benefit from in-school workshops,
conservatory training, and an
internship program, as well as
subsidized tickets to matinee and
evening performances, discussions
with artists, and state standards-
compliant study guides.
Study Guides
A Noise Within creates
California standards-
compliant study guides to
help educators prepare
their students for their
visit to our theatre. Study
guides are available at no
extra cost to download
through our website: www.
anoisewithin.org. All of the
information and activities
outlined in these guides
are designed to work in
compliance with Visual
and Performing Arts,
English Language, and
other subject standards as
set forth by the state of
California.
Study guides include
background information on
the plays and playwrights,
historical context, textual
analysis, in-depth discussion
of A Noise Within’s artistic
interpretation of the work,
interviews with directors
and designers, as well
as discussion points and
suggested classroom
activities. Guides from past
seasons are also available to
download from the website.

California’s Home for the Classics

California’s Home for the Classics

Study Guide Credits
Written by Samantha Starr, Education Director
Production Photography by Craig Schwartz
Graphic Design by Christopher Komuro
Geoff Elliott & Julia Rodriguez-Elliott, Artistic Directors
Administrative Office: 234 S. Brand Blvd., Glendale, CA 91204
Administration: Tel 818.240.0910 / FAX 818.240.0826
Website: www.anoisewithin.org
Box Office: 818.240.0910 ext.1

2 0 A Noise Within 2009/10 Repertory Season

California’s Home for the Classics