A playwright, film scenarist, and director, Clifford Odets (1906-1963) was America's outstanding dramatist in the 1930s. His colloquial dialogue, vital ideological protests on behalf of human dignity,...
Read more
Clifford Odets is known primarily as a proletarian playwright of the 1930s, although this label is misleading. Odets's first few plays, which catapulted him virtually overnight to fame and affluence,...
Read more
Born in Philadelphia to Louis J. and Pearl Geisinger Odets, Clifford Odets grew up in a Jewish section of the Bronx. Though Odets at times suggested that he was raised under the shadows of poverty, hi...
Read more
In the following review of "Till the Day I Die" and "Waiting for Lefty, "Krutch states that with these plays "Mr. Odets has invented a form which turns out to be a v...
Read more
Vernon finds "Waiting for Lefty" energetically performed but expresses reservations about its political message.
In Awake and Sing, the play of Jewish life in the Bronx, the Group The...
Read more
In the excerpt below, Odets recalls the excitement and difficulties of his involvement with the Group Theatre and recounts the first performance of "Waiting for Lefty." This article was ...
Read more
In the following, the anonymous critic gives the dual bill of "Till the Day I Die" and "Waiting for Lefty" a favorable reception.
In less than ninety days, toiling with ...
Read more
Critical Essay by Joseph Wood Krutch
The pace [of "Waiting for Lefty"] is swift, the characterization is for the most part crisp, and the points are made, one after another, with bold s...
Read more
Teaching Waiting for Lefty
All teaching products sold separately.
Waiting for Lefty Lesson Plans contain 133 pages of teaching material, including:
Marisa Tomei will star in the premiere of Will Eno’s “Oh the Humanity and Other Good Intentions,” at the Off Broadway Flea Theater. Previews will begin Nov. 3 for a Nov. 29 openin...
Read more
Lincoln Center’s rediscovery of Clifford Odets’ Awake and Sing! is a great opportunity to see the 1935 play that transformed American theater. But whether the drama about a Jewish famil...
Read more
Lincoln Center’s rediscovery of Clifford Odets’ Awake and Sing! is a great opportunity to see the 1935 play that transformed American theater. But whether the drama about a Jewish fami...
Read more