Stoddard, Eunice

An actress and dancer, Eunice Stoddard was an original member of the Group Theatre, a company formed in 1931 by Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg and Cheryl Crawford, and dedicated to producing Broadway plays exploring social and moral issues, and to developing acting techniques that emphasized emotional realism and psychological depth.

Stoddard came from an affluent and culturally connected New York family. After graduating from the Brearly School in 1925, she was sent to Europe for several years, where she studied acting, dancing and music, and met Stanislavsky. Stoddard considered a career in dance, and staged a number of dance pageants upon returning to the States, but soon enrolled in the American Laboratory Theatre, an innovative acting school based on the principles of the Moscow Art Theatre and led by Richard Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskya . There Eunice met Clurman and Strasberg, who had enrolled in the directing program, and Stella Adler, who was an acting student.

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