Pine Brook Country Club

Pine Brook Country Club began when Benjamin Plotkin purchased Pinewood Lake and the surrounding countryside on Mischa Hill in the historic village of Nichols, Connecticut. Plotkin built an auditorium with a revolving stage and forty rustic cabins and incorporated as the Pine Brook Country Club in 1930. Plotkin's dream was to market the rural lakeside club as a summer resort for people to stay and enjoy theatrical productions. The Club remained in existence until major fighting broke out in Europe in the mid-1940s and was reorganized as a private lake association in 1944.

Pine Brook is best known for having been the 1936 summer rehearsal headquarters of the most important experiment in the history of American Theatre. The Group Theatre (New York) was formed in New York City in 1931 by Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford and Lee Strasberg and was made up of actors, directors, playwrights and producers. During the summers spent in Connecticut, the artists would "sing for their supper" while working on works by the most important American playwrights of the time on real life subject matter which changed stage and film forever.

Including and in addition to the Group Theatre, some of the artists who are known to have spent the summer at Pine Brook at one time or another were: Stella Adler, Leonard Bernstein, Marc Blitzstein, Roman Bohnen, Phoebe Brand, Morris Carnovsky, Carol Channing, Montgomery Clift, Lee J. Cobb, Imogene Coca, Betty Comden, Howard Da Silva, Frances Farmer, John Garfield, Betty Garrett, Michael Gordon (film director), Will Geer, Adolph Green, Paul Green (playwright), Judy Holliday, Lena Horne, Elia Kazan, Arthur Laurents, Canada Lee, Lotte Lenya, Robert Lewis (actor), Sanford Meisner, Harry Morgan, Clifford Odets, Luise Rainer, John Randolph (actor), Jerome Robbins, Irwin Shaw, Anna Sokolow, Ralph Steiner, Paul Strand, Franchot Tone, Nancy Walker and Kurt Weill.

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