David Mamet © Brigitte Lacombe
David Mamet (born 1947) is an American playwright, film director, screenwriter and author. He won a Pulitzer Prize and received Tony nominations for a handful of his plays. David Mamet is one of the most well-known names in American theatre and filmmaking and is a founding member of the Atlantic Theater Company.
THE ANARCHIST
2 F
Two egos – two value systems – one finale – one winner. The action takes place in an office in a prison where an inmate, Cathy, stands face to face with the warden, Ann, to discuss her petition for mercy. After 35 years behind bars, convicted for having ties to a violent, political organization and the murder of a police officer, she has become another person, religious, has written a book and is determined to find new ways. It’s the warden’s last official decision before she ends her career. Is she ready and does she really want to release the woman on the other side of the table? A bitter and rhetorical power struggle between two strong personalities begins.
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BITTER WHEAT
2 F / 5 M
Far out comedy about a man’s greatness and fall. Barney Fein is a powerful and depraved Hollywood film producer who devours young female talents just because he can. As the attempt to bring down his next victim fails, his collapse begins without him ever knowing it. A delirious comedy on viagra featuring aspiring artists, hard-boiled assistants and Islamist fundamentalists.
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BOSTON MARRIAGE
3 F
This melodramatic comedy takes place some one hundred years ago, in a slightly depraved upper class society in America. The title refers to an old Victorian saying for a long-term lesbian relationship. One is introduced to Anna and Claire, two elegant and arrogant upper-class ladies, who are both embarking on new erotic affairs. Their comical maid, Catherine serves as their amusing reflection and the language throughout is kept in the stylized and feigned manner of the time, though periodically interrupted by rather sarcastic and coarse comments, which adds a great comic effect.
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DUCK VARIATIONS
2 M
About two elderly friends who in 14 variations sit on a park bench and philosophize about ducks, life and death, loneliness, friendship and love, pollution and hunting. A fascinating and very humorous text with great challenges for two actors.
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OLEANNA
1 F / 1 M
Intense chamber play about the power struggle between a university teacher and one of his female students, who accuses him of sexual harassment and, by doing so, spoils his chances of being accorded tenure. Mamet adapted his play into a 1994 film of the same name.
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THE PENITENT
1 F / 3 M
A middle-aged psychiatrist, Charles, is facing a big moral dilemma when a former (homosexual) patient has shut and killed ten people and Charles is asked to give a testimony in favor of the defense. As a recent Jewish convert, Charles has turned to his rabbi for guidance and has finally decided not to enter the witness stand but is unexpectedly exposed as a homophobe and the villain who could have prevented the killings. Has he been giving his patient the right help? And why won’t he testify, all of a sudden, now that he has done it many times before? Should he give in to the media pressure and share his journals with the defense even though this conflicts with his oath, his morality and his faith? Would a testimony bring him peace or would it end his career?
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RACE
1 F / 3 M
Race takes place in Jack (white) and his partner Henry’s (black) legal practice. The play begins with a discussion about whether they should present a well-to-do white man, who is charged with raping a black woman. The young, black lawyer, Susan, is involved in the debate on how to present the case the best. “This is not about sex, but about race”, she claims. “What is the difference?”, Jack answers. The play’s central theme is race, but Mamet also examines if the differences between color, sex, ethnicity and class, can have something to do with violations and the lack of communication. An often very entertaining chamber play about a serious matter. Good characters!
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SEXUAL PERVERSITY IN CHICAGO
2 F / 2 M
David Mamet’s breakthrough play about two women and two men’s escapades in Chicago’s dating scene. Controversial, provocative and bitingly funny. Filmed twice under the title “About Last Night”.
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SPEED-THE-PLOW
1 F / 2 M
This is a hilarious and devastating satire of Hollywood, a microcosm of American culture. Charlie Fox has a terrific vehicle for a certain hot male movie star, and he has brought it to his best friend, the Bobby Gould who is head of production for a major film company. Both see the script as their ticket to the really big table where the power is. The star wants to do it; all they have to do is pitch it to their boss in the morning. Tonight, Bobby has bet Charlie $500 that he can seduce Karen, a temp secretary. As a ruse, he has given her a novel “by some Eastern sissy writer” which he has been asked to read before saying “thanks-but-no-thanks.” Karen is determined that the novel, not the trite vehicle, should be the company’s next project. Her arguments are promising and when she agrees to sleep with Bobby the experience is so transmogrifying that Charlie must plead with Bobby not to pitch the sissy film.
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THE WOODS
1 F / 1 M
An intense and raw yet ultimately affecting love story about the conflicts and contradictions of a struggling young relationship. It is a two-character drama in three swiftly moving acts, and it centers on Ruth and Nick, a 20-something couple attempting a romantic weekend at a lakeside cabin owned by Nick’s family. Ruth, inquisitive and openhearted, tries to strike up conversations about beavers, Vikings, her grandmother – anything, really – in the hopes of drawing out the physically amorous yet emotionally inaccessible Nick. He, however, remains difficult to coax, though the memories he does choose to share hint at a dark and painful past.
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A LIFE IN THE THEATRE
2 M
This is a comedy about the artifice of acting and living. Two actors are seen performing, rehearsing, discussing and arguing over their work. In a series of snippets of plays running the gamut from melodrama to pseudo-Chekhov to sheer corn, the two portray the reality as well as the illusion of acting and the theatre. Mishaps of the kind peculiar to the theatre occur with hilarious regularity. The older actor, Robert, is a seasoned professional. John, the younger one, is an eager-to-learn novice. Gradually their roles of teacher and pupil change and by the end it is the older actor who is deferential to the younger.
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