THE AFFECT OF CUTTING FUND As sponsor of a U.S. Senate bill to cut funding to the National Endowment for the Arts unless it stopped supporting artists depicting “patently offensive” sex acts, his name spurs hoots of derision among intellectuals, liberals and arts lovers. In Canada, however, artsy liberal intellectuals are censoring themselves. And it’s […]
SAVE CASH AND SAVE THE PLANET
THE GUIDE TO LESSENING OUR ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT This latest addition to the green-living genre is nicely packaged, having cast off the knitted wholegrain design once popular with planet-saving tomes. However, despite this promising start, the book’s first chapter, entitled ‘Do you care for the planet?’, had me plotting to recycle it rather more rapidly than […]
THE PORTRAIT OF CAROL IN OLEANNA
The bare minimum has served Mamet the playwright He reduces dialogue to dense stock and strips settings and stage directions to essence. Clearly, his minimalist ideas of acting and directing are integral to his writing aesthetic. In fact, they seem designed to deemphasize the actor’s contribution. As a stage director, though, he’s either too limiting […]
THE MAN’S OWN WORST ENEMY
CAROL: You love the Power You confess. To deviate. To invent, to transgress…to transgress whatever norms have been established for us. And you think it’s charming to “question” in yourself this taste to mock and destroy. But you should question it. Professor. And you pick those things which you feel advance you: publication, tenure, and the […]
HE’S PLAYWRIGHT, DIRECTOR, THEORIST
David Mamet, quoted in In Their Own Word “All that nonsense [Brecht] wrote about his writing I think is balderdash, a direct contradiction of the writing itself…All of the comics like me always want to be tragedians.” David Mamet possesses something rare and dangerous for a playwright: a voice. Shaw was proof of the dangers; he […]
MAMET VS MAMET
Abstract: Playwright David Mamet is credited for steering American theater into a new age marked by a strong critique of capitalism. As a playwright, Mamet possesses the unique talent of being able to use a wide vocabulary to present thought-provoking perspectives. His linguistic talents often run counter to his directorial persona, creating a strong inner rift within […]
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