Promotional Information

True and False by David Mamet is an invaluable guide to the acting profession, slaughtering a wide range of sacred cows with the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright's characteristic unsparing honesty.

About the Author

David Mamet was awarded the Pulitzer prize for his play Glengarry Glen Ross. His other plays and screenplays include Speed-the-Plow, American Buffalo, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, The Winslow Boy The Spanish Prisoner, Wag the Dog and The Verdict, the last two of which won Academy Award nominations. He has also received an Obie Award, and has written a collection of poems, five collections of essays, and a book on acting, True and False. His first novel, The Village, was published by Faber in 1994, followed by the publication of The Old Religion in 1998.

Reviews

"Mamet manages to demolish the myths...that pass for theory with regard o acting and directing. . . "True and False" is a revealing book of the highest order and a pleasure to read"--Anthony Hopkins
"Hard-edged, pragmatic and idealistic. . . . Every actor or would-be actor should read this book."--"Chicago Tribune "
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"Trenchant...Meet's pared-down, occasionally cryptic prose can make powerful sense."--"The New York Times"
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"This book should be read and considered by everyone who acts."--Steve Martin" "

"The job of the actor is to communicate the play to the audience, not to bother it with his or her good intentions and insights and epiphanies about the ways this or that character might use a handkerchief‘these are the concerns of second-class minds." So writes Mamet, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, director and teacher in this extremely blunt, unorthodox and shocking treatise on the profession of acting. He remarks that "Stanislavsky was essentially an amateur" and goes on to attack method acting and its proponents. He challenges the performer to be a daring individualist by staying away from formal acting schools: "Part of the requirements of a life in the theater is to stay out of school....Formal education for the player is not only useless, but harmful." And he goes on to say, "Let me be impolite: most teachers of acting are frauds." Mamet stresses that there are no set rules and refuses to define what talent is: "I don't know what talent is, and, frankly, I don't care. I do not think it is the actor's job to be interesting. I think that is the job of the script. I think it is the actor's job to be truthful and brave." This controversial book will anger many in the profession but may also inspire because of its brashness and daring. (Oct.)