What makes good drama? And why does drama matter in an age that is awash in information and entertainment? With bracing directness and aphoristic grace, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of Glengarry Glen Ross delivers a thrillingly original treatise on his art. To David Mamet, human beings are drama-creating animals who impose narrative structures on everything from today's weather to next year's elections. Mamet distinguishes true drama from its false variants, unravels the infamous "Second-Act Problem," amd considers the mysterious persistence of the soliloquy. Three Uses of the Knife is an inspired guide for any playwright or theatergoer that doubles as a trenchant work of moral and aesthetic philosophy.
Playwright David Mamet's three lectures at Columbia University are ostensibly about issues of dramatic structure, but as they unfold, and Mamet continually explores the relationship between dramatic structure and the lives we live, much broader concerns are revealed. Here, for example, is Mamet on political propaganda:
It is ... essential to the healthy political campaign that the issues be largely or perhaps totally symbolic--i.e., non-quantifiable. Peace With Honor, Communists in the State Department, Supply Side Economics, Recapture the Dream, Bring Back the Pride--these are the stuff of pageant. They are not social goals; they are, as Alfred Hitchcock told us, the MacGuffin.... The less specific the qualities of the MacGuffin are, the more interested the audience will be.... A loose abstraction allows audience members to project their own desires onto an essentially featureless goal.
Although occasionally academic, the overall tone of the lectures is consistent with Mamet's no-nonsense manner of speech. He has no time for obfuscation and little time for repetition, save when he must absolutely employ it for emphasis. He is passionate about good theater, and passionate about the truth. 3 Uses of the Knife makes an excellent companion piece to his True and False, which addressed similar philosophical matters in the form of advice on the actor's craft.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
Life Itself As Drama:
Readers should not expect another 'How To' book here. This slim philosophical essay makes the claim that we are hard-wired, as it were, to interpret our lives as dramatic narratives. And thus that 'drama' on stage or screen should reflect and enact the struggle to interpret, to make sense, to synthesise. In the process, Mamet eschews what is sometimes presented to us as 'drama', in his grumpy and dogmatic way. If the dogmatism is annoying (is this just a rant?) and the first response is to be affronted,... more info
Neo-Aristotelianism:
Mamet explicates a compelling theory of drama that links the fine and liberal arts with multifarious forms of American religion and social experience. Though he falters into occasionally harsh prescriptivism, he offers a look at one way American dramatists can and do communicate their world to an audience--and, in many ways, how they communicate the audience's own world as well. At the heart of Mamet's theory is his claim that all of us make drama out of the ordinary matter of our lives. The dramatist... more info
Essential:
David Mamet, the master of Drama, gives advice and technique in this GREAT book. Truly a must have for the aspiring writer of drama!
So much in this short volume.:
I read this book every year, and every year I take something new from it. There's SO much in this short book. It's FILLED with truth about life, art, and life & art.
