True and False Book

Imagine an Enlightenment thinker, sitting on his drawing room chair sometime in the 18th century, wets his pants so hard at the idea of the mind-body dichotomy he enters a time loop directly into post-Stanislavski America, somehow becoming a playwright in the process.

He would be David Mamet, and this would be his book on acting.

I think this is a good book to read for actors as a cautionary tale on the poorer attempts at Method Acting. Specifically the part about "Playing for Time" is so useful. In "Playing for Time" Mamet skewers the process of "I receive the other actor's line, and rather than responding to it I check in with my internal emotional life because dammit it's all about me, and then I deliver my line, having showed the audience the kind of human interaction that only ever occurs in shitty theatre productions" (paraphrased). Mamet also points out that the actress (now that I think of it this was sexist, why can't men do this too) who summons tears onstage for the sake of summoning tears is removing herself from the narrative of the play and from the almighty Text for which Mamet seems to think actors are mere vessels, going to his own extreme in the process.

Playing for Time and emoting for the sake of emoting are the issues in this book I really responded to. The problem is Mamet doesn't *replace* his "don't do's" with anything. Yes there is a level of trust in the moment that needs to happen so actors don't spend so much time being internal, but the trust in the Text that Mamet is espousing is Absolute, and leaves no room for the actor to, well, act, and that's why the acting in Mamet's productions is so wooden. William H. Macy can pull it off because he is always riding a wave of in-the-moment thought that is so real and unselfish, but whenever I've watched a film of Mamet's I can't help but think the thought process of his actors is "Ok I can't do this, I can't feel this, just delivering the line, trusting the line, Ok here's my line" which is, in effect, exactly the overinternalizing claptrap Mamet warns against. A hyper-literal interpretation of Stanislavski is just as hard to watch as a hyper-literal interpretation of Mamet.

Dear actors, have you ever had a director who you know is judging you and looking for incontrovertible evidence that you're being too cerebral so he or she can point it out to you with a grin that bespeaks Triumph? Did this director say you were being too Internal without qualifying how so and giving you another option, thus only making you more internal? Does this director still infuriate you when you think about him or her? I have a solution: Imagine said director as a third year student, reading this book unsupervised. Feel better?

Ultimately I like the bubbles about acting Mamet bursts, but I think the way he bursts them are more a reflection of his own cynicism than they are something revolutionary and freeing for actors. Do read it, but exercise caution. It's a book with very good thoughts about acting by a person who does not understand actors.