About book True And False: Heresy And Common Sense For The Actor (1999)
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.
here, mamet offers his view and interpretation of what really good acting is, and it can be most effectively distilled as a quotation: "Invent nothing. Deny nothing." meaning that, if it's there in the text, don't hide it in any way, and don't go looking for any greater explanation or supposed-character-based topography than what is presented in the words you are given.on first reading the book, i dismissed it with the thought: "well, of course he'd say that about acting: he's a playwright!"it took me a decade of continuous work in theatre to realize just how right mamet is about everything in here.if you need proof, simply look at the names we know from theatre history: Shakespeare, Sophocles, Moliere, Lope de Vega, etc. they were all PLAYWRIGHTS. though they were all actors and directors and whatnot in some respect, they were, and still are, playwrights first and foremost, and what we remember and what we have of them are their words.and what will live on, long after we, as actors, are dead and buried face down at a crossroads with stakes through our hearts, are their words.and if we do not, as actors, put those words first and above all other considerations of character and emotion and whatever-insane-bullshit the liberal-arts-institution-tenured-faculty acting instructors have invented to justify their next publish-or-perish tome, we are fools and deserve to be denied sanctified interment.because (lest we forget) the root cause of the whole actor-as-heretic treatment is the idea that actors take on other souls like possessed people.well, if you stand between your audience and the text they came to hear and decide that you are behooven to conjure some new shit up from some combination of aether and your own paltry imagination (seriously, anyone who thinks of themselves as more creative than Shakespeare, raise your hand... [didn't think so.]) then you deserve to be burned at the stake.theatre is / should be a holy endeavor. imagine if a rabbi, imam, or priest decided to load up god's word with a bunch of made-up-on-the-spot backstory crap about how Abraham (last figure on whom all three can agree) stayed his hand from laying waste to Isaac, not because of any familial bond or intrinsic sense of right and wrong, but because he had never learned the proper means of ceremonial slaughter because, as a child, he... blah blah blah... or he was not fit to perform the sacrifice, because at that moment he smelled feces because that morning, he... yadda yadda yadda...that ain't what the congregation came to hear.and if you don't think of your audience, in some way, as a congregation, you don't deserve them.this goes to a large part of mamet's message in this book, that often gets buried in academic theatre: you, as an actor, are out there for them. not vice versa.
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Again, Mamet discounts the value of any and all academic approaches to theater and theater making. Again it's refreshing to hear an irreverent and informed voice proclaim, without reservation or apology, that the best way to learn how to act is by doing, without books, classes, teachers; in short, by finding a way to be on stage, and working to truthfully communicate plays to audiences. Though I disagree with some of the writing, and I remain undecided about much of it, I continue to be inspired by his perspective.
—John
True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor (1997)David Mamet (1947- )Nonfiction (127 pp.)Anytime; stage and rehearsal studioInstruction to be clear, direct, listen, respond, and perform understandable actions on stage; good acting is better than Great Acting.Semi-Random Semi-Representative Sample: What does this talk of technique mean? It means we were so starved of anything enjoyable that we were reduced to enjoying our own ability to appreciate. Bookstore Cat Sample: Invent nothing, deny nothing, speak up, stand up, stay out of school.Why I picked it up: I told a friend about Mamet’s book on directing and he told me to read this. Similar stuff. Clear. Good things to think about and enact.
—Philipp
A must-read for actors. Brilliant in too many ways to list. Picture Mamet walking alone through the Garden of Acting Wisdom. Now picture all the statues of False Gods which occupy the Garden. They stand perched on plyths, cast in ridiculous postures designed to inspire cheap awe rather than to reveal any truth about form. Finally? Picture Mamet swinging a massive fire axe. He knocks all the idols down. Cleaves them in half. Shatters them. Destroys them. If you end up disagreeing with everything in True or False, it's still worth your time to read it.
—Damon
