In his newest book,a slender but muscular essay simply called Theatre(Faber & Faber), Mamet reflects on the profession that has been thethrough-line of his diverse career as he lashes out at a raft of annoyances. Heis not impressed with Stanislavsky and his Method; doesn't care much fortheater directors in general, holding that good actors are usually better offwithout them; dismisses contemporary Broadway as a pricey tourist trap in the themepark that New York City has become; and despises academic culture studies asthe province of tenured vandals bent on destroying art and replacing it withP.C. position papers dressed up as performance.
What's frustratingabout Mamet is his implication that there is no good fight worth fighting. Hehas invested into the dogma of Milton Friedman, the philosopher of“self-interest” and deregulation whose notions have charged a heavy toll on thewelfare of the world. Having written so vividly about swindlers and theirmarks, perhaps Mamet suspects anyone trying to better the world of being acrook or a fool?
None of thisinvalidates his core ideas on the art of theater or art in general. Like thegreat East German-born poet Durs Grünbein, whose recent essay collection The Bars of Atlantis contains sometrenchant thoughts on the war between the creative mystery of poetry and thecerebral prison of the philosophers, Mamet presents theater as the enemy of oneof the repressive mechanisms cited by Freud, “the intellect and itspretensions.” For Mamet, theater in its pure modes of drama and comedy, shornof sermonizing, creates a forum in which we can free ourselves from repressionthrough identification with the protagonist's quest. “The job of theatre is toinvestigate the human condition,” he writes, adding that our condition isessentially tragic, though not without hope.
