True and False - by David Mamet (Paperback)

About the Book

Iconoclastic playwright, screenwriter, and director David Mamet shows actors how to undertake auditions and rehearsals, how to deal with agents and directors, and how to engage audiences.

Book Synopsis

One of our most brilliantly iconoclastic playwrights takes on the art of profession of acting with these words: invent nothing, deny nothing, speak up, stand up, stay out of school. Acting schools, "interpretation," "sense memory," "The Method"--David Mamet takes a jackhammer to the idols of contemporary acting, while revealing the true heroism and nobility of the craft. He shows actors how to undertake auditions and rehearsals, deal with agents and directors, engage audiences, and stay faithful to the script, while rejecting the temptations that seduce so many of their colleagues. Bracing in its clarity, exhilarating in its common sense, True and False is as shocking as it is practical, as witty as it is instructive, and as irreverent as it is inspiring.

Review Quotes

"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

"Trenchant...Meet's pared-down, occasionally cryptic prose can make powerful sense."--The New York Times

"This book should be read and considered by everyone who acts."--Steve Martin

About the Author

David Mamet is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, as well as a director, novelist, poet, and essayist. He has written the screenplays for more than twenty films, including Heist, Spartan, House of Games, The Spanish Prisoner, The Winslow Boy, Wag the Dog, and the Oscar-nominated The Verdict. His more than twenty plays include Oleanna, The Cryptogram, Speed-the-Plow, American Buffalo, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, and the Pulitzer Prizewinning Glengarry Glen Ross. Born in Chicago in 1947, Mamet has taught at the Yale School of Drama, New York University, and Goddard College, and is a founding member of the Atlantic Theater Company.