A Life in the Theatre

by David Mamet

David Mamet is the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of such seminal plays of our time as Glengarry Glen Ross, American Buffalo, Oleanna, and Speed-the-Plow. His A Life in the Theatre takes us into the lives of two actors: one young and rising into the first full flush of his success; the other older, anxious and beginning to wane. In a series of short, spare, and increasingly raw exchanges, we see the estrangement of youth from age and the wider, inevitable, endlessly cyclical rhythm of the world.

Genres: Plays, Theatre, Drama, 20th Century

86 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

David Alan Mamet is an American author, essayist, playwright, screenwriter and film director. His works are known for their clever, terse, sometimes vulgar dialogue and arcane stylized phrasing, as well as for his exploration of masculinity.

As a playwright, he received Tony nominations for Glengarry Glen Ross (1984) and Speed-the-Plow (1988). As a screenwriter, he received Oscar nominations for The Verdict (1982) and Wag the Dog (1997).

Mamet's recent books include The Old Religion (1997), a novel about the lynching of Leo Frank; Five Cities of Refuge: Weekly Reflections on Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy (2004), a Torah commentary, with Rabbi Lawrence Kushner; The Wicked Son (2006), a study of Jewish self-hatred and antisemitism; and Bambi vs. Godzilla, an acerbic commentary on the movie business.

Reviews

[Makenzie · Rating 3 out of 5]

reads like a filmed sketch by toronto based comedians

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like Mamet's other great plays, this title proves its worth through the questions it doesn't answer.

The play concerns two actors; one older, one younger. In roughly a dozen rapid-fire scenes on- and off-stage, the elder actor attempts to teach a lesson, and the younger actor responds.

What complicates matters is what happens outside of the audience's eyes. One of the actors begins to see greater professional success than the other, altering the teacher/student dynamic. As the play progresses, their forced company (mandated by their employment in the same show) causes stress fractures, breaks, and mends.

Relationships shift again when success stops for both of them.

Though filled with gratifying theatre lingo for those who understand such stuff, at heart, Mamet's play plays more intently with the emotional strains of success and failure, and how we humans share our deep longings with each other, even when we don't want to.

[Neil Schleifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is Mamet at his most sentimental. This observation of an older actor, beyond his prime, trying pridefully to impart his wisdom on his younger, up-and-coming co-star is a melancholy observation on aging, relevance and ego. It's a nice contrast to the expletive-laced, machine-gun fire dialogue Mamet later became known for.

[Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Relatable, but I wasn't completely in love with it. I would love to see this on stage.

[Nick Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

A couple of years ago I read a number of David Mamet’s early plays. Although I had seen a number of his films I had not been to a production of any of his plays or previously read any. This early work felt like a young writer’s output: fun, enthusiastic, full of ideas, but maybe apprentice work rather than fully realised. American Buffalo was the most impressive, maybe showed a growing maturity or confidence. Then I jumped ahead and read Glengarry Glen Ross. This gave Mamet’s career a sort of trajectory: American Buffalo, Glengarry Glen Ross, the crime films. I’ve now gone back to the 1970s and read A Life in the Theatre, written between American Buffalo and Glengarry Glen Ross. It is fun, but it feels as though it belongs with the apprentice work. This, however, might be because I’ve given Mamet’s career a narrative and maybe if I read more of his later plays I will realise my narrative is much too simplistic, that Mamet’s concerns and methods are much broader than I am allowing and A Life in the Theatre fits into another ‘Mamet narrative’ that I have yet to notice. I did enjoy it, but I found it a little flimsy. A simple plot, the interaction of two actors, an older one (Robert) and a younger one (John): it is broken into 26 short scenes spread over an unspecified times: between scenes time passes and things happen. There is development: at first Robert is the more experienced figure, giving advice, taking a certain pride in his worldly knowledge of the theatre – and I wondered if there was sexual attraction, but this doesn’t seem to lead anywhere; then we realise John has had a certain success, gained praise, has found his feet – we cannot be sure how much John needed Robert’s support in the first place, he certainly no longer needs it; Robert now seems a little lost, becoming bitter. That’s about it: it’s witty, amusing, formally it is quite interesting – we can fill in the gaps between scenes with our own understanding of the narrative – without being forbidding. As I said, fun, but maybe not a major work.

[Olivia Thames · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first play I have read of Mamet's, but most likely not the last, I found the comedy leaving me in a conundrum in how to describe the impression the script left on me. I found some elements humorous, others philosophical, and plenty of times where the clarity was missing. Maybe with another read at another calmer time in my daily life will leave me with a deeper way to think about the play, and how to describe/recommend it.

[Jillian · Rating 3 out of 5]

A montage of scenes, onstage and backstage, between two actors of different generations. A few of the scenes seem like throwaways, but other exchanges are exquisite in their subtlety, their turns, their dry humor, or their pathos. Gentler than I expected for Mamet in some ways, though he manages to treat women like shit without needing to bring any on stage.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Funny, without overwhelming amounts of inside baseball. Some genuine pathos, but mostly light sharp comedy.

[Amir Rajabi · Rating 5 out of 5]

درجه یک، واقعا کیف کردم.

[Wt Prater · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this play.

[Carlita Vinciguerra · Rating 1 out of 5]

Mamet's plays are so surface-level and sexist it's a wonder how he ever became one of the greats.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

To be fair, I don't remember reading this so much as the performance I saw: Performed late-night on the main stage of a 400-seat theater, the small audience sat upstage and watched the two characters downstage, with the curtain closed further down. At the points when the characters were "performing" as actors within the play, the curtain rose, and the audience saw the action looking out onto 400 seats.

And beyond all those gimmicks, its the intimacy of the play that's most striking.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

After Glengarry Glen Ross, this is my favorite Mamet play. Almost skeletal in its sparseness, it still manages to both specifically illuminate the life of the actor while also more generally capture the melancholy state of affairs when the elements of a craft of any sort are passed down from one generation to the next.

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This play looks at the relationship between two actors as they rehearse, prep, and perform various plays. Offstage, they seemingly have a cordial, if not friendly, relationship, until time passes and it's obvious that the two are pretending as much off stage as on.

[Sarah]

England 2005. Apollo Theatre. April 6.

[Gregory Knapp · Rating 5 out of 5]

A small Mamet masterpiece.