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    Writing in Restaurants

    Author David Mamet
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    Paperback
    $24.00 US
    Penguin Adult HC/TR | Penguin Books
    On sale Oct 01, 1987 | 176 Pages | 9780140089813
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    "Essays in direct line from Stanislavsky, Chekhov, Shaw, and Brecht"
    —Mike Nichols

    A collection of essays from Pulitzer Prize winning playwright David Mamet adressing many issues in contemporary American theater

    Temporarily putting aside his role as playwright, director, and screen-writer, David Mamet digs deep and delivers thirty outrageously diverse vignettes. On subjects ranging from the vanishing American pool hall, family vacations, and the art of being a bitch, to the role of today's actor, his celebrated contemporaries and predecessors, and his undying commitment to the theater, David Mamet's concise style, lean dialogue, and gut-wrenching honesty give us a unique view of the world as he sees it.
    Writing in RestaurantsPreface
    Acknowledgments
    I. Writing in Restaurants
    Capture-the-Flag, Monotheism, and the Techniques of Arbitration
    A National Dream-Life
    Radio Drama
    A Tradition of the Theater as Art
    First Principles
    Stanislavsky and the American Bicentennial
    An Unhappy Family
    Some Thoughts on Writing in Restaurants

    II. Exuvial Magic
    Exuvial Magic: An Essay Concerning Fashion
    True Stories of Bitches
    Notes for a Catalog for Raymond Saunders
    Decadence
    A Family Vacation
    Semantic Chickens
    Chicago
    On Paul Ickovic's Photographs
    A Playwright in Hollywood
    Oscars
    Pool Halls
    Things I Have Learned Playing Poker on the Hill

    III. Life in the Theater
    Epitaph for Tennessee Williams
    Regarding A Life in the Theater
    Concerning The Water Engine
    Decay: Some Thoughts for Actors, Theodore Spencer Memorial Lecture, Harvard, February 10, 1986
    Notes on The Cherry Orchard
    Acting
    Realism
    Against Amplification
    Address to the American Theater Critics Convention at the Tyrone Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis, Minnesota, August 25, 1978
    Observations of a Backstage Wife

    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. View titles by David Mamet

    About

    "Essays in direct line from Stanislavsky, Chekhov, Shaw, and Brecht"
    —Mike Nichols

    A collection of essays from Pulitzer Prize winning playwright David Mamet adressing many issues in contemporary American theater

    Temporarily putting aside his role as playwright, director, and screen-writer, David Mamet digs deep and delivers thirty outrageously diverse vignettes. On subjects ranging from the vanishing American pool hall, family vacations, and the art of being a bitch, to the role of today's actor, his celebrated contemporaries and predecessors, and his undying commitment to the theater, David Mamet's concise style, lean dialogue, and gut-wrenching honesty give us a unique view of the world as he sees it.

    Table of Contents

    Writing in RestaurantsPreface
    Acknowledgments
    I. Writing in Restaurants
    Capture-the-Flag, Monotheism, and the Techniques of Arbitration
    A National Dream-Life
    Radio Drama
    A Tradition of the Theater as Art
    First Principles
    Stanislavsky and the American Bicentennial
    An Unhappy Family
    Some Thoughts on Writing in Restaurants

    II. Exuvial Magic
    Exuvial Magic: An Essay Concerning Fashion
    True Stories of Bitches
    Notes for a Catalog for Raymond Saunders
    Decadence
    A Family Vacation
    Semantic Chickens
    Chicago
    On Paul Ickovic's Photographs
    A Playwright in Hollywood
    Oscars
    Pool Halls
    Things I Have Learned Playing Poker on the Hill

    III. Life in the Theater
    Epitaph for Tennessee Williams
    Regarding A Life in the Theater
    Concerning The Water Engine
    Decay: Some Thoughts for Actors, Theodore Spencer Memorial Lecture, Harvard, February 10, 1986
    Notes on The Cherry Orchard
    Acting
    Realism
    Against Amplification
    Address to the American Theater Critics Convention at the Tyrone Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis, Minnesota, August 25, 1978
    Observations of a Backstage Wife

    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. View titles by David Mamet

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