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Writing in Restaurants

Author David Mamet
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$24.00 US
| $32.00 CAN
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.
"Essays in direct line from Stanislavsky, Chekhov, Shaw, and Brecht"
—Mike Nichols

"Writing in Restaurants is rich with anecdotes . . . composed in precise mellifluous language."
—The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Passion, clarity, commitment, intelligence—just what one would expect from Mamet"
—Sidney Lumet

"Graceful, forceful, hortatory essays of a profoundly moral writer of our time"
—Richard Christiansen, Chicago Tribune

"Among the themes explored are why radio is a great training ground for writers, theater as an arena for dreams and the subconscious, Tennessee Williams's dramatic mission, and the craze for fashion as a symptom of the middle class's sterile lifestyle and loss of the ability to fantasize." -- Publishers Weekly

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
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

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.

Reviews

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

"Writing in Restaurants is rich with anecdotes . . . composed in precise mellifluous language."
—The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Passion, clarity, commitment, intelligence—just what one would expect from Mamet"
—Sidney Lumet

"Graceful, forceful, hortatory essays of a profoundly moral writer of our time"
—Richard Christiansen, Chicago Tribune

"Among the themes explored are why radio is a great training ground for writers, theater as an arena for dreams and the subconscious, Tennessee Williams's dramatic mission, and the craze for fashion as a symptom of the middle class's sterile lifestyle and loss of the ability to fantasize." -- Publishers Weekly

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

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

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