David Mamet Quotes

Scene study is isolated. I suppose it's interesting, but I don't think it really teaches you about a throughline. A throughline is something you feel when you do one scene followed by another followed by another.

It's important to do research. I do that in every play, every actor does.

In the first place, it must be remembered that our point of view in examining the construction of a play will not always coincide with that which we occupy in thinking of its whole dramatic effect.

To be able to analyze plays and novels is so relevant to acting.

If you pick up an eighteenth-century play, at the top it says 'The Argument,' and then you have a list of characters, and then you have the play. I was just always struck by that - that, of course, good drama is about conflict.

[T]he Famous Rules which the French call, Des Trois Unitez , or, The Three Unities, which ought to be observ'd in every Regular Play; namely, of Time, Place, and Action.

I believe the way to write a good play is to convince yourself it is easy to do, then go ahead and do it with ease.

I discover that I am thinking about a play, which is the first awareness I have that a new play is forming. When I'm aware of the play forming in my head, it's already at a certain degree in development.

To play well the scenes in which we are 'on' concerns us much more than to guess about the scenes that follow it.

Talk about high school and what we identify with in the play; things that have happened to us and all of our high school experiences that we could bring to this. And to talk about what everyone knows in each specific scene.

True, I don't begin with an idea for a play - a thesis, in other words, to construct the play around. But I know a good deal about the nature of the characters. I know a great deal about their environment. And I more or less know what is going to happen in the play.

All the plays that have ever been written, from ancient Greece to the present day, have never really been anything but thrillers... Drama's always been realistic and there's always been a detective about... Every play's an investigation brought to a successful conclusion.

The critics suppose that it is easy to write a play. They aren't aware that writing a good play is difficult and writing a bad one is twice as hard.

A new chapter in a novel is something like a new scene in a play.

Shakespeare put no children in his plays for a reason," Sir Godfrey muttered, glaring at Alf and Binnie. "You're forgetting the Little Prince," Polly reminded him. "Who he had the good sense to kill off in the second act," snapped Sir Godfrey.

It's the function of a playwright to write. Some playwrights write a large number of plays, some write a small number.

If you string together a set of speeches expressive of character, and well finished in point and diction and thought, you will not produce the essential tragic effect nearly so well as with a play which, however deficient in these respects, yet has a plot and artistically constructed incidents.

When you're reading some of the great plays, when you do what I call "taking up with a writer," something happens.

That the play is the tragedy, “Man,” And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.

I had to work with Ben Mendelsohn who's one of the great actors of our time. I had a lot of scenes with him and I was thrilled to be on the set with him; I just wanted to see how we were going to play it.

I suspect that the theme, the nature of the characters, and the method of getting from the beginning of the play to the end is already established in the unconscious.

It would be difficult to determine whether the age is growing better or worse; for I think our plays are growing like sermons, and our sermons like plays.

It's hard work. It's really hard work, but it's really interesting. We have this camera, I think it's called a SimulCam, and when you play it back, you can see the giant in the scene you just shot. It's incredible. You're reacting to a tennis ball that's way up there, then when you watch it, it's this huge giant's face on it. Wow. That's cool. I just can't wait to see it when it's all edited together and the special effects are all crystal clear. It's going to be, hopefully, amazing.

Even one word, or certainly one sentence, should be able to describe the basic characteristic that the scene has, or the character has, or the story has. And then you begin to detail that one spine, and you have offshoots from that spine, and it becomes more and more complex, but all of it stems from that one-word, one-line theme, which can give the character, the scene, or the play its uniqueness.

Study, find all the good teachers and study with them, get involved in acting to act, not to be famous or for the money. Do plays. It's not worth it if you are just in it for the money. You have to love it.