Product Description

A guide to the acting profession by a leading American playwright. He advises aspiring actors on topics such as judging a role, approaching the part, working with the playwright, undertaking auditions, and the relationship with agents and the business in general.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16495 in Books
• Published on: 1998-05-18
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

Customer Reviews

some things to think about.
"True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor" is exactly that. In this slim volume Mamet exposes many of the troubles that plague the theatre and the art of acting in general.

There is much contained here that IS heresy to many actors, he cuts many of Stanislavskis theories to shreds. Whether you personally agree with them or not many of his arguments are sound (although, admittedly the jazz musician analogy is awful).

Aditionally, he cuts drama schools to pieces... and he is right. The only thing a drama school is good for is getting contacts, formal acting training does not teach a person to act it teaches a person to become EMPLOYABLE. (Go and see ANY showcase production from ANY drama school and it soon becomes apparent that the performers (talented or otherwise) have been taught to simply go through the motions and follow direction exactly without any element of spontaneity (often even being told EXACTLY how to say each line))

However, interesting and well written his book may be, Mamet does not say anything that hasn't been said at least a thousand times before. The naturalistic theatre of stanislavski died a hundred years ago and has been buried deeper and deeper ever since... and thank GOD! His teachings are still relevant (a fact which Mamet does not deny) but few people take them as gospel. There are also a large number of industry professionals in serious disagreement with the way drama schools teach.

Where the book is most interesting is when Mamet writes about the hard life of the actor, writer and director (among others), I found myself nodding when he describes the prejudice an artist can endure fr their choice of career from people who just don't understand (friends from school or family members being a prime example) or those who have tried and given up to become administrators (casting agents and the like).

"True and False: Heresy and Common Sense to the Actor" is a concise, well written and fascinating look at the world of the professional actor. Buy it, read it, take the arguments into account and make up your own mind. Just don't believe everything you read.

An inspiring no-bullshit triumph.
In this slim volume, Mamet lays waste to the oppressive quasi-religious method nonsence that confuses and ruins so many actors. He describes the Business as it is - a chaotic free-for-all where not only the lucky but also the brave succeed. READ IT - sack your agent, sell your house and put on a play....

Brilliant
"You readers are of a generation that would like to stay in school...You will encounter in your travels folks of your own age who chose the institutional path, who became the arts administrators rather than the writers. These folks chose to serve an institutional authority in exchange for a paycheck, and these folks are going to be with you for the rest of your life, and you actors and writers and people who come up off the street, who live without certainty day to day and year to year are going to have to bear with being called children by these institutional types...It is not childish to live with uncertainty, to devote oneself to a craft rather than a career, to an idea rather than an institution. It's courageous and requres a courage of the order that the institutionally co-opted are ill equipped to perceive. They are so unequipped to perceive it that they can only call it childish, and so excuse their exploitation of you.

"...Any system built on belief functions through the operations of guilt and hypocrisy. Such a system, whether of acting training, meditation, self-improvement, etc., functions as a psuedo-religion, and is predicated on the individual's knowledge of his or her own worthlessness. The system holds itself out as the alleviator, cleanser, and redeemer of the guilty individual."

"...The Stanislavsky 'Method,' and the techniques of the schools derived from it, is nonsense. It is not a technique out of the practice of which one develops a skill--it is a cult.

"Concetration cannot be forced. It is a survival mechanism and an adaptive mechanism, and it will not stand down and stop making its own connections simply because we'd like it to. Acting, finally, has nothing whatever to do with the ability to concentrate. The ability to concentrate flows naturally from the ability to do something interetsing. Choose something interesting, legitimately intesreting to do, and concentration is not a problem. Choose something less interesting and concetration is impossible.

"...If you decide to become an actor, stick to your decision. The folks you meet in supposed positions of authority--critics, teachers, casting directors--will, in the main, be your intellectual and moral inferiors. They will lack your imagination, which is why they became bureaucrats rather than artists; and they will lack your fortitude, having elected institutional support over a life of self-reliance. They spend their lives learning lessons very different from the ones you learn, and many or most of them will envy you and this envy will express itself as contempt. It's a cheap trick of unhappy people, and if you understand it for what it is, you need not adopt or be overly saddened by their view of you. It is the view of the folks on the verandah talking about the lazy slaves."

David Mamet
Excerpts from
TRUE AND FALSE
Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor

This book was written for actors.