What makes good drama? How does drama matter in our lives? In
"Three Uses of the Knife, " one of America's most respected writers
reminds us of the secret powers of the play. Pulitzer
Prize--winning playwright, screenwriter, poet, essayist, and
director, David Mamet celebrates the absolute necessity of drama --
and the experience of great plays -- in our lurching attempts to
make sense of ourselves and our world.
In three tightly woven essays of characteristic force and
resonance, Mamet speaks about the connection of art to life,
language to power, imagination to survival, the public spectacle to
the private script.
It is our fundamental nature to dramatize everything. As Mamet
says, "Our understanding of our life, of our drama.... resolves
itself into thirds: Once Upon a Time.... Years Passed.... And Then
One Day." We inhabit a drama of daily life -- waiting for a bus,
describing a day's work, facing decisions, making choices, finding
meaning. The essays in the book are an eloquent reminder of how
life is filled with the small scenes of tragedy and comedy that can
be described only as drama.
First-rate theater, Mamet writes, satisfies the human hunger for
ordering the world into cause-effect-conclusion. A good play calls
for the protagonist "To create, in front of us, on the stage, his
or her own character, the strength to continue. It is her striving
to understand, to correctly assess, to face her own character (in
her choice of battles) that inspires us -- and gives the drama
power to cleanse and enrich our own character." Drama works, in the
end, when it supplies the meaning and wholeness once offered by
magic and religion -- an embodied journey from lie to truth,
arrogance to wisdom.
Mamet also writes of bad theater; of what it takes to write a
play, and the often impossibly difficult progression from act to
act; the nature of soliloquy; the contentless drama and empty
theatrics of politics and popular entertainment; the ubiquity of
stage and literary conventions in the most ordinary of lives; and
the uselessness, finally, of drama -- or any art -- as ideology or
propaganda.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!