Blackwell Reference Online

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Born in Chicago on November 30, 1947, David Mamet is perhaps the most quintessentially American of contemporary playwrights. Not only has he taken as his explicit subject America and its mythic Dream, but he has also taken as his form the multiple media of American culture to explore the potency of America's national and inter-national myth. In original plays, adaptations, film, television, essays, novels, poetry, and interviews, Mamet examines the potentially destructive, if not violent, effect of the American Dream. The American Dream, he observes, “was basically about raping and pillage…. We are finally reaching a point where there is nothing left to exploit…. The dream has nowhere to go so it has to turn on itself” (qtd. in Savran 1988 : 133). This dynamic of individualism and the “Dream” gone awry permeates the bulk of Mamet's work, but for Mamet it is in drama that the critique of the “Dream” has its roots and it is in drama that the possibility of redemption emerges most provocatively. Even within this single form – drama – Mamet exhibits an exploratory impulse, moving from experimental one-acts to realistic full-length plays. Having grown up on Chicago's Jewish South Side and working menial jobs at Hull House Theatre and at Second City, Mamet drafted his first plays while attending Goddard College in Vermont. During his junior year, he studied acting under Sanford Meisner ... log in or subscribe to read full text