Posted: 4/28/17 at 11:05am
David Mamet is on record saying that he thinks acting school is pointless. All an actor has to do is stand on their mark and read the lines, and leave the character development to the playwright. Is this a valid process of thinking for an actor? Does it apply to all plays, only his, or some mixture?
Posted: 4/28/17 at 1:50pm
He's very anti formal education in general (he encouraged his children to drop out of high school) so I think he'd probably say this about a lot of things.
Posted: 4/28/17 at 10:39pm
Ever seen Rebecca Pidgeon act? She carefully, clearly speaks the words. That's it.
She is his favorite performer of his work. ( probably a reason why they married.) Mamet does not really care what other people write so how THEIR words are performed are irrelevant to him. His work is the only thing that matters in his eyes.
Posted: 4/28/17 at 10:46pm
your post intrigued me because i can't imagine Mamet actually thinks that an actor should just "stand and read the lines". I didn't know anything about Mamet prior to these past five minutes but a quick google search showed he conceived an acting technique that was described as much more than simply saying the lines (it's called "practical aesthetics" if you'd like to read more) and he started an acting school called atlantic acting school so he presumably doesn't think that all acting schools are pointless.
Posted: 4/28/17 at 11:06pm
Positively the worst acting I have ever seen Damian Lewis do was in David Mamet's American Buffalo in the West End. Ditto John Goodman. I didn't expect Lindsay Lohan to be any good, but I thought Richard Schiff would be all right. I was wrong. More terrible acting came from Julia Stiles in Oleanna.
I thought it was just his plays that I despised. Perhaps it is dreadful acting, which he encourages.
