David Mamet Libros

Calls for nothing less than the death of the director and the end of acting theory. This title is suitable for students, teacher, and directors, who crave a blast of fresh air in a world that can be insular and fearful of change.

A landmark American drama that inspired a classic film and a Broadway revival, featuring an introduction by David Mamet. This blistering character study examines the American melting pot and the judicial system that upholds it, showcasing a deep patriotic faith in the U.S. legal system. The play focuses on Juror Eight, the only holdout in an 11-1 guilty vote. Rather than seeking to prove the other jurors wrong, Eight aims to encourage them to view the case with clarity, free from personal biases. Reginald Rose skillfully strips away the layers of pretense, revealing a fuller picture of both the jurors and America, at its best and worst. Following the acclaimed 1954 teleplay, this drama became a cinematic masterpiece in 1957, with Rose writing the adaptation. More recently, it enjoyed a successful and award-winning run on Broadway. For over seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics offers a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres, providing authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes from distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, along with up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, director and teacher has written a blunt, unsparingly honest guide to acting. In True and False David Mamet overturns conventional opinion and tells aspiring actors what they really need to know. He leaves no aspect of acting untouched: how to judge the role, approach the part, work with the playwright; the right way to undertake auditions and the proper approach to agents and the business in general. True and False slaughters a wide range of sacred cows and yet offers an invaluable guide to the acting profession

The purpose of theater, like magic, like religion . . . is to inspire cleansing awe. What makes good drama? And why does drama matter in an age that is awash in information and entertainment? David Mamet, one of our greatest living playwrights, tackles these questions with bracing directness and aphoristic authority. He believes that the tendency to dramatize is essential to human nature, that we create drama out of everything from today’s weather to next year’s elections. But the highest expression of this drive remains the theater. With a cultural range that encompasses Shakespeare, Bretcht, and Ibsen, Death of a Salesman and Bad Day at Black Rock, Mamet shows us how to distinguish true drama from its false variants. He considers the impossibly difficult progression between one act and the next and the mysterious function of the soliloquy. The result, in Three Uses of the Knife, is an electrifying treatise on the playwright’s art that is also a strikingly original work of moral and aesthetic philosophy.

Essays discuss gambling, college, magazine writing, clothing, the theater, anti-Semitism, memory, President Nixon, the portrayal of Jews in motion pictures, and screenwriting

A masterclass on the art of directing from the Pulitzer Prize-winning (and Oscar and Tony-nominated) writer of Glengarry Glen Ross, Speed the Plow, The Verdict, and Wag the Dog Calling on his unique perspective as playwright, screenwriter, and director of his own critically acclaimed movies like House of Games, State and Main, and Things Change, David Mamet illuminates how a film comes to be. He looks at every aspect of directing—from script to cutting room—to show the many tasks directors undertake in reaching their prime objective: presenting a story that will be understood by the audience and has the power to be both surprising and inevitable at the same time. Based on a series of classes Mamet taught at Columbia University's film school, On Directing Film will be indispensible not only to students but to anyone interested in an overview of the craft of filmmaking. "Passion, clarity, commitment, intelligence—just what one would expect from Mamet." —Sidney Lumet, Academy Award-nominated director of 12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon, Network, and The Verdict

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Glengarry Glen Ross addresses key political issues from religion and political correctness to taxes and global warming while denouncing current administrative agendas and explaining why he has abandoned his liberal views. 40,000 first printing.

An examination of the machinations behind the scenes at a real estate office.

Playwright, screenwriter, poet and essayist David Mamet explains the necessity, purpose and demands of drama. In these three essays, he describes the ties that bind art to life, language to power, imagination to survival, and shows the power of the theatre to keep us whole and human.