ANDY DRACHENBERG: How would you describe your start in theatre?
DAVID MAMET: I started out as a child actor in Chicago. I used to work for my Uncle Henry – he was the head of broadcasting for the Chicago board of Rabbis and used to put on radio and television shows and I used to play various Jewish children in them. This was a very long, long, long, long, long time ago.
AD: A Life in the Theatre. What led you to write this piece?
DM: I wrote A Life in the Theatre because a guy bet me he couldn’t touch his eye with his elbow. I knew this was impossible (it’s impossible to touch your eye with your elbow), and the bet was that if I won, he was going to give me all the money in his pocket. If he won, I had to write “a life in the theatre.” And so, he took out his glass eye and touched it to his elbow, and I was suckered. And that’s why I wrote this play.
AD: What were your ideas about theatre then? Were there certain things you wanted to write about?
DM: I had all kinds of ideas about theatre back then. I don’t think they’ve changed in the years since I’ve started. Basically, I loved everything about it, and I wanted to know everything about it I could, and I was very happy to be there. It was the situation then and it’s the situation now.
AD: How would you describe this play to someone who has no knowledge of the theatre world?
DM: If I met somebody who knew nothing about the theatre world, nothing about this show, nothing about theatre at all, and landed in Times Square, I would try to use my time getting them to invest in my next show.
AD: Why theatre? What’s unique about those who work in this industry vs. film or the business world, etc.?
DM: Everything’s interesting about theatre. There’s nothing that is uninteresting about theatre. It’s what interested me then and it still interests me today. Willa Cather, one of our greatest novelists, wrote Oh, Pioneers because she was interested in pioneers. She could have wrote fucking “Pirates of the Caribbean,” because god knows she had talent, but she wasn’t interested in pirates of the Caribbean, she was interested in the pioneers.
AD: This is your sixth play. How has the experience of revisiting the piece been?
DM: It’s great to revisit the play, because I get to do it with two spectacular actors, and as happy as I am to say it, it’s exhilarating! Anytime you get to do a play again with a new cast, especially with great actors, the new cast will always enliven the play in their own way. It’s the difference between working with a great actor and a good actor.
David Mamet (Playwright)Mr. Mamet is the author of various plays and screenplays and has directed ten films. He is a founding member of the Atlantic Theater Company and the author of the bestselling Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business; The Wicked Son; Three Uses of the Knife; and True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor. His newest books; The Trials of Roderick Spode, The Human Ant; and Theatre are currently in bookstores.