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Home > Dramatists
Friday, 14 May 2010
Richard Foreman, who recently confirmed that he will be leaving
theatrical work for that of film, speaks to Morgan van Prelle Pecelli
about his decision, his final stage production Idiot Savant, and
a variety of other subjects in a lengthy interview in Reality Sandwich.
Home > Dramatists
Thursday, 13 May 2010
I hope to write about David Mamet's short book of essays Theatre in the next few weeks; it's a
maddening, insightful and contradictory work of considerable interest. In
the meantime, there is this review of the book by Charles Spencer in the 30 April
issue of the Telegraph. Spencer writes:
There isn't one David Mamet, but two of the blighters.
Artistically speaking he has a split personality.
On the one hand there is Macho Dave, much given to lean,
mean, strongly plotted confrontational plays in which foul language is
used with the brutal impact of a sawn-off shotgun while somehow
achieving a kind of street poetry. When Mamet is in this mode there are
few living American dramatists to touch him for theatrical excitement as
plays like American Buffalo, Glengarry Glen Ross and
Oleanna have proved.
But buried inside Macho Dave, who loves hunting and loathes
political correctness, there is Sensitive David who writes artily
attenuated plays that are as insubstantial as they are pretentious and
painful memoirs of his childhood in Chicago. ...
... [Amid] all the attacks on fakery and his robust
Right-wing
insistence that subsidy sucks and the theatre is the perfect model of the
free market economy, one suddenly catches a fleeting glimpse of Sensitive
David, when he declares, for instance, that the theatrical interchange is
a communion between the audience and God, moderated by a play or litany
constructed by the dramatist.
That seems a long way from his assertion that the only
purpose of theatre is to entertain a paying audience but then one of the
most fascinating things about Mamet, both as playwright and polemicist, is
that he has the confidence of his own contradictions.
That Mamet "has the confidence of his own contradictions" is apt and
well-put, though I can't agree on Spencer's dismissal of some of
"Sensitive David's" more aesthetically ambitious work as "artily
attenuated," "pretentious" and "insubstantial"; they are, on the contrary,
remarkably complex plays. Discussing these plays in the introduction to
the fourth volume of the Methuen collected Mamet, the playwright says that
"Considerations of form fascinate me," and describes The
Cryptogram, Oleanna, American Buffalo and The
Woods as "classical tragedies ... all written in free verse." His
further thoughts on tragedy in the same volume illuminate some of what he
writes in Theatre, and encourage me to go back to read some of
these plays from a writer who, despite his Broadway productions, seems to
be a more and more elusive and ambiguous figure. Sheer
bloody-mindedness is of little interest, but there's more than
that to Mamet, however much one may disagree with his current
ideology.
Home > Dramatists
Tuesday, 11 May 2010
It was a pleasure to see a capacity crowd at the CUNY
Graduate Center's Martin E. Segal Theatre Center last night for
Howard
Barker at the Segal Center. The audience included a number of
enthusiasts for Barker's work, and perhaps most remarkable was the
heterogeneity of this audience. Some of the most brilliant performers of
the Broadway, off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway communities
could be found both on stage and in the audience, along with directors,
long-time fans of Howard's work as well as newcomers to the
dramatist's project, students, theatre administrators — young and
old, from a variety of walks of life. Testimony, if any were needed, to
the continuing appeal of Barker's work and especially to its necessity,
even in an age which seems to find it irrelevant (though anyone familiar
with Howard's work knows that this label is more an indication of that
necessity than anything else). As the harried curator of the event I was
able to speak to only a few of you, and sadly only briefly. But rest
assured that I was delighted to see those of you who sought me out to say
hello (especially those who travelled great distances just to be there for
the day), and I'm very glad indeed I had the opportunity to share this
common enthusiasm for Howard's work with you.
Credit where credit is due: the administration, staff and technical
crew of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center (Dr. Frank Hentschker, Dr.
Daniel Gerould, Jan Stenzel, Ruth Wikler-Luker and our outstanding
technical director Boris, of course), without whom none of this would have
been possible; performers Wallace Acton, Robert Emmet Lunney, Jan Maxwell
and Rocco Sisto; director Jesse Berger; stage manager Cynthia Dillon;
director Richard Romagnoli and playwright Ken Urban; Concord Media and Dr.
Peter Hulton of the University of Exeter for providing the video portion
of the day; and, last but certainly not least, Victoria Wicks, Howard
Barker and David Ian Rabey for taking the time out of their extremely busy
schedules to join us here in the United States for this unique,
once-in-a-lifetime event.
Those who are interested in purchasing Howard's books are
advised to visit the Nietzsche Circle's bookstore at Amazon Associates, where you'll find a
full selection of his theory, plays and poetry; buying them through this
bookstore, you'll also be doing a small part to support the Circle's
publication Hyperion, which this month includes a special
section on the dramatist's work. David Ian Rabey's Howard Barker: Politics and Desire and Howard Barker: Ecstasy and Death are
indispensible to a full understanding of the Barkerian project.
Onward, ever upward. Thanks to all of you, once again.
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Superfluities
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George Hunka
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Organum I (2006-2007)
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II (2008-2009)
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Tragedy (2010-continuing)
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Foreman 1
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Je Suis
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Nonken
Saint Oedipus
Contact
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Copyright © 2003-2010
by George
Hunka
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