Stark Insider
October 24, 2011
Throw in a bit of sex and age discrimination, a dash of offensive language and Mamet gives the audience reprieve from affirmative action.
The legal system is about three things: hatred, fear, envy.
David Mamet’s Race seeks to expose the true nature of the politics of race in this hot and fast-paced legal comedy that is about anything but the truth, so help me god.
Full Story: http://www.starkinsider.com/2011/10/theater-review-race.html
Showing posts with label theater. Show all posts
Showing posts with label theater. Show all posts
Monday, October 31, 2011
Monday, September 14, 2009
We Can’t Stop Talking About Race in America
The New York Times
September 13, 2009
The New Season Theater
By DAVID MAMET
PRESIDENT OBAMA, like his predecessor President Bill Clinton, has suggested that this country engage in a dialogue about race.
But what has our 230-year national experience been but a dialogue about race?
Our earliest drama on the subject, “Metamora,” by John Stone (1829), concerns the relations between the Massachusetts settlers and Prince Philip of the Wampanoags. So does the novel “Hope Leslie” by Catherine Sedgwick (1827).
Much of the contentiousness that characterized the First Continental Congress centered on the subject of slavery. Since then the Fugitive Slave Law, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Missouri Compromise, the Dred Scott decision, the Emancipation Proclamation, the 14th Amendment and so on, down to the Voting Rights Act and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the trial of the Scottsboro Boys, the internment of the Japanese, busing, affirmative action and the 2008 election, have kept the subject alive in the national discourse.
My current play, “Race,” is intended to be an addition to that dialogue.
As a Jew, I will relate that there is nothing a non-Jew can say to a Jew on the subject of Jewishness that is not patronizing, upsetting or simply wrong. I assume that the same holds true among African-Americans.
In my play a firm made up of three lawyers, two black and one white, is offered the chance to defend a white man charged with a crime against a black young woman. It is a play about lies.
All drama is about lies. When the lie is exposed, the play is over.
Full Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/theater/13mame.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1252951450-Sl9KLTZPdDYdPVRc3IoZHA
September 13, 2009
The New Season Theater
By DAVID MAMET
PRESIDENT OBAMA, like his predecessor President Bill Clinton, has suggested that this country engage in a dialogue about race.
But what has our 230-year national experience been but a dialogue about race?
Our earliest drama on the subject, “Metamora,” by John Stone (1829), concerns the relations between the Massachusetts settlers and Prince Philip of the Wampanoags. So does the novel “Hope Leslie” by Catherine Sedgwick (1827).
Much of the contentiousness that characterized the First Continental Congress centered on the subject of slavery. Since then the Fugitive Slave Law, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Missouri Compromise, the Dred Scott decision, the Emancipation Proclamation, the 14th Amendment and so on, down to the Voting Rights Act and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the trial of the Scottsboro Boys, the internment of the Japanese, busing, affirmative action and the 2008 election, have kept the subject alive in the national discourse.
My current play, “Race,” is intended to be an addition to that dialogue.
As a Jew, I will relate that there is nothing a non-Jew can say to a Jew on the subject of Jewishness that is not patronizing, upsetting or simply wrong. I assume that the same holds true among African-Americans.
In my play a firm made up of three lawyers, two black and one white, is offered the chance to defend a white man charged with a crime against a black young woman. It is a play about lies.
All drama is about lies. When the lie is exposed, the play is over.
Full Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/theater/13mame.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1252951450-Sl9KLTZPdDYdPVRc3IoZHA
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