Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 16:55:56 -0400
Subject: PUPT: David Mamet on writing


The following are excerpts from an article by playwright David Mamet in the
New York Times arts section from Monday, July 15, part of their "Writers on
Writing" series. Mamet focuses on what to include and what to leave out in
his writing. He uses music as an analogy, referring to a record producer
who told him, "Leave out the third - we hear it anyway" (a major chord in
music is made up of the 1st, 3rd and 5th tones).



"This is the genius of  Bach, and the overwhelming demand of dramaturgy -
this understanding, or its lack, divides those who can write from those can
*really* write: how much can one remove, and still have the composition be
intelligible?

"Chekhov removed the plot, Pinter, elaborating, removed the history, the
narration; Beckett, the characterization. We hear it anyway.

"Both legitimate modern drama (Pirandello, Ionesco) and the trash of
performance art build on the revelation that omission is a form of creation
. . . that the audience will supply the plot.

"But our experience of such can be, at best, a smug joy.

"We listen to some concert pianist improvise waterfall arpeggios for an
hour, or view puerile performances, and, though we may leave the theater
smiling, we are left poorer, for we celebrated not the divine but the
ability of the uninspired to ape the divine. This is idolatry.

"The commandments are the same: leave out the third, concentrate on the
missing tone. Yes, we know that in the key of G a C chord would like to
resolve to G. How does it get there? The ardor to address this question
accounts for the genius of Beckett and also of Vernon Duke, Prokofiev, Kurt
Weill. The fascinating question of Art: What is between A and B?"



A couple of weeks ago, we attended the Northeast/Mid-Atlantic P of A
Festival in Bryn Mawr, PA, and Mamet's article made an interesting prism
through which to view the festival performances. Hands down, my favorite of
the festival was Blair Thomas's "#27 The Blackbird," based on a poem by
Wallace Stevens, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird."  I will do my
best to describe it. Blair used a very wide expanse of shadow screen made
up of four separate scrolling rice-paper shadow screens (crankies),
standing side by side, lit (I think) by oil lamps. Each cranky was painted
with scenes, some of which contributed to whole panoramas, some of which
were individual shots. Some of the poem's verses appeared in the screens as
well. Blair would roll (change) these screens at different times, so that
we were given a constantly mutating and changing scene: a landscape of
hills might turn into a woman's torso, then into something else entirely as
another cranky was scrolled . He also manipulated several shadow puppets
through the scenes: a blackbird, a man, and a woman. The piece was done to
music (String Quartet #4 by Ben Johnston, performed by the Kronos Quartet),
without spoken words .

Those are the mechanics of it. It was mesmerizing and extremely moving. The
method of presentation combined with the dramatic structure, and the
intellectual and emotional content, formed what felt like a new genre of
puppet theater.

Can you tell I liked the piece?

Now, back to David Mamet's article. I feel that a major reason that Blair's
blackbird piece was so effective is because he left out so much .  . . "how
much can one remove, and still have the composition be intelligible?"

Leaving things out requires a faith in the audience. It's so much easier to
tell them, every moment, what is happening onstage,  just in case they
don't get it on their own. It's easier to tell them how a character is
feeling than to use image manipulation and action to convey emotion, and
then rely on the audience to understand it.

Of course, one's audience must be considered when deciding how much to
leave out . . . often you can leave out more with an adult audience than
with a group of five-year-olds. But it *is* possible to challenge a young
audience; in fact, that challenge has been one of the most interesting
aspects of our work for children's and family audiences over the years.

Fine puppetry can be, for me, something close to a religious experience.
Blair Thomas's "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"  affected me
deeply because of  the innovative staging and because Blair trusted his
audience enough not to fill in the blanks. "The fascinating question of
Art: What is between A and B?"

All quotes are from  David Mamet, "Hearing the Notes that Aren't Played,"
NY Times 7/15/02. For the full text of the article, go to
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/15/books/15MAME.html

Crabgrass Puppet Theatre
www.crabgrasspuppets.com




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