They Once Walked Among Us, Eleven O'Clock Always Comes, Meritocracy

This has been a wonderful read but I am glad it's over. Mamet wraps up his book by telling us that the greats that once walked among us were just like you and me. The final chapter then is about learning from the audience. When going straight into film you miss the interaction from the audience. If it is funny the audience will laugh, moving then they will sigh, etc. "A standing ovation can be extorted from the audience. A gasp cannot." I really liked this. I think it is true. A gasp from an audience means you have awaken something in them. Standing ovations can feel necessary rather than earned.

The Villain and the Hero, Acting "As if"

Humans are susceptible to suggestions. We will readily believe things we are told. There for the audience does not need characterization because it will be provided in the script by the author. Okay yes this I understand and I can agree with for the most part.
Acting "As If" did not feel like any new information. Mamet says to use your insecurities on stage. Don't use technique. As an actor you don't need faith. Mamet also talks about actors feelings of being a fraud. I enjoyed and understand the ideas of acting out fantasies for a one person audience. It's true this is easy. You don't need to prep yourself to act out your fantasy. But I feel the difference is that your fantasy is tailored to you. You are not granted this luxury with a play.

The Designated Hitter, Performance and Character

Most of these chapters feel as though Mamet is just writing and you need to shift through for the important information. From this chapter I basically got that the Good Actor is usually not good. We call him good because of our own need. The Good Actor is just a place holder. I don't get this and there for I don't agree or disagree...I don't know.
In Performance and Character I take away that you need to look outward and not inward. Again be brave be honest. Being brave seems to be one of the big messages through the whole book. It is a message I agree with and understand. Than Mamet goes on about how teachers are charlatans. Yes Mamet doesn't like school or teachers again we get it. He does make a good point about questioning what is told to you in an acting school. It's true if a teacher can not explain or demonstrate something for you it is likely he or she is lost as well.

Talent and Habit

Talent is like luck and it favors the prepared. So Mamet tells us to learn the skills of voice, dance and how to read the script like an actor. This to me means schooling which is not what Mamet would suggest. I don't get it. How do you become a competent actor if you can't go to school and there fore don't have the skills to get work and there for can't learn from the stage as Mamet says it should be done. I do however agree that talent like luck will come from determination and dedication.
I enjoyed Habit. The chapter felt like all of the basics. Things like leaving your problems on the street and being totally there in rehearsal and ready to get work done. Be an overachiever rising above the ranks rather than with them. Constantly improve your skills. However my favorite parts of this chapter were about how actors try with everything they have. They constantly hand themselves up for inspection by others. It is you on stage and you can hide nothing. It's a very reveling choice to put yourself on a stage.

Guilt and Concentration

Okay so David Mamet has now given us "actable objectives", "punch-lines" and "As ifs". He does not however believe in a method or schooling.......*pulls at hair* This book is now just making me angry. He most certainly is giving his own method and it is simply not the same as that of others before him. He talks about scholarship and staying in school and how they are bad things. He however is a teacher and has with this book made himself and his METHOD better than that of others. Anyway getting back to the chapter as ifs serve as reminders. Guilt from unattainable request causes actors to feel that they would have succeeded if they had only believed more. I agree. Walking like the color blue or unzipping and stepping out of my shell has never quite worked for me.
So concentration can not be forced suggesting then that it is a subconscious action. Okay I can jump on board here although I'm not sure I agree as countless students forced concentration in classrooms on a daily bases. So assuming that concentration flows to what is most interesting it would make sense to do as Mamet suggests and pick the most interesting play and the most interesting and fun action in the play. Concentration then will not be an issue. The problem here is that the actor does not get to pick the play and does not get to cut this play. That job is given to the director, the dramatrug etc. Mamet seems to have a habit of talking about things that are lovely in theory but not practical in the real world.

Emotions and Action

The chapter Emotions seemed to be a kind of repeat of other chapters. False emotions are a bad thing. We don't like it in our day to day lives when people smile to big or over express their sadness (although many are guilty of this on a daily bases) nor do we like to see it one stage. Then Mamet again calls emotion memory and sense memory paint by numbers. Then again he goes on about how you don't need school and it will not teach you these things. You must learn from the stage. Yes we got this in previous chapters I think we get it.
Now I may be interpreting this wrong but the idea of a "punch line" sounds a awful lot like a through-line as I believe it was called. I am again experiencing flashbacks. It does however kind of work if you think of a "punch line" scene by scene rather than a "punch line" for the whole play. To be honest I am really confused.

The Rehearsal Process,The Play and The Scene

So in rehearsal the play should be blocked and the actors should become accustom to the actions they are going to perform. Yes. I do however hate how cut, dry and impersonal this feels. This could be that I have only experienced rehearsal through a college and high school atmosphere but I love discovering a play along with my other actors. Things that you should just know or that should be taken care of before rehearsal are things I enjoy experiencing as a group. Then Mamet starts ranting about "actable objectives" and I start flashing back to Units and Objectives, making Mamet seem a little hypocritical. Yes you must have an actable objective and this according to Mamet this requires commitment but I also believe it requires preparation if not on paper than in your mind.
Focus your efforts scene by scene and not on the play. Yes.

Helping the Play and Acceptance

I feel again that we are being pulled by extremes here and that the better place would be somewhere in the middle. I will say that yes physical actions are more important than belief or emotional preparation but you can not completely leave these out. I do not however agree in anyway that most plays are better read than preformed. I have never thought that a play was better read. I hate to read a play. Plays are written to be preformed. It's just like Shakespeare never making sense to me until I actually saw it preformed or performed it myself.
As for Acceptance again I get a little lost. I feel as though Mamet is ranting. I agree that you can't make yourself believe something is true when it isn't nor should you try. There is no way you forget you are in a play onstage. Mamet than lose me with his talk of acceptance and it's being the key for happiness and actors. But I do get that the world is the way it is and really there isn't much you can do to change it. I do not however agree with this. There are many ways you can change things in the world around you. Perhaps it would be better to say change what you can and accept what you can't.

Work and Oral Interpretation

So Mamet does not believe that book work is necessary. Well how can I not agree with that. I do however feel that you must do something. You can't just memorize lines and they will come out just like they are suppose to right? It should also be mentioned that book work helps some people. I enjoy doing very unstructured book work. I may not have any documentation of the work but I'm understanding both the play and the character better. This however would be incorrect in the world of Mamet. I also like the idea of the 4th wall even thought Mamet calls it "a construction of someone afraid of the audience". Creating the idea of a 4th wall helps me to remember that I am in a play and just like when you watch a movie you the actors do not acknowledge that the audience is there. Mamet does make a good point of not trying to force yourself to believe in something that is obviously false. Yes you know that there is in fact no wall between you and the audience but it using this concept I cut down on side glancing and eye contact than I think I'll keep it.
The chapter titled Oral Interpretation was not a favorite of mine. It felt as though Mamet was oversimplifying. In no way shape or form do I believe that you could convincingly play , say a queen of England, without some background work. I hate this idea because some of my favorite times spend on plays in doing background work. You are able to make connections you didn't see before. Things the author thought you would know or people use to know or even things that have gotten lost in translation. Simply getting on stage and saying words is stupid! Witch I guess would be what Mamet is looking for when he says that the audience is looking for someone who can act. He describes this by saying "who can bring to the script something they couldn't have learned or imagined from reading it in a library." Well how does one do this if they don't do more than simply read the play and memorize lines ? Maybe I am the one oversimplifying what Mamet has wrote or maybe I am not a what Mamet would define as a competent actor.

Paint by Numbers

Mamet is blowing my mind. So in the chapter Paint by Numbers we're are given the wisdom of rehearsal. Now I suppose that if you have a set of competent actors then rehearsal would not have to take long. However with out training how does one get a competent actor? Mamet says himself that an actor needs to be trained to speak well etc. But with out school how do you get that. Even if you get experience on the stage it means at some point in time you will be in a show that is not full of competent actors and there for rehearsal just can't work that way. See blowing my mind. It feels to me like he is over simplifying and looking at an unattainable ideal.

Auditions

An audience comes to a show to be entertained and there for it stands to reason that they would be easier to please. Auditions are intimidating because a producer or an agent could really care less about you entertaining them and more than likely wont be entertained. To them you are another face in a crowd and they have seen many others like you. So I understand the concept of walking off stage and talking about how my performance was terrible. But usually this is to my fellow actors, my director. When an audience member comes to compliment me on my performance more likely than not i reply with a simple thank you. No matter how bad I fell I have done, my job was to entertain them and that I did. It is different with fellow actors and directors etc. I feel as if they are judging me, comparing me to something unachievable or even to themselves. It is not about simple enjoyment anymore and that intimidates me. Now reading this I hate the concept of auditioning or performing for anyone but an audience even more than I did before.

I'm on the Corner and Business is Business

So don't have a back up plan and don't go to school...This man is crazy. Not everyone will make it in the acting world no matter how bad they want it or how hard they work for it.

So this odd thing is starting to happen. I read and agree with everything I read. But then I think about it and I can't put together a "bigger picture". So anyway in the chapter Business is Business I get the concepts of wanting to please everyone and agree 100%. Then I can latch on to the idea that there is no character you are the character. But then there is all this talk about not adding to what the writer has done. "invent nothing, deny nothing" what the heck does that even mean? I've always been of the impression that invention is what theatre is all about. You invent another person another world. This is what makes me like theatre. Mamet then goes on to talk about acting teachers. Now I agree that acting teachers are not the best (although I would not call them frauds). I also think that being in a school simply allows you to call your self part of theatre (I'll admit it's why I'm here). I do believe that you will get more out of stage experience rather than class room experiences. Now with all that said I can't help calling Mamet himself a fraud. Is he not trying to Teach people a way of approaching the theatre world. Isn't this just a different method that has evolved out of what Mamet thinks others did wrong?

Find Your Mark

So....Umm.....I love the opening paragraph. It was exactly what I find myself asking. But then as I continue with the chapter I confuse myself. I find myself agreeing with everything, but I also don't understand how it can be true. Yes I don't think that you can know what you would do in a situation but I also do not think that you would be able to simply feel your way. Acting has to involves some sense of repetition and rehearsal. I mean although there is always a chance for the unknown the actor pretty much has to know what is going to happen next right? I also like the concept of wanting real heroism from real people. But the great part about that is the knowledge that it is real. The audience is aware that a play is not reality. I also don't quite understand the concept of acting on what you feel onstage. I can say that at times what I am feeling would not be even remotely appropriate for the moment. I suppose this means that I'm not in the moment or something *sigh*

A Generation That Would Like to Stay in School and Scholarship

So basically Mamet says don't go to school. As lovely as that sounds it is impractical. Almost everything these days requires a college degree. Including acting, most of the time. I do agree that you need to be dedicated and it is okay to live with uncertainty but I also believe you should put yourself in the situation that will give you the most opportunities and more often than not that is school. As for scholarship well I agree all it is about being better than the audience and what good can come of that.

Ancestor Worship

In the first lines of this chapter Mamet calls Stanislavsky an amateur. Essentially making all of that reading last semester feel worthless. It felt even more worthless as I continued reading and finding myself agreeing with everything Mamet said. I agree that there is only an ills ion of a character on stage. You are your self and can not "become" a character for a play. The audience knows that this is all an illusion. I also agree with the concept that trying or achieving to reach a required emotional state only takes the actor out of the play. I can't tell you how many times I forget what's happening on stage because I'm trying so hard to get myself to think or feels something that I believe I should be thinking or feeling at the time regardless of the stimulation from the outside. Mamet does end up going on about how Stanislavsky's method is "hogwash" as he dubs it. I feel that this comes in part from his dislike of formal training and I get it. Stanislavsky = bad. He almost says it to much...

David Mamet's True and False

Mamet's book True and False starts with a slow first page and then you get to the second and read the words "That's what acting is. Doing the play for the audience. The rest is just practice." from that moment on I was hooked. Although I have read ahead I am going to try to cover only the first two chapters I suppose you could call them. I don't feel like this book is split into chapters as much as it is split into ideas. Hopefully by posting in smaller chunks I'll prevent my overgeneralizing topics. The first section is titled To the Actor. The section is short and basically tell you that Mamet is experienced and comes from a family of actors. He's been doing this for around thirty years now. Although it is short it sets you up for the rest of the book by telling you that this book is basically going to challenge everything you've been taught. By doing this Mamet hooked me in and I could hardly wait to read what came next. The second section is titled Some Thoughts. This second little introduction made me feel like Mamet knew me. He opens with a lists of feeling that I could identify with. Yes indeed I do feel confused, guilty, lost and ashamed as an actor. I then thought to myself "Oh my goodness is he going to tell me how to fix these feelings?"It is almost as if he is given words to the feelings you haven't been able to describe for yourself. Now I do wonder how much of this is my real feeling and how much of it is me latching on to something that "sound good". I suppose I'll just have to wait and see.