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True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor

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This is a short, blunt and controversial monograph on the business of acting, but in assessing its lessons, one should consider two salient points. First, David Mamet tried unsuccessfully to become an actor, and, second, that as a playwright and director, he necessarily has his own ideas about how his works (and the works of other playwrights) should be produced, and his vision undoubtedly conflicts with actors' ideas about how those works should be realized. In the guise of giving acting advice, he is voicing his strong opinion that all actors' work must necessarily be subordinate to that of the playwright or director, and it recalls Alfred Hitchcock's famous dictum that he regarded actors as cattle. That's not necessarily acting advice, but it is a hierarchical view of roles within a production or a theatre company.

With those points in mind, much of what Mamet has to say about acting is very good advice indeed. It is no secret that the Stanislavski and Strasberg systems of acting often produce academic and/or inward looking performances. Mamet also finds nothing at all to praise in acting schools of any stripe or theory. And as readers familiar with Mamet's plays might expect, when Mamet wants to heap scorn upon an object, he is capable of doing so with cold and hilarious fury. His points about working truthfully in the moment (which he calls acting courageously) and focusing honestly on your partner or the other actors are surely solid. Similarly, his simple advice about how a scene should work and how an actor should understand the scene's objective are rock solid.

In the end, although Mamet skewers both acting schools and theories, he has really espoused a theory of stage performance, albeit one that takes as its guidepost a highly naturalistic and unadorned style. Similarly, his advice that only by constantly working, and subjecting your craft to the ultimate test of audience acceptance or rejection, will an actor really grow, is beyond dispute. Overall, this is a useful and entertaining analysis. But it's really only partly about how to act, and if you're buying it as a how-to guide, you're going to be disappointed.

Much of this book is taken up with Mamet railing against the Stanislavski System, of which he demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding. For example, he claims that the Method is not practical because you cannot "force" your emotions (those who have read any of Stanislavski's books will recognize that Stanislavski said this exact thing) and you cannot force yourself to believe something you know to be false (if Mamet had read Stanislavski's sections on the "magic if," he would find that Stanislavski also teaches this and has a solution to the problem).

The fact that he calls the Stanislavski System the Stanislavski Method makes me suspect that he is actually thinking of Strasberg's Method, who is often accused of putting too much emphasis on the certain aspects of a System like internal embodiment of the role and many say misunderstood large parts of the Stanislavski system; after Stella Adler studied with Stanislavski and returned to the Group Theatre, she and several other teachers of the 'Method' broke with Strasberg on these issues (including Meisner, who Mamet later studied under, who very strongly disagrees with Strasberg's methods and teaching style and says so very frankly in his book "Sanford Meisner on Acting"). Many of the issues Mamet brings up are fairly common criticisms of Strasberg, especially by Meisner.

When he quits ranting against the Stanislavski System and what he thinks actors need to stop doing and gets down to what he thinks actors SHOULD do, many of his principals are (or, at least, should be) either painfully obvious (such as, our job as actors is to entertain the audience) or of little use to serious actors. For example, he spends a whole chapter writing on auditions - only problem is he gives no advice on how to audition well or successfully, he just explains why they are a bad way of casting (without, I might note, recommending a better way of casting - everyone involved hates auditions, we only do them because no-one has come up with a better system, unless the production team is casting a star or someone whose work they are familiar with enough to skip the audition). Stanislavski (whose approach was "these are the principals of what must happen "internally," this is how it looks externally, this is how it looks when you're creating a character for the stage), Mamet does not spend much time explaining how his principals work or how they are to be applied on stage, which tends to limit the usefulness of the good principals he has.

I will give Mamet credit for a few things, though. His writing is concise and to the point, and touches on a few of the basic principals of acting, and he points out a few mistakes that some actors make. The one thing that this book does a very good job with is reminding us of the basic job of the actor, which actors tend to get away from sometimes, such as the fact that the audience is paying good money to see us perform and our first obligation is to them (although even this can be dangerous in that it can cause you to play what you think the audience should be seeing rather than playing the scene honestly, which can lead to unrealistic and dishonest acting). He makes a few other interesting points (e.g., the primary place we learn to act is on stage, not in the classroom, and the tendency to stay in school forever rather than get practical experience in the theatre won't help you but is rather damaging to your acting).

Do not read this book instead of other acting books, but rather in addition to them. The book is fairly short - you should be able to read it quickly. This would be good to read along with Stanislavski or books on the Method, but don't read it as a the first or only acting book you read. I would NOT recommend buying it, although I would recommend reading it once and only once as an alternative perspective on acting - more perspectives is a good thing, and even if I disagree with much of that perspective it makes you think about why you disagree with it which is a good thing.

This book--another fit of didacticism from a writer of highly uneven output--is a bracing experience. Mamet's thoughts are so simplistic, his tone so dogmatic, that he provokes you to define your own thinking more sharply. I therefore recommend the book highly.

I'd like to share one observation, out of the many that this book provoked in me: Mamet's own preference, it seems, is the flat, uninflected acting in most of his films. Compare, for instance, Lindsay Crouse's beautifully emotional work in Sidney Lumet's THE VERDICT with her strangely robotic work in Mamet's HOUSE OF GAMES. The disparity between the two performances--one directed by the Actors Studio-trained Lumet, the other directed by the virulently anti-method Mamet--points up a central, yet unacknowledged, truth: Mamet is advocating a particular style of acting. This style results from the action-oriented approach that he and his followers employ, but it is no more or less a style than that produced by the method techniques he decries. This may seem a minor point, but it is one that he would hotly deny, as he insists that he advocates a technique and not a style.

I should add that the book contains a number of incisive thoughts on ethics and professionalism. So valuable were these that I typed them up and put them on my wall. They kept me sane through a difficult summer with a professional theatre company. The book is worth its price for these alone.

I first bought this book while hanging out with a fellow actor friend of mine. We got on the NYC subway and started to read the books we'd just bought. I couldn't believe what I was reading. I was shocked, almost dismayed - but, oh so thankful.

I felt the need to share these lines with my friend. He instantly called Mamet a heretic. "How dare he ? Why are you reading this ?" Two months later, I gave him a copy as a gift. I urged him to read it. A week later, he thanked me from the bottom of his heart.

Why am I telling you this long story ? Because this book about smacking you in the face. You'll either appreciate it, or hate Mamet to death for it. But know that it's done with noble intentions.

Actors are taught some truly silly techniques and habits. As a result, we are robbing ourselves of the dignity of what we do. And while Mamet reminds us that this artform was saved by people who basically wanted to make a living at doing "not much", there IS a dignity to it.

I don't think he's seeking an overthrow of everything we hold dear. I think he's trying to teach us the absurdity of some of our actions by being absurd in his repsonses to it. "Stanislavski was a hack" is his call to action, not revolution.

Read this book. Enjoy it with a grain of salt. And claim the dignity to break the silly habits you've learned to take on. I have. And the five friends I've bought this book for haven't stopped thanking me for it.

Mamet is an infuriating author.

He calls Stanislavski a "hack," and yet his system is based upon a part of Stanislavski's system: the actor's objective.

Mamet derides acting schools, and yet the Atlantic Theater has an actor training program based upon the system that he devised. It's as if his system is the one "correct" one. (If Mamet were religious, he would make a great Baptist.)

Mamet's method is exclusive- it only provides for actor's working on a written text. What about actor's who are creating a piece of theatre? How are they to analyze their lines and find an objective? What if there are no lines? What if it is a piece based on sound and rhythm?

Mamet could pose very good answers to all of these questions. So could I. This is merely to demonstrate that Mamet seems to argue that everything he says is the truth with absoloute finality. Mamet is an infuriating author.

But the infuriation is well worth it. By forcing us to question our ideas about acting, school, etc. -- Mamet is doing a lot of good. Read this book. Be outraged. Be challenged. Question, think, and either you'll have been enlightened by Mamet or you'll come out having reinforced your own ideas.

It's a concise, lively read.
Cheers!

No other author, from Hagen to Meisner to Strasberg, has captured the art of acting so simply, so quickly (127 pages), or so truthfully. I hated this controversial book when I first read it (surely, Stanislavsky is turning over in his grave), but after much thought and practice and observation, I must admit that the art of acting really is, and must be, as simple as Mamet makes it. This truly is the only book on acting that a professional must read.

A very good book insofar as an expose of The Method. Mamet is an excellent critic but a muddled theoretician and his advice ends up sounding as dogmatic as Stanislavsky and as reductionist as Strassberg.

Lee's "Method" appropiated one of Stanislavsky's early theories and absorbed all of the others into it, unintentinally (?) giving them secondary status. This theory was and is 'Affective Memory' ( or as Mamet refers to it , the acting equivalent of 'paint-by-the numbers') wherein an actor would remember experiences that had moved him in his past and then tie them or substitute them to the character he was portraying them to infuse it with 'truth'.

Interestingly, 99% of Affective Memory exercises deal with past pain: Your father's death, your sister's suicide, uncle Ethelbert molesting you in the closet when you were 9, etc.

This leads to some bummed out acting sessions and practising guru-psychoanalyst-con men. (I refer to Harold Clurman's remarks on Lee as quoted in 'Acting without Agony' by Don Richardson ) and more importantly to a new convention as artificial as the 19th century's dictum that an actor should not turn his back on the audience while exiting the stage; namely the dogma of REAL TEARS.

Method loons are fond of contrasting 'indicating' which is bad with 'truthfulness' which is neato, and the yardstick generally employed is REAL TEARS.

Thus whether you're playing Hamlet in his "O What a rogue" speech or Felix Ungar in The Odd Couple in the scene where he shows a photograph of his family to the two cuties, the scene specifies weeping and thus the true actor will cry REAL TEARS.

Never mind that one's a classical drama and the other's a comedy, that's irrelevent and The Method wants you to cry. So go to class, remember personal tragedies, and suffer agony for art's sake.

Mamet makes fun of this lunacy and defends the primacy of the play, of the written word. Acting is after all, an interpretive, performing, and secondary art to writing. Here he is on solid ground , following Bertol Brecht's gripe that Stanislavskian actors mangled the author's work just so they could commit an "emotional striptease" on the stage.

But what advice does he offer instead?

Well there are some 'common sense' gems such as his request not to indulge in "Funny Voices" and to let the audience teach you, rather than stay in school/studio/labs/workshops forever.

But after all is said and done, he goes back to "that hack" Stanislavsky and his famous saying that the person you are is infinitely more interesting that any character you could act. Thus he ultimately advises stepping out on stage as yourself, picking a simple objective (which will give 'the illusion' of the character) and BEING BRAVE.

This is a wee bit silly since characters are not created quite THAT simply. At the risk of repetition, it is as reductionist of Stanislavsky as anything Lee ever came up with.

Mamet, like Brecht and unlike say, William Saroyan or Anton Chekhov is not exactly known for the warmth of his characters. Perhaps this has something to do with his attitude.

For a far less vehement and more constructive ctitique try "The End of Acting" by Richard Hornby.

I started reading this book with a highlighter in hand, just in case anything jumped out at me. At the end of my read, 80% of the book was yellow!

As an actor and director, I have myself felt bound by techniques and seen fellow actors I've directed get trapped by the limitations of "being in the moment" and feeling inadequate about their work.

Mamet, I believe, respects the actor enough to encourage the actor to remove these trappings and focus on their simple task. Not that acting isn't tough work, but we invariably make it much harder than it need be.

Mamet pulls no punches. If you subscribe to the "method", "sense memory", or other schools of acting, this book will offend you as Marilyn Manson might offend a Christian Coalition leader.

There is no middle ground here. You'll either feel liberated as an actor, or want to hurl this book into the closest bonfire.

As for myself, I have a clearer vision of the actor's place in the world, and am performing and directing with more clarity and consistency than ever before.

I owe this to Mr. Mamet.

All the years I spent in acting schools did not prepare me for this much-maligned book. In True and False : Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor, David Mamet takes down the establishment (so to speak) and lays bare his common sense approach to acting. In doing so, he also makes his love for actors and acting clear. The playwright/director/novelist attacks acting schools, casting directors and "the method" among other institutions in his tirade against all the counter-productive, anti-creative issues that American actors have been plagued with for decades. There are things in this book that may send you screaming from the room, but it is beneficial for any actor to read what this prolific theatre artist has to say about our profession, our craft, and us as artists. A must read for all actors, especially those pursuing a professional career.

Mamet, an educator himself, immediately on the first read of this simple, direct and painfully blunt treatise caused me to completely overhaul my own approaches in training young actors.

So much of acting training can be based in either psuedo- pyschoanalytical academic trivia or blind hero worship and name dropping.I myself proved guilty of such crimes- as I am sure all directors, actors and acting teachers have. Mamet, in 127 pages debunks all these false posings and boils theatre art down into simple truths, and causes one invovled in these noble professions to do a radical sould searching and simplify their lives and approaches.

Especially helpful are his chapters on "Talent", "Ancestor Worship", "The Rehearsal Process", "Emotions" (how many times have all actors been crippled by the lie that they aren't connecting emotionally enough to a part!), "I'm on the Corner" and "Action". In a few well selected words, Mamet is able to de-mystify the theatre while celebrating the magic it does produce.

Add this immediately to your shelf. Whether you end up agreeing or disaggreeing is immaterial. It will cause you to re-evalaute!