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Mamet's Heresy and Common Sense: what's True and False in ‘True and False’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Bella Merlin
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Abstract

David Mamet's book, True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor (Faber, 1998), is rapidly becoming recommended reading amongst the acting fraternity. In this article Bella Merlin offers a critical dissection of Mamet's approach, drawing on the working knowledge of Stanislavsky's Method of Physical Actions, or Active Analysis, which she acquired at the State Institute of Cinematography in Moscow. She underlines the fragility of Mamet's dismissal of Stanislavsky, and illustrates how much of his ‘common sense’ actually derives from the principles underlying the Method of Physical Actions. Bella Merlin is an actor and lectures in Drama and Theatre Arts at Birmingham University.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , August 2000 , pp. 249 - 254
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2000

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References

Notes and References

1. Mamet, D., True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor (London: Faber and Faber, 1998), p. 6Google Scholar.

2. Strasberg, L., Strasberg at the Actors Studio: Tape-Recorded Sessions, ed. Hethmon, Robert H. (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1991), p. 111–12Google Scholar.

3. D. Mamet, True and False, p. 15.

4. Merlin, B., ‘Albert Filozov and the Method of Physical Actions’, New Theatre Quarterly, XV, No. 3 (08 1999), p. 228–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. D. Mamet, True and False, p. 12.

6. Ibid., p. 56.

7. Ibid., p. 30.

8. Stanislavsky, K., cited in Gorchakov, N. M., Stanislavsky Directs, trans. Goldina, Miriam (New York: Limelight, 1991), p. 213Google Scholar.

9. D. Mamet, True and False, p. 19–20.

10. Ibid., p. 65.

11. Ibid., p. 32.

12. Stanislavsky, K., Creating a Role, trans. Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood (London: Methuen, reprinted 1988), p. 213.

13. D. Mamet, True and False, p. 52.

14. Ibid., p. 54.

15. Ibid., p. 64.

16. Ibid., p. 84.

17. Ibid., p. 63.

18. Ibid., p. 80.

19. Ibid., p. 45.

20. Ibid., p. 114.