Mamet, David

▪ American author

in full  David Alan Mamet 

born November 30, 1947, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.

      American playwright, director, and screenwriter noted for his often desperate working-class characters and for his distinctive, colloquial, and frequently profane dialogue.

      Mamet began writing plays while attending Goddard College, Plainfield, Vermont (B.A. 1969). Returning to Chicago, where most of his plays were first staged, he worked at various factory jobs, at a real-estate agency, and as a taxi driver; all these experiences provided background for his plays. In 1973 he cofounded a theatre company in Chicago. He also taught drama at several American colleges and universities.

      Mamet's early plays include Duck Variations (produced 1972), in which two elderly Jewish men sit on a park bench and trade misinformation on various subjects. In Sexual Perversity in Chicago (produced 1974; filmed as About Last Night… [1986]), a couple's budding sexual and emotional relationship is destroyed by their friends' interference. American Buffalo (1976; filmed 1996) concerns dishonest business practices; A Life in the Theatre (1977) explores the teacher-student relationship; and Speed-the-Plow (1987) is a black comedy about avaricious Hollywood scriptwriters. Glengarry Glen Ross (1983; filmed 1992), a drama of desperate real estate salesmen, won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for drama. In all these works, Mamet used the rhythms and rhetoric of everyday speech to delineate character, describe intricate relationships, and drive dramatic development.

      Mamet wrote fiction, plays for children, and screenplays for a number of motion pictures, including The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981), The Verdict (1982), Rising Sun (1993), Wag the Dog (1997), and Hannibal (2001), all adaptations of novels. He both wrote and directed the motion pictures House of Games (1987), Homicide (1991), Oleanna (1994), The Spanish Prisoner (1998), and State and Main (2000).

Additional Reading

Ira Nadel, David Mamet: A Life in the Theatre (2008), is a biography. Christopher Bigsby (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to David Mamet (2004), is a collection of critical essays.

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