Ira Nadel, Professor of English at the University of British Columbia, and a member this project's advisory board, has written a biography titled David Mamet: A Life in the Theater. The book has been published in North America and the United Kingdom by Palgrave Macmillan.
The subtitle, Nadel writes in his introduction, is "misleading. While it summarizes [Mamet's] commitment to the theatre world, it discounts his efforts in other genres. A striking feature of Mamet's long career is his sucess with forms outside the theatre, while never really leaving it. . . . The challenge is to balance artistic clarity with moral honesty, which occasionally requires the use of the con. Mamet's artistic diversity is not so much the evolution of an aesthetic as the need to try something new, one of the themes of this narrative."
Mamet's quest, ballasted by a strong work ethic, has deep roots in his Chicago experiences where theatre was a "'popular entertainment. It was very close to blue-collar amusement, like going to see the Cubs,' . . . The theatre was both a spectacle and a show and rarely thought of as intellectual as it was in New York . . . Similarly, playwriting, like acting, is no mystery for Mamet. It emanates out of the Chicago tradition of 'writing as a legitimate day-to-day skill, like bricklaying . . . you need a script. Well, hell, figure out how to write one.'"
At the end of the introduction, Nadel suggests the challenges he faced while further defining the book's aims: "Mamet is keenly aware of what theatre can reveal, though he rarely permits self-exposure on any personal level. He protects his private life partly because he believes 'biography makes rotten drama' and partly because he distrusts it. People get things wrong. Facts go astray. Events are forgotten. But at the end of his newest collection, Bambi vs. Godzilla, he addresses the artistic responsibility of biography, explaining that it is difficult to 'engross the audience . . . as the end is known. It calls for greater skill and imagination on the part of the writer in finding an internal story within the generally known historical moment.' This is not quite a call for psychoanalysis but the need to identify inner stages of development that unite outward events. . . . The aim of this account is to align the outer story of Mamet's life with the inner, while not losing sight of his primary rule for good writing: telling the audience 'WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.'"
The director of this project extends congratulations and thanks to Professor Nadel on the successful completion of this challenging task. The book achieves it aims and advances our understanding of both Mamet's artistry and the development of theater in Chicago.
Jeffrey Sweet, playwright and member of this project's advisory board, will celebrate the publication of an anthology of his plays with a reception on Monday, June 30, at the Victory Gardens Biograph space, 2433 North Lincoln Avenue, in Chicago. Sweet is a member of the Playwright's Ensemble at Victory Gardens which will produce his new play, Class Dismissed, next March.
The title of the anthology is The Value of Names and Other Plays. Northwestern University Press's website says: "The title work, first mounted in 1982, is a comedy-drama about the aftermath of the blacklist whose continued relevance makes it a frequently produced play today. The family drama Porch suggests larger social changes through the interaction of a small-town shopkeeper and his defiant daughter. The lauded American Enterprise, set in the Chicago of the robber barons, is a song-filled true story about a millionaire whose stubborn idealism leads to disaster. Stay Till Morning is a rueful comedy about sex and accommodation in the Florida Keys. The three plays that grew out of his fascination with the effects of World War II, Berlin 45, Court-Martial at Fort Devens, and The Action Against Sol Schumann dramatize the ways in which that conflict transformed private fates. Each script is accompanied by an extended introduction from the playwright as well as complete performance notes." To order a copy, click on this link: http://nupress.northwestern.edu/title.cfm?ISBN=0-8101-2395-9
The director of this project is glad to see American Enterprise included. The "robber baron" is George Pullman and the play concerns the Pullman strike and the events leading up to it and its aftermath. It premiered at the Organic Theater on March 6, 1991, directed by Wesley Savick, with Gary Houston as Pullman. It was orginally published in 1991 by Chicago Plays, Inc (isbn 1-56850-012-2). Based on Sweet's research, and including his songs, the play successfully braids history, music, and action into a work of theatrical art that deserves a much wider audience.
Albert Williams, drama critic for The Reader and advisory board member for this project, is rallying support for the founding of a Chicago Performing Arts Museum. Williams has been been encouraging this project for more than a year but now has placed the issue squarely before the theater community via his blog, On Stage. Click on this link to read Williams' case and the numerous comments it drew from a cross-section of the theater community. http://blogs.chicagoreader.com/onstage/2008/06/06/chicago-performing-arts-museum-why-not/
On June 20, Williams posted an update: "A public 'town meeting' of persons interested in the creation of a museum and archive devoted to Chicago theater and dance will take place Monday, August 4, at the Mercury Theater, 3745 N. Southport. Contact Jason Epperson, jason@eppersontheatrical.com, for more information.
On June 27, Williams announced the launch of the website for the Chicagoland Theater and Dance Foundation, organized by Jason Epperson. The website says that " mission of the foundation is to fund the preservation of Chicago's rich and diverse performing arts history, with the specific goal of developing a performing arts museum and archive in downtown chicago." The website's address is http://chicagoperformingarts.org/default.aspx
Check Williams' blog regularly for news about Chicago Theater.
Paul Sills, son of Viola Spolin and a pioneer of improvisational theater, has died at age 80. Links to obituaries can be found under Sills' name in the database.
Please use this site as a place to send information about:
1) the lives of the founders of Chicago theatres;
2) changes in theatre ensembles and artistic philosophies;
3) changes in address and specifications of performance spaces;
4) the locations of archival materials, including, but not limited to, manuscripts, prompt books, notes, drafts, design sketches and plans, props, images, sound recordings, subscriber lists, board minutes and related administrative records and correspondence, however ephemeral and insignificant they may seem now. Any document or object associated with your work, especially if its provenance and context is well documented, potentially lights the paths of historians and teachers. Please see the Bibliography section for suggestions on developing plans for your archives.
Updated: 8/27/07
The research supporting the Chicago Theatre History Project is made possible in part by the $10,000 Philip and Miriam Kapfer Endowed Faculty Research Award conferred by the Creative Work and Research Committee of Valparaiso University.
"What is done interests me more than what is thought or supposed. Every fact is impure, but every fact contains in it the juice of life. Every fact is a clod, from which may grow an amaranth or a palm." --Margaret Fuller, Summer on the Lakes in 1843