An Open Letter to David Mamet

By BARCODE 2x

Dear David Mamet,

Congratulations on another great year of all that you do. You have another play coming up the pipeline, and I just wanted to talk to you about a few items.

You have become increasingly political over the years, and I certainly have no problem with that. Bush really got under your skin, I can tell. Again, no problem. Your plays now go by one-word titles like 'November', 'Romance', and of course the new one, 'Race'. It's a bold statement, when you put a big, nebulous word out there as a title. It really loads the play up, politically. I am wondering if you might try adding a few words to the title. Hollywood has had some great success with wordier, more specific titles like "Drag Me to Hell" and "The Men Who Stare at Goats." It's merely a suggestion.When an artist of your stature releases a new work with such bold one-word titles, your fans brace with anticipation. I do not count 'Oleanna', since that name never comes up in the entire two acts of that play.

I miss the old Mamet. 'Glengarry Glen Ross' and 'Speed-the-Plow'. Back then, your political agenda was broader, more sweeping, more Arthur-Miller-esque in its scope. You were talking about the decline of Western Civilization itself, the decay of moral values in the face of Reaganomics. You brought a philosophical magic to the war of the sexes in 'Sexual Perversity in Chicago'. You really worked on a big canvas.

The Bush years have narrowed the view for many of us. I'll use you as an example. Let's get specific. Your political cartoons which I followed in The Huffington Post. I never quite got it. I think maybe you should have put more time into them. Your plays are wordy, full of snappy 'Mametspeak', full of half-formed thoughts and constant interruptions. A lot of 'banter', if you will. It's your thing. The cocktail napkins you seemed to have composed your cartoons on may not have had enough room on them to get your point across. I never quite understood any of them. To me, they are like cave paintings, the crude markings made in the sand. No doubt they signify something, telling some important story of life in time. But what they truly mean? No one knows.

The mixed metaphors, like capitalism as a pork factory (you like using pork as a metaphor for things) gets a bit confusing in a two-frame, one-napkin cartoon. You are political. You allied yourself to the Left, and took a strong, outspoken stance against Bush during the Bush years. Artists got political. When political rage boils up in the artist, the work is affected. In the 1980s, you took a more refined approach. The 'Glengarry' salesman were all a bunch of Willy Lomans in a fresh Hell, trying to sell real estate in a depressed economy. It was right on the money. And you didn't hit it too hard.

Art is a safe place to discuss politics, but when the politics become the central focus, it overwhelms the art. The line between art and punditry becomes blurred, if not altogether foggy. You are a dramatist, after all. Your stature as a writer has had a huge impact on the world of theatre art. You sneeze, and we all think about sneezing too. The theatre is an increasingly political arena, and differing voices with differing points of view are what make it really snap and pop. There are no prominent right-wing playwrights, but let that go.

Is theatre enjoying any success now, in part, due to its strong left-leaning political flavor? Is the theatre becoming too liberal? Is the medium of theatre becoming the message? Is theatre inherently irreverent, which nowadays means it is a safe place for a left-wingnut like yourself? You are a left wingnut. We all are! Own it, embrace it. And then leave it alone, will you?

Yours truly,

Barcode 2x, The Civic Ethicist