Read Online True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor by David Mamet - Free Book Online Page A

accomplish a goal like that delineated by the author—and then both our successes and our failures can have dignity.

ACTION
    W hen you tell a joke, your choice of what to include and what to exclude relates solely to the
punchline of the joke
. Those things which tend toward the punchline are included; those things which are purely ornamental are excluded. One does this naturally, as one knows the punchline is the essential element. A joke holds our attention because we assume, as audience, that all elements presented to us are essential.
    In a well-written play, and in a correctly performed play, everything tends also toward a punchline. That punchline, for the actor, is the
objective
, which means
“What do I want?”
If we learn to think solely in terms of the objective, all concerns of
belief, feeling, emotion, characterization, substitution
, become irrelevant. It is not that we “forget” them, but that something else becomes more important than they.
    Take the joke: “A man goes into a whorehouse. Arun-down, weatherbeaten building nonetheless possessing a certain charm. Once, when the street was a residential block, the building, no doubt, housed a middle-class family—a family with aspirations, trouble, and desires not unlike our own.…” We see that all this, beautiful though it may be, is irrelevant
to the joke
. Not irrelevant
in general
, not
unbeautiful
, but irrelevant
to the joke
. What we are being presented with may be a magnificent essay, but we know it cannot be a joke, and that the teller is misguided.
    She wanted to “help.”
    How do we free ourselves from the misguided wish to “help”? To free ourselves from having to decide whether something is
effective, beautiful
, or
germane
, we ask the question “
Is it essential to the
action?” and all else follows. In so doing, we choose not to manipulate the audience,
though we might
, we choose not to manipulate the
script
, though we might; and we choose not to manipulate
ourselves
, though we might; and we find, by so doing, that the audience, the script, and ourselves function better. What we are doing is eschewing
narration
. If we devote ourselves to the
punchline
, all else becomes clear.
    The punchline is
the action
.
    Think of it as a suitcase. How do you know what to put in the suitcase? The answer is, you pack for where you want to go.
    ——
    Anyone can turn on a TV program fifteen minutes into it and know exactly what is going on, and who did what to whom. But television executives insist on including fifteen minutes of narration in the script. Anyone can look at a couple across the lobby of a hotel and tell more or less what they are talking about and how they feel about each other. You don’t need narration in the writing of a play, you need action. Just so, in the acting, you don’t need portrayal, you need
action
.
    Again, what is this
action
? The commitment to achieving a single goal. You don’t have to become more interesting, more sensitive, more talented, more observant—to act better. You
do
have to become more active. Choose a good objective which is fun, and it will be easy. Choose something that you
want to do
. The impulse to
play
, to
imagine
, got you interested in theatre in the first place. You knew, as children, that the game had to be fun. You played “War” or “Marriage” or “Lost in the Woods”—you did not play “Root Canal.” Choose a fun action. You remember how.
    Actions rehearsed and performed grow stronger. Because they are fun. You can rehearse that goodbye speech to your girlfriend or boyfriend fifty times and it is still fun. That’s all the mystery there is to the “objective”—it is an action which is fun to do and is something like that which the author intended.
    While you are intent on an
objective
, you do not have to compare your progress to that of your peers, you do not have to worry about a
career
, you do not have towonder if you are doing your job, you do not have to