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"There is no character. There are only lines upon a page." -- David Mamet (True and False 9)
Characters in theater productions are transient. They appear on stage for a few hours as a flexible facade donned by actors. Playwright David Mamet believes that the qualities an actor displays as a character are solely illusions of dialogue. He displays this belief throughout his works by instilling his characters with specific traits that can be seen in their language. Mamet weaves his characters' personalities out of their silver strands of speech, rather than giving them histories that attempt to explain their present actions. "In Hollywood they always want to know about a character's back-story, which is the stupidest damn idea. It's like asking what kind of underwear the guy in the painting is wearing," he states (Weber 12). In his book Truth and Lies: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor, Mamet even instructs actors to perform without having a character in mind that they are trying to represent. Mamet cautions actors to "invent nothing, deny nothing. This is the meaning of character" (41).
In American Buffalo, the audience is introduced to Teach when he storms onstage cursing his friend Ruthie, who had begrudged him a piece of toast. Teach values Ruthie's friendship and resents her stingy indignation: "How many times do I pick up the check? But (No!) because I never go and make a big thing out of it" (10). Teach rants on about the injustice of her sarcastic comment "help yourself" (10) when he takes a piece of toast off her plate. Teach is incensed at people who lack common decency, although as the play progresses Teach shows little decency himself. Teach is a common criminal who is desperate to gain the respect of Don, a shop owner and fellow thief. He wants to be an equal, always tossing in a comment to agree with Don and trying to show off his own knowledge of the underworld. Mamet shows that Don is unimpressed, and instead Teach presents himself as a sycophant. He spends five minutes complimenting Don on what an excellent mentor he is to Bob, a young employee of Don and the third character in the play. Teach blathers, "This loyalty. This is swell. It turns my heart the things that you do for the kid" (34). As Teach gushes on, it is apparent that he is looking for Don's approval and even "reveals his own desire to displace Bob in a positive relationship with Don" (Carroll 36). Teach values Don's approval as much as he values Ruthie's friendship.
Teach is also a character who has no faith in humanity but desperately needs the comfort provided by others. Mamet proves this conviction by exploring Teach's feelings about and relationships with other people:
Though Teach seems to realize that there is emptiness in life, he does not have insights into how he is implicated in this emptiness. Even as he yearns for contact, he compulsively creates circumstances which ensure that he still lives his life in isolation. (Carroll 35)
But Teach blusters on with monologues about the injustice of life and the cruelty of other people. At one point he trashes Don's shop, ranting: "The Whole Entire World. There Is No Law. There Is No Right And Wrong. The World Is Lies. Every Fucking Thing." C.W.E. Bigsby insists Teach's
aggressive language is designed to cover his paranoid fears. He arms himself to guard against a hostility generated in part by his own delusions and his seemingly instinctive distrust of human responses. (266)
Teach is a character illustrated by his speech, and he protects himself with these words. The very words he uses serve at once to define him and to erect a barrier between himself and his world.
This sense of false security is also apparent in Roma, a cut throat real estate salesman in Glengarry Glen Ross. For Roma, business is his business. He lives by a few professed values that that he feels justify his actions. "There's an absolute morality? May be. And then what? If you think there is, then be that thing. Bad people go to hell? I don't think so. If you think that, act that way. A hell exists on earth? Yes. I won't live in it," (47) he expounds. Roma's posturing, characterized by his use of short terse words, reveals his insecurity.
Though Roma lives for himself, his idea of human partnership is revealed when he proposes a working relationship with another salesman. "We are the members of a dying breed. That's... that's... that's why we have to stick together" (105). Roma alternates these moments of quiet reflection with brash statements that reveal his inner anger at life and his deep-rooted cynicism. "What I'm saying is, what is our life? (Pause.) It's looking forward or it's looking back. And that's our life. That's it," (48) he concludes. These words purposely belittle the life Roma is leading because Roma is insecure about his role in life and therefore protects himself with an illusion of words. He feels he has nothing to save him from catastrophe and tragedy. Mamet projects these insecurities through Roma's proclamations of independence: "The true reserve that I have is the strength that I have of acting each day without fear" (49).
Roma also has a sense of tradition in the guild of salesmen. He credits a fellow agent, Levene, with showing him the ropes. This is clear when Levene comes back to the office celebrating a sale he had just made:
LEVENE: ... I did it. I did it. Like in the old days, Ricky. Like I was taught...Like, like, like I used to do... I did it.
ROMA: Like you taught me...." (73-4)
Critic Dennis Carroll says Roma clearly "respects the old-fashioned mystique of salesmanship and credits Levene for having passed it on to him" (43). Levene's indictment in and the subsequent proof of his involvement in a robbery leaves Roma with "perplexed concern," (47) states Carroll. When a detective hustles Levene into his office, Roma protests, "hey, hey, hey, easy friend, That's the 'Machine.' That is Shelly 'The Machine' Levene" (106). Mamet makes it clear that the catastrophe that Roma feared has occurred, but that Roma will survive because he will actually live by the morals to which Roma professed to follow (if such a positive word can be used for Roma's values). The final line of the play assures the audience that Roma will continue to act in life "without fear" (49), just as Mamet instructs his actor perform a role. After a colleague tells Roma that he hates their job, Roma responds by obliquely saying he will continue working: "I'll be at the restaurant" (108) he declares as he exits the office.
The same perseverance is shown by Jolly in The Old Neighborhood. Jolly is a tough woman who succeeds in having a positive relationship with her husband in spite of her problems dealing with her overbearing and cruel parents. She is "a woman who has managed to piece together a kind of compromise with the circumstances of her life" (Denton 1). Though Mamet is making an obvious allusion to his own childhood (Lahr 77), he writes lines for Jolly that "give her such radiance that our heart goes out to her in all her raggedness" (1), comments critic Ed Siegel. Jolly spends much of the play recollecting with her brother Bobby the childhood they shared. Jolly laments a Christmas when she received an expensive leather briefcase instead of the skis she had asked for: "The thing of it is, I just wanted some skis. Would it have killed them to've given me a pair of skis? Was it so ludicrous? A monster like myself? Was that so... (Pause.)" (63). Though is it clear that Jolly suffered during her childhood, the character that is presented is a unique product of Mamet's imagination. He does not try to invest Jolly with attributes that are due to her dysfunctional family. Jolly functions as a rational human being on the surface. She says to her brother, "I WANT ONE THING. And that is : The thing that is best for you. Period. Paragraph. And the rest of the world can go to hell. I don't give a fuck. I'm too old" (76).
Deborah is another female character coping with life in Sexual Perversity in Chicago. The play centers around her relationships with her boyfriend Danny and Joan, her mentor in romance. Deborah is shown as a character alternately sure of herself and her feelings people, then crumbling into a state of discordant communication with those around her. Both aspects of her speech reveal her personality. The first meeting between Danny and Deborah demonstrates her communication barrier:
DANNY: Is someone taking up a lot of your time these days?
DEBORAH: You mean a man?
DANNY: Yes, a man.
DEBORAH: I'm a Lesbian. (Pause.)
DANNY: As a physical preference, or from political beliefs? (23)
Though she is obviously attracted to Danny, Deborah (who is not a Lesbian) refuses to show her feelings and they both invoke pat clichés to avoid speaking truths. Bigsby states that "beneath the insistent rhythms of the speeches and the white noise of the parallel monologues is a silence which [Mamet's] characters try to neutralize" (257). Deborah's character is communicated both in her speech and her silence. She reaches out to Danny as best she can and both characters seem to feel that "Nothing that lives can live alone," (99) as a character says in The Duck Variations, another Mamet play. However both Danny and Deborah cannot succeed in living together and their words make them seem independent. Mamet depicts Deborah as being hesitant to hear the truth:
DANNY: I love you.
DEBORAH: Does it frighten you to say that?
DANNY: Yes.
DEBORAH: It's only words. I don't think you should be frightened by words. (41)
Bigsby thinks that Deborah is "terrified of genuine feeling" (261). Deborah tells a story from her childhood to illustrate the lack of truth in communication, and through the parable Mamet gives the audience an insight into Deborah's fear of the truth:
I said, "Mommy, can I have a cookie?", and she for some reason misunderstood me or misheard me, and thought that I said that I wanted a "hug," so she gave me a "hug," and I said "Thank you, Mommy. I didn't want a cookie after all."
(Pause.) You see? What is a sublimation of what?
(Pause.) What signifies what? (58)
The irony of Deborah's dialogue is that it exposes hers personality as she tries to hide that personality. Mamet creates a character who fails at communicating her feelings, but who also fails at concealing them.
Mamet's approach to dialogue and his style of writing allows actors to present the character they are portraying without thinking about "motivation or emotional truth or any of that other theoretical acting stuff," (np) says critic Martin Denton. Mamet has said that "the purpose of technique is to break down the barriers between the conscious and the unconscious mind" (Bloom 193). He is able to weave characters whose instincts run contrary to their desires, and he is able to show this contradiction with the brush strokes of language. Mamet builds identities out of ink and paper that seem solid to the audience. In real life too, Mamet creates a personality for himself that is similar to many of his characters. He foils interviewers by deflecting their questions and refusing to answer, such as in this interview with Arthur Holmberg:
H: How would you classify the other plays you've written?
M: Some of the others were gang comedies.
H: Glengarry Glen Ross?
M: Yes.
H: You would call that a gang comedy?
M: Yes, or a gang drama.
H: And The Old Neighborhood, what would you call that?
M: I don't know what it is. What would you call it? (3)
The power of his plays lies in his minimalist creations of character through language. The words reflect both what is being said and what is being withheld. Lahr states succinctly that in Mamet's plays, "identity is dramatized as each character's struggle to speak his meaning" (78). Mamet is an author of truth. He reveals the inner workings of his characters without falsely linking personality to history by writing brutally honest lines. The truth of the moment and the character are seen in the illusion of dialogue.
Works Cited
Bigsby, C.W.E. A Critical Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Drama Volume Three: Beyond Broadway. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
Bloom, Harry. Ed. "Mamet" Twentieth-Century American Literature. New York: Chelsea House, 1986.
Carroll, Dennis. David Mamet. New York: St. Martin's Press,1987.
Lahr, John. "Fortress Mamet." The New Yorker. November 17, 1997, 70-82.
Mamet, David. American Buffalo. New York: Grove, 1976.
_____ . Glengarry Glen Ross. New York: Grove, 1983.
_____ . The Old Neighborhood. New York: Vintage, 1998.
_____ . Sexual Perversity in Chicago and The Duck Variations. New York: Grove, 1974.
_____ . True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor. New York: Pantheon, 1997.
Siegel, Ed. "The talk is rich in Mamet's Old Neighborhood." Boston Globe April 18, 1997, Sec. F:1
Weber, Bruce. "At 50, a Mellower David Mamet May Be Ready to Tell His Story." The New York Times November 16,1997, Sec. 2: 7,1-2.