True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor
by David Mamet

Name: True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor
Brand: David Mamet
SKU: 9780679772644
Rating: 4.05 (2926 reviews)

True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor Cover

True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor Book Cover — True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor Cover

What readers are saying

Readers have mixed but predominantly positive views on this book. Many find Mamet's perspectives on acting to be enlightening and transformative, while others appreciate the bold critique of common acting methods. Some readers feel challenged by his approach, leading to both admiration and frustration in equal measure.

Enlightening and transformativeBold critique of acting methodsCompelling and easy to readCan be narrow-mindedContradictory arguments

Synopsis

One of our most brilliantly iconoclastic playwrights takes on the art of profession of acting with these words: invent nothing, deny nothing, speak up, stand up, stay out of school.

Acting schools, “interpretation,” “sense memory,” “The Method”—David Mamet takes a jackhammer to the idols of contemporary acting, while revealing the true heroism and nobility of the craft.

He shows actors how to undertake auditions and rehearsals, deal with agents and directors, engage audiences, and stay faithful to the script, while rejecting the temptations that seduce so many of their colleagues.

Bracing in its clarity, exhilarating in its common sense, True and False is as shocking as it is practical, as witty as it is instructive, and as irreverent as it is inspiring.