Talk-back back talk
David Mamet’s plays are no longer open for discussion
DAVID Mamet sparked a furor with his recent threat to slap a $25,000 fine on any theater that holds postperformance discussions of his plays.
It sounds extreme, but if you’ve ever seen a Mamet play, you know he goes to extremes.
Some people are screaming censorship.
“I believe artists are public servants and the play belongs to the audience,” playwright Paula Vogel told the New York Times.
Others say the 69-year-old is well within his rights to let the plays speak for themselves. Gregory Mosher, who’s directed several Mamet plays, told Deadline: “I think post-show discussions are best had in bars or restaurants.” Still others think the whole thing is silly: Ronald Harwood, who wrote “The Dresser,” told London’s Guardian, “I like after-the-show discussions . . . I’d like to charge $25,000, but I’m not going to.”
Mamet gave no reason for his threat, and he and his reps have turned down all requests for interviews. But a little sleuthing reveals that his hatred of socalled “talk-backs” stems from the (short) Broadway run of his play “Oleanna.”
One of Mamet’s most controversial — and vicious — plays, it’s about a female college student who accuses her arrogant professor of sexual harassment and attempted rape. It opened in 1992, a year after the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings. Audiences were stunned and divided, and heated debates ensued after they left off-Broadway’s Orpheum Theatre.
Jump ahead to the 2009 revival. Ticket sales were weak, even with stars Bill Pullman and Julia Stiles, probably because Broadway was awash in Mamet plays, old and new. To gin up business, the producers held talk-backs on the stage of the Golden Theatre.
“We were trying to recreate the experience people had at the play in 1992,” a source involved with production told me. “You got into some wild discussions. It was part of the fun of the evening.”
The producers goosed up the talk-backs by inviting David Dinkins, Judge Ju- dith Kaye and other politicians, lawyers and political activists to take part. Producers even invited Hill to do one, but she demurred.
The discussions were “lively and fun,” my source says, “and popular. We usually had between 250 and 300 people — more than half the audience stayed.” Mamet didn’t attend a single talk-back. But after he read a lengthy Times piece about them, he “went ballistic,” a source close to him says. “He thought the play had become an appetizer for the talk-backs.”
Mamet banned post-show conversations for his new plays. This year, the “Glengarry Glen Ross” writer extended the ban to all his plays, ordering Dramatists Play Service, which licenses his work, to add the threat of a $25,000 fine.
“It’s short-sighted,” a producer who’s worked with Mamet says. “I understand the writer’s words are sacrosanct, but this is a crowded market. You’ve got to make an impact, and talkbacks are popular.”
There are rumblings that a few theaters might challenge the ban. While a court would be unlikely to enforce the $25,000 penalty, Mamet could retaliate by withdrawing his play and never permitting theaters to do his work again.
Talk-backs aren’t the only thing Mamet forbids. Sources say he’s also banned music from his plays, either at the start or during scene changes.
I’m waiting for the ban on actors. Having suffered through Al Pacino’s performance in Mamet’s dreadful “China Doll” a couple of years ago, I’m all for it.