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David Mamet Quotes about Drama

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The audience requires not information but drama.

The audience requires not information but drama.

David Mamet
Drama, Information, Audience
David Mamet (1991). “On Directing Film”, Penguin Group USA

The main question in drama, the way I was taught, is always, 'What does the protagonist want?' That's what drama is. It comes down to that. It's not about theme, it's not about ideas, it's not about setting, but what the protagonist wants.

David Mamet
Drama, Ideas, Doe

The subject of drama is The Lie. At the end of the drama THE TRUTH -- which has been overlooked, disregarded, scorned, and denied -- prevails. And that is how we know the Drama is done.

David Mamet
Drama, Lying, Writing
David Mamet (2013). “Three Uses of the Knife: On the Nature and Purpose of Drama”, p.87, Vintage

The basis of drama is... the struggle of the hero towards a specific goal at the end of which he realises that what kept him from it was, in the lesser drama, civilisation and, in the great drama, the discovery of something that he did not set out to discover but which can be seen retrospectively as inevitable.

David Mamet
Drama, Hero, Struggle

We respond to a drama to that extent to which it corresponds to our dream life.

David Mamet
Dream, Drama, Our Dreams
David Mamet (1986). “Writing in restaurants”, Viking Adult

I don't have any experience with film schools. I suspect that they're useless, because I've had experience with drama schools, and have found them to be useless.

David Mamet
Drama, School, Useless
David Mamet (1991). “On directing film”, Viking Pr

Films have degenerated to their original operation as carnival amusement - they offer not drama but thrills.

David Mamet
Drama, Amusement, Film

IF YOU PRETEND THE CHARACTERS CANT SPEAK, AND WRITE A SILENT MOVIE, YOU WILL BE WRITING GREAT DRAMA.

David Mamet
Drama, Writing, Character

Every reiteration of the idea that _nothing matters_ debases the human spirit. Every reiteration of the idea that there is no drama in modern life, there is only dramatization, that there is no tragedy, there is only unexplained misfortune, debases us. It denies what we know to be true. In denying what we know, we are as a nation which cannot remember its dreams--like an unhappy person who cannot remember his dreams and so denies that he does dream, and denies that there are such things as dreams.

David Mamet
Dream, Drama, Unhappy Person
David Mamet (1986). “Writing in restaurants”, Viking Adult

Any claim to actual identification as a drama must rest upon the construction of a plot independent of the assignment of affliction to the protagonist.

David Mamet
Drama, Independent, Plot

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