David Mamet - Audience Quotes

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Art is an expression of joy and awe. It is not an attempt to share one's virtues and accomplishments with the audience, but an act of selfless spirit.

David Mamet

The audience will teach you how to act and the audience will teach you how to write and to direct. The classroom will teach you how to obey, and obedience in the theatre will get you nowhere. It's a soothing falsity.

David Mamet

Make the audience wonder what's going on by putting them in the same position as the protagonist.

David Mamet

If you find that a point cannot be made without narration, it is virtually certain that the point is unimportant to the story (which is to say, to the audience).

David Mamet

Acting is not a genteel profession. Actors used to be buried at a crossroads with a stake through the heart. Those people's performances so troubled the onlookers that they feared their ghosts. An awesome compliment. Those players moved the audience not such that they were admitted to a school, or received a complimentary review, but such that the audience feared for their soul. Now that seems to me something to aim for.

David Mamet

The audience perceives only what the actor wants to do to the other actor.

David Mamet

As long as the protagonist wants something, the audience will want something.

David Mamet