Powerful Stuff

David Mamet is a name that's long been familiar to me as a very highly rated writer for the theatre but I'd never read anything by him until yesterday. I knew he was highly regarded for his dialogue, which I gathered was extraordinarily naturalistic - the language of the everyday, complete with hesitations, repetitions, non sequiturs and the like, and that was about it. Oh, and I knew his play Oleanna had something to do with the notion of political correctness being turned against a male character by a female because it was staged in Singapore last year, or thereabouts, and I'd read a review (but, sadly, didn't get to see the production as I was too busy at the time.) It sounded intriguing.

So when we went to the library the other day, the one at The Esplanade, to pick up some plays (a deliberate strategy to have things to read that can be gobbled down in reasonable time even if work is excessively demanding) and I saw a copy of Oleanna it was an easy pick. And what a great play (or, rather, script which I think would make a great play) it turned out to be. The dialogue is wonderfully crafty, in the sense that it derives from an art that conceals art. Apparently, superficially casual, yet every pause counts. But what took me by surprise was the depth of ideas that the encounter(s) between John and Carol explored. There's a bit of blurb on the back of the edition I read that says Mamet intends 'to skewer the dogmatic, puritanical streak which has become commonplace on and off the campus', but I think the piece goes much deeper than that (an interpretation, by the way, that seems to assume the female, Carol, is the villain(ess) of the story.) Give the role to a good actress and I think you've got a highly disturbing, disconcerting exploration of power and its role in education, in life I suppose, which should make any liberal educator think twice, or more.

I usually feel that writers don't do terribly well when dealing with education. Something of the texture of the whole teacher/learner thing escapes them. This play nails one aspect of the experience and the mirror it holds up to nature doesn't reflect well on any of us.