Speed-the-Plow | Author Biography

David Mamet was born on November 30, 1947, in Chicago, Illinois, to Bernard Mamet, a labor lawyer, and his wife, Leonore. As a child, Mamet’s parents had high expectations for their son and his younger sister, Lynn. Mamet’s father especially emphasized the importance and potency of language. The family spent hours arguing for the sake of argument, and Mamet learned the subtleties inherent to well-spoken words. This experience had a direct bearing on Mamet’s plays, for he is known as a master of dialogue.

David Mamet
David Mamet

Mamet’s parents divorced when he was eleven, and he subsequently lived with his mother for four years before moving in with his father. At this time, Mamet got his first taste of theater, working backstage and doing bit parts at Chicago’s Hull Theatre. At first Mamet wanted to be an actor, and to this end he studied the craft in New York City’s famous Neighborhood Playhouse with Sanford Meisner. When it became evident that acting was not his true calling, Mamet returned to college (Goddard in Vermont) and began writing. His first full-length play, Camel, was his senior thesis and was performed as a student production.

Mamet continued to write following his graduation. He supported himself with small acting roles as well as working part-time teaching acting at Goddard and Marlboro, another college in Vermont. During this time, he began writing what would become his first hit: 1974’s Sexual Perversity in Chicago. The play won the Joseph Jefferson Award for the best new Chicago play before it moved to Off-Off Broadway and Off-Broadway productions in New York City. Appraising the New York version of the show, Time named it among the ten best plays of 1976.

Mamet’s next play, American Buffalo, was regarded as an ever bigger smash. As with its predecessor, the play debuted in Chicago. When the production moved to New York City in 1977, however, it went directly to Broadway. Several years later, in 1984, Mamet won the Pulitzer Prize for one of his most well-respected plays, Glengarry Glenn Ross. The story revolves around survival in a dog-eat-dog business environment: real estate. Similarly, Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow (1988) revolves around another cutthroat business: Hollywood and the entertainment industry. Mamet wrote a number of screenplays, many of them adaptations of other’s work, throughout the 1980s and 1990s and he became well-versed in the harsh business of film.

In 1992, Mamet produced one of his most controversial works, Oleanna. The play concerns the unfounded allegations of sexual harassment by a young, female student against a male college professor. Mamet directed the original Broadway production as he had previously done with several of his plays. The playwright also branched out into directing films. He has helmed (as well as written) such motion pictures as House of Games (1987), Things Change (1988), and The Spanish Prisoner (1997); he has also written the screenplays for The Verdict (1982), The Untouchables (1987), The Edge (1998), (with Hilary Henkin) Wag the Dog (1998), and Lansky (1999), among others. By the end of the 1990s, Mamet was regarded as one of the contemporary masters of the dramatic form, an emerging power in Hollywood, and a virtuoso of dialogue.