The problem with Oleanna

By Simon Rice

The issues explored in David Mamet’s controversial play on political correctness, education, and power politics, Oleanna, stand up to the test of time.

They have as much resonance today as they did when it opened to audiences in 1992.

The only problem is, while showcasing some of Mamet’s best writing, the play is ultimately mired by his inability to transcend his own personal prejudices.

Diego Matamoros & Sarah Wilson in Soulpepper's remount of Oleanna

Almost twelve years after directing the show myself, I went to see Soulpepper’s remount currently playing at The Young Centre. This isn’t a review, so I won’t be commenting on the production.

What stood out to me this time around, was just how flawed a play Oleanna is.

This comes partially from a great disappointment at how well the play begins, and how badly it finishes.

The first act has the promise of brilliance. Carol, a confused and somewhat neurotic college student, appears in the office of John, her professor, looking desperately for answers.

She is failing, and she can’t understand why. John has little time for her at first, more interested in answering a phone that rings incessantly and preoccupied with the impending purchase of his dream house.

John is the archetypal verbose intellectual, who challenges all excepted norms in his academic life, while happily accepting the spoils, both power and money, the profession rains upon him.

John is a wholly actualized character. Carol is not.

John’s great strengths and weaknesses are laid bare.

He is arrogant and snobby, and yet he makes the important decision to try and reach Carol in a less than orthodox way

If we’re going to take off the Artificial Stricture, of “Teacher,” and “Student,” why should my own problems be any more a mystery than your own?

He then goes on to talk about his predictable, upper-middle class dilemmas in a typically arrogant and paternal way.

Nice house, close to the private school… (He continues making his note.) … We were talking of economic betterment (CAROL writes in her notebook.) … I was thinking of the School Tax. (He continues writing.) (To himself:) … where is it written that I have to send my child to public school. … Is it a law that I have to improve the City Schools at the expense of my own interest? And, is this not simply The White Man’s Burden? Good. And (Looks up to CAROL) … does this interest you?

But despite his great flaws, he opens up a compelling discussion on the value of post-secondary education.

We shove this book at you, we say read it. Now, you say you’ve read it? I think that you’re lying. I’ll grill you, and when I find you’ve lied, you’ll be disgraced, and your life will be ruined. It’s a sick game. Why do we do it? Does it educate? In no sense. Well, then, what is higher education? It is something-other-than-useful.

When Carol challenges John on how he can disparage education, to those who have in many cases, “over-come great obstacles to get here,” he replies that it is his job to challenge and provoke thought in his students. Carol seems unable to grasp this idea.

So whether you like him or his ideas, John is a real character, at least somewhat worthy of our empathy.

Carol is less a character than a straw woman. Mamet uses her, simply as a vehicle, to drive Oleanna towards a conclusion that confirms his suspicions: that political correctness is used by feminists, in a witch hunt, that has as its ultimate purpose the removal of humanity from human interaction.

Whether you believe this or not doesn’t matter, because Mamet makes his case so poorly.

In the first act Carol is written, rather one-dimensionally, as seemingly inarticulate, desperate, angry, and completely lacking self-esteem.

Nobody tells me anything. And I sit there … in the corner. In the back. And everybody’s talking about “this” all the time. And “concepts,” and “precepts” and, and, and, and, and, WHAT IN THE WORLD ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? And I read your book. And they said, “Fine, go in that class.” Because you talked about responsibility to the young. I DON’T KNOW WHAT IT MEANS AND I’M FAILING…

Simon Rice and Sara Wood also staged their own Oleanna in the pre-Praxis days with Bloody Theatre in 1998

Mamet reveals nothing of where she is coming from or what her background is. If she has a life outside of being a failing student, we’re not privy to it.

Remarkably when Carol returns in the second and third act, this time on decidedly less friendly terms, she has developed great self-confidence and a sophisticated vocabulary.

… It is a sexist remark, and to overlook it is to countenance continuation of that method of thought. It’s a remark…

… What gives you the right. Yes. To speak to a woman in your private… Yes. Yes. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. You feel yourself empowered … you say so yourself. To strut. To posture. To “perform.” To “Call me in here…” Eh? You say that higher education is a joke. And treat it as such, you treat it as such. And confess to a taste to play the Patriarch in your class. To grant this. To deny that. To embrace your students.

Of course we still have no idea why Carol is doing this, or where she is coming from, only that she is single mindedly bent on John’s destruction.

I don’t care what you feel. Do you see? DO YOU SEE? You can’t do that anymore. You. Do. Not. Have. The. Power. Did you misuse it? Someone did. Are you part of that group? Yes. Yes. You Are. You’ve done these things. And to say, and to say, “Oh. Let me help you with your problem…

This is the problem with Oleanna. The questions it asks and tries to address are fascinating, and without easy answers. But Mamet tries to give us easy answers in his conclusion.

He wants us to feel that John is righteous and that Carol is a monster, and he succeeds.

But are we any wiser for it?

I’m here from downtown. I’m here from Mitch and Murray. And I’m here on a mission from Mommy!

This young thespian really hits his rhythm around the 2 minute mark.

Okay, I’m putting the coffee down, but mostly because I feel like replacing brass balls with a half eaten pretzel is a strong choice.

Press the blue and white thingy above to see a video that expands the metaphor to include Girl Guides.

Volcano’s Africa Trilogy: Part VII

Africa Trilogy assistant director Deanna Downes has been ruminating on the project from her secret lair in Philadelphia.

Africa Trilogy Set for a Smooth Landing in The States?

by Deanna Downes

David Mamet’s new play Race is playing on Broadway. A New York Times review calls it “a play that examines the self-consciousness that descends on American white people when they talk about, or to, black people.”

Fela, a play about the revolutionary creator of Afro-pop, Fela Kuti, is also on Broadway. When talking about his production of Fela, director Bill T. Jones says Fela’s life brings about, “questions like creativity, transgression, rebellion, sensuality, history, race, power.”

It would appear, the theatrical runways are being paved for a smooth landing of this multi-national but Canadian birthed trilogy about Africa and the West.

Click here to read the rest of this post on Deanna’s blog…

Ben Brantley puts the Mamet back into Mamet

"As staged by Mr. Hughes, the current “Oleanna” flies bravely in the face of Mr. Mamet’s prescriptions about acting. “There is no character,” Mr. Mamet has written. “There are only lines upon the page.” This “Oleanna” squints to read between those lines, and Mr. Pullman and Ms. Stiles have obviously been encouraged to create characters who are more than what they say."

by Michael Wheeler

Although material on the Praxis Website usually refrains from mentioning or linking to reviews, famed New York Times theatre critic Ben Brantley’s review of the recent Oleanna revival in NYC is interesting enough to be come the exception that proves this rule.

In his review, Brantley makes the argument that the production starring Bill Pullman and Julia Stiles is not a success in large part because the performers do not use the correct acing technique: a Practical Aesthetics approach to performing the text developed by Mamet and taught by the Atlantic Theatre Company he helped to found.

The original production of Oleanna starring Rebecca Pidgeon (who is married to Mamet) and Practical Aesthetics co-creator William H Macy, “seemed to move at warp speed” and left Brantley, “with shortened breath and heightened blood pressure”. The current production he writes, “seemed slow to the point of stasis, and its ending found me almost drowsy.” Both productions had roughly the same running times.

Creating a complictaed and contradictory character is not normally a flaw in the approach of a performer. A medium still heavily influenced by Stanislavsky and Psychological Realism normally rewards those artists that create multi-layered characters who are “more than what they say”. In fact, not to do so in many post-Chekovian texts is to risk one-dimensionality –  it is assumed that the process of creating a character includes plumbing the world between the lines to create the fully formed human being within.

Brantley argues that this is not however, the approach that should be taken with this text:, “because “Oleanna” is a play about people for whom language is a conditioned reflex: They don’t think before they speak, even when they believe they do.” This – in a nutshell – is the essence of the technique that Mamet and Macy have worked to develop. In direct response to what they refer to “the method”, Practical Aesthetics forces the actor rely on their will over their intellect by distilling the creation process to a three step process that prizes the text over all else.

Because I haven’t seen the production, it’s impossible for me to have an informed opinion about Brantley’s analysis. I broke one of the few rules of curating material for this site  because I was struck by a review of a piece of theatre that was conscious of not only what elements the production succeeded and failed, but posited informed reasons why they did as they related to the craft and approach the artists used to create it. It seemed to me rare, insightful, and good evidence as to why having your show reviewed in The Times still matters a little more than all the rest.

Click the link to read the full review: He Said, She Said, but What Exactly Happened?