SOURCE: Price, John A. Review of True and False, by David Mamet. Journal of Popular Culture 33, no. 3 (winter 1999): 147-48.

In the following review, Price outlines Mamet's main messages about acting in True and False.

In David Mamet's True and False, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and Oscar-nominated screenwriter reveals the unique perspective of how a playwright views the rehearsal and performance aspects of a text. In this book, Mamet offers an alternative to the standard “Method” acting approach.

Without specifically addressing his own plays, Mamet's scalding criticism of Stanislavski and the American “Method” can easily be read as a prescription for how this playwright intends his plays to be analyzed and performed—and how not to.

True and False consists of one hundred and twenty-seven pages divided into twenty-nine chapters; and, like his dialogue, Mamet's chapters are brief, hard-hitting, and poignant. Mamet assaults and insults the commonplace institution(s...