David Mamet Festival
Special Events & Extras
Tickets for events on sale on Friday, February 24. Visit the Goodman Theatre Box Office or call 312.443.3800
Click here for more information on the David Mamet Festival.
An Evening with David Mamet
In the Albert - March 27, 2006 at 7 pm
David Mamet discusses his remarkable career, his Chicago beginnings and his views on contemporary theater in a wide-ranging conversation with longtime Chicago Tribune critic Richard Christiansen.
Subscriber price: $25; non-subscriber price: $35
Acting mamet
In the Albert - April 3, 2006 at 7 pm
Some of the foremost stage and screen interpreters of Mamet's work discuss the joys and challenges of bringing his unique style to life.
Subscriber price: $12; non-subscriber price: $20
Mamet SpeakEasy
At Subterranean - April 6, 2006 Doors open at 7:30 pm
Meet the next generation of Mamets! The top 10 scripts selected from the Goodman's Mamet Write-Alike contest will be read aloud by Goodman Theatre artists at Subterranean. The readings will be judged and receive critical commentary from a celebrity panel, who will select the top three finalists. These finalists will advance to the Mamet Slam event at the Goodman on April 21 (details below).
Note: the deadline for submissions to the Mamet Write-Alike Contest has been extended to Friday, March 10. Aspiring writers and Mamet fans are invited to pen a short play in the same unique style as the celebrated Chicago native playwright. Click here for details.
Doors open at 7:30 pm; event begins at 8:30 pm
Subterranean, 2011 West North Avenue, Chicago, IL
Admission is free; reservations are not required. For more information call 773.278.6600
American Buffalo: A Celebration
In the Albert - April 10, 2006 at 7 pm
Commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Goodman's world premiere of Mamet's best-known work, this one-time-only concert reading of American Buffalo reunites original cast members J.J. Johnston and Mike Nussbaum with the production's director, former Goodman Artistic Director Gregory Mosher. The cast of the anniversary reading also includes Sean Nelson, who appeared in the film adaptation of American Buffalo (with Dustin Hoffman and Dennis Franz).
Subscriber price: $12; non-subscriber price: $20
Mamet Slam!
In the Owen - April 21, 2006 at 10:30 pm
The David Mamet Festival culminates in a late-night one-time-only performance in the Owen Theatre. Featured will be some of Mamet's most outrageously theatrical short scenes and monologues, presented by a handful of Chicago's best-known off-Loop theater companies. In addition, the top three finalists in the Mamet Write-Alike Contest take the stage in Mamet Slam!
Admission is free; reservations are required.
Dirty Dammit Mamet Martini
Pre- or post-show, relax with a Dirty Dammit Mamet Martini at Catch Thirty-Five, a Goodman Preferred Partner. Created for the occasion of the David Mamet Festival, this special $9 martini features chilled Absolut Vodka served straight-up with a splash of olive juice.
Dammit Mamet Crossword Puzzle
Test your knowledge of David Mamet in the mind-bending Dammit Mamet Crossword. Solve the puzzle and enter to win tickets to an upcoming Goodman production, restaurant gift certificates and the official David Mamet Festival T-shirt.
David Mamet Crossword Puzzle
No purchase necessary to enter. One entry per person, per household. Odds of winning depend on the number of qualified entries received. All entries must be received by April 23. Winner will be chosen by random drawing the week of April 25, 2006.
Mamet Fun Facts
Theater Facts
- Madonna played the female role on Broadway in Mamet's play Speed-the-Plow.
- Felicity Huffman (wife to William H. Macy, founding member of the St. Nicholas Theatre Company) was Madonna's replacement in Speed-the-Plow.
- Al Pacino starred in the revival of American Buffalo.
- Robert Duvall starred in the original production of American Buffalo.
- David Mamet has won one Tony Award for the revival of Glengarry Glen Ross. It won the 2005 Tony Award® Best Revival of a Play.
- He won the Pulitzer Prize for Glengarry Glen Ross in 1984.
- The time between the premiere of American Buffalo and the revival was only five years.
- He has had five shows on Broadway: Glengarry Glen Ross, The Old Neighborhood, Speed-the-Plow, American Buffalo, and The Water Engine/ Mr. Happiness. American Buffalo and Glengarry Glen Ross have both been revived.
- His popularity grew with productions of The Duck Variations, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, and American Buffalo, which premiered off-Broadway in 1976.
- The telephone is often a key device or weapon in his works.
- He has written over 35 full-length and one-act plays.
Personal Facts
- Mamet attended Goddard College. He later returned in 1971 to teach for the year. Along with his two students, William H. Macy and Steven Schachter, they started the St. Nicholas Theatre Company.
- His junior year of college he studied in New York studying under Sanford Meisner.
- Mamet was a busser at Second City for two years. He also worked backstage at Hull House Theatre in Chicago.
- While working at Hull House Theatre, he was a chorus member in The Threepenny Opera and played a stretcher-bearer in The Brig.
- After he graduated from college Mamet joined a theater company at McGill University in Montreal. He performed in two of Harold Pinter's play, The Homecoming and The Fantasticks.
- He worked as an office manager in a real estate office on Peterson Ave. in North Side Chicago for a year.
- After college drove a taxi cab in Chicago
- Appeared as a soda jerk in a weekly local TV variety show that dealt with Jewish themes and issues.
- In the summer of 1966 he worked for a merchant marine on the Great Lakes, and would later take this experience and draw on it in Lakeboat.
- Lakeboat came about while he was a visiting professor at Marlboro College. Part of the job requirement was to write a play that could be produced in a workshop.
- Often declines credit or uses a pseudonym if he is called upon only as a script doctor, or some films he doesn't direct. The only such film that credited him by name was Hannibal.
- He avoids using a personal computer to write his screen/plays preferring, instead, his old-fashioned typewriter.
- Besides winning the Pulitzer, he has also been nominated for an Academy Award (Best Adapted Screenplay for The Verdict and Wag the Dog), a Golden Globe (Best Screenplay for House of Games, The Verdict and Wag the Dog), and numerous theater awards.
- Mamet funds his own films from the money he receives from credited and unaccredited rewrites of usually big-budget films.
- He wrote an early version of the script, Malcolm X, that Spike Lee rejected.
- After a reading of Glengarry Glen Ross, Mamet sought help from Harold Pinter who told him [Mamet] that the play just needed a production.
David Mamet Festival Includes:
Festival Sponsor:
Individual Sponsor Partner for the David Mamet Festival:
- Jim and Susan Annable
- Patricia Cox Hunckler and Family
- Merle Reskin