|
Director's Notes I first discovered David Mamet when I discovered American Buffalo somewhere in my freshman year of high school. At this time in drama class we were reading aloud West Side Story and to remember that now it makes me laugh. West Side Story is filled with characters who are supposedly tough no nonsense street thugs, but they sing and do ballet and in all honesty are really no worse than any other musical attempting to understand a culture far removed from suburbia. American Buffalo was the opposite end of the spectrum. Reading it for the first time was a pivotal experience. Up until then most of the plays I had read, especially dramas, lacked a sense of realism for me. Although there were many playwrights I liked at the time, and still do, Mamet was the first who struck me as someone writing a play that very well could be real. Mamet can be difficult to read. His use of plain street language and Chicagoan slang is very confrontational on a page. There are many times I want to correct Teach’s sentences in my head until I catch myself. Buffalo needs to be heard. In high school it never occurred to me to ever direct anything. I came to it by accident over the years, and the first script I pitched at The Balagula was Buffalo. “Surprise Theatre” came first, and then Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged), but I kept bringing back American Buffalo because when I looked at the brick walls with the old metal windows in the back of Natasha’s, I knew that’s where I wanted to build Donny’s shop. I’ve had a lot of time to think about this show, what I want to say with it, what I want it to be, but the question everyone keeps asking me is: “Why do you want to direct this?” It’s a hard question to answer. There is always more than one answer to a question like that. The obvious first thing is that I believe it’s a great piece of theatre, something actors, directors, and an audience can sink their teeth in. However even though that’s true, with a play as honest and raw as Buffalo you must be honest and raw in your actions towards it. I know these guys. I went to school with them, listened to their warped ideas of “business,” their indignation at anyone besides themselves who succeeds, and their absolute dependence on euphemisms to cope in their world. I knew guys who thought like these characters, who believed in the romanticized notions of crime. I grew up with guys like Donny and Teach, and some of those guys probably grew up to be Donny and Teach. American Buffalo is funny at times and in others it’s tragic. Its dissection of business and capitalism is deep while being raw and simple in its delivery. It’s a fictional tale told in a realistic way, with people you can believe exist probably right down the street somewhere. It’s an intellectual play told with stripped down honest words. You’ll have to hear it to understand it. Eric Seale
|