|
dd3e908
|
"When we got to the part where we had to improvise an argument in a poetic language, I got cold feet. "I can't do this," I said. "I don't know what to say." "Say anything," he said. "You can't make a mistake when you improvise." "What if I mess it up? What if I screw up the rhythm?" "You can't," he said. "It's like drumming. If you miss a beat, you create another." In this simple exchange, Sam taught me the secret of improvisation, one that I have accessed my whole life." --
|
|
sam-shepard
playwriting
|
Patti Smith |
|
c57977e
|
As a youth I enjoyed -- indeed, like most of my contemporaries, revered -- the agitprop plays of Brecht, and his indictments of Capitalism. It later occurred to me that his plays were copyrighted, and that he, like I, was living through the operations of that same free market. His protestations were not borne out by his actions, neither could they be. Why, then, did he profess Communism? Because it sold. The public's endorsement of his plays kept him alive; as Marx was kept alive by the fortune Engels's family had made selling furniture; as universities, established and funded by the Free Enterprise system -- which is to say by the accrual of wealth -- house, support, and coddle generations of the young in their dissertations on the evils of America.
|
|
irony
humour
playwriting
communism
|
David Mamet |