Kinetic Theatre stages a pair of David Mamet plays this summer
“I was trying to find the jewels that people really don’t know, or if they know them, saw them 30 years ago and haven’t seen them since,” he said.
Andrew Paul is emphatic.
“David Mamet is the preeminent living American playwright and certainly the most prominent living Jewish playwright,” he said.
Paul’s remarks aren’t simply the meanderings of a theater buff aware that Mamet won the Pulitzer Prize for the play “Glengarry Glen Ross,” or a film fan who knows the writer penned “Hoffa,” “Wag the Dog,” “The Postman Always Rings Twice” and a host of other stage and screen productions.
Rather, he is the producing artistic director of Kinetic Theatre Co. and the co-founder of the Pittsburgh Irish Classical Theatre, serving as its producing artistic director from 1996 to 2013.
Under his leadership PICT produced more than 100 plays and festivals dedicated to Samuel Becket and Anton Chekhov, to name a few. He also directed the 2021 docudrama “Cyril,” about Pittsburgh forensic expert Cyril Wecht.
This year, Kinetic Theatre will produce two Mamet works, “A Life in the Theatre” and “Oleanna.”
The idea of a “minifestival” came to Paul when he was at PICT, where he said he found success doing single playwright festivals and thought that he could use the model at Kinetic Theatre.
For Mamet, Paul worked to find titles people hadn’t seen for decades.
“I was trying to find the jewels that people really don’t know, or if they know them, saw them 30 years ago and haven’t seen them since,” he said.
Of the two, “Oleanna” has the larger public awareness. The work was adapted into a 1994 film starring William H. Macy.
Paul said that most people recall the play but not much about its details.
“They remember their visceral reaction,” he said. “I can’t tell you how many people hated those characters, but that was the intention. It’s that you don’t take sides and dislike both of them.”
The work, he said, presages the #MeToo movement.
“Mamet was way ahead of his time with this stuff,” he said.
“A Life in the Theatre,” Paul said, is a “major work” comprised of 26 short scenes.
“It’s a story, not only about the theater, but it’s about two lives: an older actor who has been in the theater his whole life and a younger actor who is becoming a star and usurping the older guy. There’s this real transfer of power. Power games are a big thing with Mamet,” Paul said. “But it’s very Chekhovian.”
Each of the works, he noted, features only two actors.
And while Paul is certain of Mamet’s status in the theater world, he is also aware of the playwright’s controversies, including his speaking out against efforts to improve the representation of women, members of the LGBTQ+ community and other marginalized groups. Mamet has weighed in against gender-neutral bathrooms and he wrote the 2008 Village Voice essay “Why I Am No Longer a Brain-Dead Liberal.”
Paul said he finds Mamet’s change in politics — from his most fertile period in the ’70s until about 2005 when his views were far more progressive, to his later transformation as a conservative often seen on Fox News — fascinating.
“There’s some pushback,” Paul said, noting that some theaters aren’t producing Mamet’s works as much because of his politics.
“I think we should differentiate the person’s politic viewpoints from their artistic work,” Paul said. “I separate those things.”
Plus, Paul said, a little controversy might help generate interest in the plays. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing.
Theater attendance still hasn’t rebounded to its pre-COVID numbers, according to a 2024 report in fastcompany.com. In 2022, revenue from ticket sales and subscriptions was still 55% lower than it was in 2018. Paul said he thinks it is still 30-40% off its pre-virus days.
“It’s been tough to get audiences back, which has been a surprise to everybody,” he said.
At the same time, Paul doesn’t think the answer is simply to raise the prices on those still attending live theater. He hopes the pendulum will swing back and ticket prices soon will be affordable to a wider audience again.
In the meantime, he’s concentrating on producing quality work at an affordable price.
And, for the Mamet plays, Paul is not only producing quality work in Pittsburgh: All of the actors also have a Pittsburgh tie and “love” the city, Paul said.
Sam Tsoutsouvas, who appears in “A Life in the Theatre,” holds the distinction of having a father who played for the Pittsburgh Steelers. His co-star in the play, Joseph McGranaghan, is from Pittsburgh and mostly performs here.
David Whalen tours nationally but he’s from New Kensington, something that works to the advantage of producer Paul, ever mindful of watching his bottom line.
“I always make him stay with his folks,” Paul said with a laugh. “I’m like, ‘I’m not housing you, man.’”
Mei Lu Barnum, who shares the stage with Whalen, is a Point Park University graduate and her boyfriend lives in Pittsburgh.
Paul shares his actors’ love of Pittsburgh, calling it one of the “great theater communities.”
“Anybody who came here felt that way, too,” he said.
“A Life in the Theatre” runs from June 13-30. “Oleanna” is staged from July 11-28. Kinetic Theatre Company will finish its season with decidedly lighter fare — “Holmes for the Holidays: A Sherlock Carol,” by Mark Shanahan. All productions take place at the Richard E. Rauh Studio Theatre in the University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning. PJC
David Rullo can be reached at drullo@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.
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