Drama Happens When your characters try to Achieve Something

David Mamet: #3 Purpose of Drama (Cont”d)

“Drama is also, just a form of myth. Myth is a poetic statement of an unverifiable reality. Like, myth is not false it’s just unverifiable. Like, for example, Jesus Christ died for our sins. It’s not false if you are a Christian, that’s the essence of your life. You just can’t point to it on a sheet piece of paper and say, see here. But its none the less true for that. so myth, again, is a statement of a truth that is unverifiable and so is drama, drama evolves us in the quest of a human being to achieve something.” ~David Mamet, Masterclass

“ Yes, I understand how at every step this human being was trying to achieve something and they underwent traumas I can’t even begin to imagine and they doubted themselves and they all wanted to quit every hero and heroine wants to quit…” ~David Mamet, Masterclass

I would love to write out every word David Mamet said in this lesson. I can’t.

The shortened version: “Drama is the stepchild of religion” and “humans are basically insane” and “all drama is the same as a joke the joke frees us from reason.”

What I took away is that I have been looking at ‘drama’ from the wrong end. I was looking at it as a teachable moment when all it really is…. the cause from the effect.

Think of when Lucy got a job in a candy factory and the conveyer belt started to run faster and faster.

Think of a time you over embellished at that family dinner or the time you caught a fish or how many steps you climbed when the elevator wasn’t working. That is drama, you’re telling a story. You are not trying to make a point, and just embellishing those three steps into a hundred or how big that fish really was, gives us the drama we so love to express.