Word: dramatists
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...problem is that he insists that “the vulgate, the actual language of the people can be found only in the cultural anathemas known as popular entertainment.” This argument is tenuously developed to a frustrating conclusion: “The job of the dramatist is to get, and that of the actors and directors to keep, the asses in the seats. Period. This is what pays the rent.... The purpose of theatre is not to instruct, to better, to expiate. It is to entertain.” Mamet’s perspective on drama...
...people read William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) anymore. But in the lands that used to form the British Empire he was immensely popular, from the 1930s right through to the 1980s, and he has a small fan base still. In his native England, he was a well-loved dramatist whose record of having four plays running concurrently in the West End remained unbroken for a generation. He climbed dizzying heights of fame and prosperity, lived a long life (of which nearly six decades were in circumstances of great renown), and besides being a writer was a doctor...
...Maugham produced nine works of fiction and nonfiction, all the while wanting to really make it as a dramatist. He hit pay dirt with his play Lady Frederick in 1907. But by the time of his last play, Sheppey, in 1933, he had come full circle; he was done with the world of the theater, which he found almost hateful, and only wanted to concentrate on his fiction, considering that, at last, to be his real writing. He was an acknowledged master of the short story and a great deal of his fiction was based on material provided...
...These criticisms of unimaginativeness stem from a definition of socially conscious theater that is didactic, narrow, and unfulfilling. Some may see theater as “education disguised as entertainment,” but this ignores the wonderful complexity available in the medium. David Mamet, the esteemed dramatist and essayist, put it best when he said, “The good drama survives because it appeals… to the problems both universal and eternal, as they are insoluble...
...Vietnam War in Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July and Heaven and Earth; the investigation of the John F. Kennedy assassination in JFK; and, in Nixon, the life of the only President to resign his office. All those subjects allowed for a certain ambiguity, but Stone - a dramatist first, dispassionate chronicler never - pushed political views that might have been lopsided but usually resulted in terrific films with an adrenaline rush...