Oleanna

Book: Oleanna
By: David Mamet

Play writing stories are the basic blue prints for a stage production, written in descriptive form that clearly defines characters and their movements/actions through stage direction and displays the plot and setting of a story.

David Mamet is a famous play writer, known for his dark themes and hints of social commentary, with plays that are often translated to film , besides the obvious choice of a play.

 Plot/Summary: Oleanna is a play with only two characters in the office setting of a professor and his disgruntled student. It consists of three acts and the characters John and Carol. John is a professor who seems to be interested in helping his student, Carol, with assignments that she is having difficultly understanding in class.

Act One: Carol meets with John about her lack of understanding in class material and the point of a college education. As Carol pouts and becomes disgruntled with her inability to understand John's point of view, John attempts to soothe her by touching her shoulder.

 Act Two: Carol reports John for harassment even though he doesn't completely understand her reasoning for reporting him for inappropriate conduct. He meets with Carol to try and understand her reason for filing a report, but she remains vague and constantly notes that her understanding of their previous meeting is in her report to the tenure committee.

Act Three: In a final attempt to plead with Carol and understand why she's filed a report against him, John sees that Carol has become demanding and acts superior to John. She claims that by law-- by the words of tenure committee, John attempted to rape her. Carol gives John an ultimatum of removing a book of his publication from the university access, and at that point John realizes that Carol seems to have a motive for filing a report on him.

It's when Carol tells John that he doesn't have the right to call his wife "baby" that he finally loses control and beats her into a corner. The ending of the play is at a standstill when John realizes what he has done and Carol acts as if it were to have been expected.

Review: My perception of Oleanna was that Carol was manipulative and had an agenda with John the entire play, but given that the actual events that Carol sites in her complaints are never viewed by the reader, it is difficult to actually choose a side.

The play is entirely subjective and shows a power struggle between professor and student, in a solid setting of John's office to see how their interactions and miscommunication escalates. I found the ending to be shocking, and although I would usually side with the female perspective of sexual harassment--I felt that Carol had taken a lot of John's words and manipulated them to her advantage and her own agenda. The ending when John finally hits her didn't spark sympathy for me because I thought that Carol was a unfeeling character.

Play Writing Style: David Mamet uses a lot of cut off conversations. Carol and John are repeating interrupted as they try to speak to each other, so through out the entire play, Carol and John are never able to give a certain perspective because each character assumes the meaning of the other without letting them finish speaking.  He uses a lot of pauses to create a realistic setting and the use of strictly words to communicate, instead of personal actions makes the play more powerful than if either character's perspective outside of the meetings were given.

Writer's Tip: To write in play writing form, separate characters and choose a style of speaking for the characters to define them. Think of a bar scene, an interaction between a religious figure and an atheist, or anything controversial and try to write out an interaction that is realistic and plausible by using Mamet's writing style.