Mamets Glengarry glen Ross Omid Shams Thematically and stylistically David Mamet is the playwright of America.

As Haedicke says [He] not only has he taken as his explicit subject America and its mythic Dream, but he has also taken as his form the multiple media of American culture to explore the potency of Americas national and international myth(Krasner 2005: 406). However, what Mamet does in his plays is far from simply representing the American Life and American Dream to explore the potency of Americas myth. He radically criticizes the fundaments of what makes the American myth as the idea of something out of nothing where only one guy is going to get to the top (qtd. in Kane 2001: 467). In other words, he exposes the other face of America, the cruel one, and of course that dream comes to turn into a nightmare. Among his works and specifically the business trilogy which has been internationally welcomed by critics, Glengarry Glen Ross is a best example of how Mamet gives an image of Americas other face. In Glengarry the script has enough power to determine the base of characters moves without any emphasis on certain mise en scne [staging]. In other words, the power of the play is based on actors words instead of their actions. The play began from a simple situation, a business conversation in a booth at a Chinese restaurant. Through this simple conversation Mamet gives us the most essential information we need to follow the play: Such as what the play is about and who the characters are; Personality and positions of characters; their job, their goal and the main conflict between them. At the very beginning Levene reveals what the conflict is about: the Glengarrys Highlands leads and a bloody competition over the bonus Cadillac. During the three scenes of act one, we see the main characters talking with each other in three couples. During these scenes mostly one character is the main speaker and the other one is a listener. This position of one central and one marginal character on the stage implies their will to power and pushing their rival away. It also illustrates the bigger stage of the American capitalist society in which one always tries to be a central and leading character. However, they are all at the same place, Chinese restaurant, eating and talking. If we take eating as a symbol of everyday life we can see they are all in a similar position. They are trying to survive in this society. The play is about the people who are controlled by the irresistible and invisible forces. In order to win the title of successful man they are ready to make themselves similar to the society that pushes them into a swampy situation and crushes them underfoot. They are all dreaming of a bonus Cadillac as symbol of nobleness, capitalism and successfulness. Those forces we cannot see but we can feel their presence throughout the play, are those social values that turn people into numbers and codes on a hierarchical list. Even the way of arrangement of the characters during these three scenes supports this idea. First we see Shelly

who is begging the representative of these irresistible forces. Shelly is a vulnerable person who asks Williamson to stabilize his occupational position by giving the leads to him. In the second scene as if Moss is replaced with Williamson. Now he is the representative of the System and trying to convince Aaronow to steal the leads. In the third scene, Roma is the indicator of society and all he says is like the manifesto of a good citizen in a capitalist society:
Stocks, bonds, objects of art, real estate. Now: what are they? (pause) An opportunity. To what? To make money? Perhaps. To lose money? Perhaps. To "indulge" and to "learn" about ourselves? Perhaps. So fucking what? What isn't? They're an opportunity. That's all. They're an event.

Mamet arranges a brilliant cause and effect chain between Shellys attempt to fraud, Williamsons attempt to take bribe and the plan to steal the leads. Also through the conversation between Moss and Aaronow we already know that there is a plan for a rubbery before it actually happens. Act two happens at the office after the robbery, where all of the main characters have a confrontational scene and Mamet completes his characterization. Act two is focused on the issue of rubbery and Mamet presents suspension in the story regarding to what he formerly told us about the rubbery plan and at proper moment he reveals the whole story. The static staging of play implies the situation of the characters that are stuck in a system from which they have no way out. In the middle of act two we see Roma and Levene are talking and Leven proudly tells his victorious story about selling to Nyborgs and Roma listens to him as a winner. But at the end we see that all they did had nothing for them. They are in a circle rotating around them and each of them could do what Levene did and at the end they are all the victims of the system. Ignoring the weak and passive role of detective in the play Mamet successfully reveals the real face of American dream and the way it victimize the society through giving a realistic image of business which is what America is about (Krasner 2005: 410). In Glengarry Mamet stands in an important moment of American dramas history. He exposes the cruel order of our age that increasingly crushes people underfoot and turns them into imitators of their slavers. As long as this order rules America Glengarry would be a play about recent American society.

Albees Who is afraid of Virginia Woolf? Albee explains in an interview What people confuse as being obscenity or profanity in Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was nothing other than brutal honesty. And brutal honesty still shocks.(1) The brutal honesty in who is afraid of a Virginia Woolf? is shocking because it addresses us rather than the characters. This is the honest image of our emotions, desires and relations. What we see on the stage is not what really happens in our social and sexual life. But what happens in our mind and what is hidden and suppressed behind our persona. From the very beginning of the play there are three obvious feelings interacting: violence, fear and fury. As the play continues we realize that it is not a temporary situation but these three concepts along with humiliation and lust are making the body of the play. The first conversation between, George and Martha tells us that there is no such emotions and relationship as we use to expect from an old married couple. It getting more shocking when the guests, Nick and Honey come and we realize that those feeling are reproduced also between George, Martha and their guests. Steven Price refers to the very important point that What connects them to the younger couple of Nick and Honey is childlessness. (2) Childlessness can symbolically imply the dissatisfaction which is the key concept of that brutal honesty. Dissatisfaction is the essence of our modern life as well as the characters. It leads to an endless anger and fear in our hearts that we throw it on the other. When the prosperity and dignity are not the basis of the communication, as it is in our masked and hypocritical society, then the dissatisfaction and humiliation will be shared as language of communication. In other words, behind the prosperous mask of the society, dissatisfaction and desire for humiliation are hidden. At the beginning of the party Nick and Honey seem as a happy and successful couple but as it continues they gradually reveal their dissatisfaction and participate in George and Marthas violent and humiliating games. Insulting and humiliating make the chain of cause and effect in plot incidents through the act and react process. During these acts and reacts another theme appears that is desire to other. Marthas sexual desire for Nick shows her attempt to compensate her failures through taking what the other has. After those violent games and desire ends without any satisfaction (even between Nick and Martha) the last game, bringing up baby, reveals that George and Marthas son, the only proof of their successfulness and superiority over Nick and Honey, was an illusion. Play ends up with the final confrontation of George and Martha when Martha who is now disarmed of the illusion confesses her fear: George: whos afraid of Virginia Woolf Virginia WoolfVirginia Woolf Martha: I amGeorge Albee beautifully unmasks the modern society and its fear of other. The other can be referred either to symbolic values of the American society (such as successfulness and

satisfaction) in an psychoanalytical context or the political and ideological evil other which was characteristic of Cold War era in which Albee wrote his play. In fact Albee makes the audience experience this annoying party as silent guests and through that brutal honesty he reveals what we all hide. What audience watches is the unsealing all of those emotions sealed by social contracts. May be that is why he expects his audience to be willing to reconsider whether all the values that they brought into the theater are still valid when they leave (3)

Glengarry Glen Ross Notes: Haedicke, Janet V. (2005). David Mamet: America on the American Stage. In David Krasner (ed.).
Twentieth Century American Drama, Blackwell Publishing press. Kane, L. (ed.) (2001). David Mamet in Conversation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Notes:

1- Karl, Polly. An interview with playwright Edward Albee, director Pam MacKinnon and Artistic Director Martha Lavey, online, http://www.steppenwolf.org/watchlisten/program-articles/article.aspx?id=238 2- Price, Steven. (2005). Fifteen-Love, Thirty-Love: Edward Albee. In David Krasner (ed.). Twentieth Century American Drama, Blackwell Publishing press. 3- Karl, Polly. An interview with playwright Edward Albee, director Pam MacKinnon and Artistic Director Martha Lavey, online, http://www.steppenwolf.org/watchlisten/program-articles/article.aspx?id=238