The purpose of theater like magic like religion . . . is to inspire cleansing awe. What makes good drama And why does drama matter in an age that is awash in information and entertainment David Mamet one of our greatest living playwrights tackles these questions with bracing directness and aphoristic authority. He believes that the tendency to dramatize is essential to human nature that we create drama out of everything from todays weather to next years elections. But the highest expression of this drive remains the theater. With a cultural range that encompasses Shakespeare Bretcht and Ibsen Death of a Salesman and Bad Day at Black Rock Mamet shows us how to distinguish true drama from its false variants. He considers the impossibly difficult progression between one act and the next and the mysterious function of the soliloquy. The result in Three Uses of the Knife is an electrifying treatise on the playwrights art that is also a strikingly original work of moral and aesthetic philosophy. show more