American Drama and the Postmodern: Fragmenting the Realistic Stage
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American Drama and the Postmodern: Fragmenting the Realistic Sta ...

Chapter 1:  Theorizing Contemporary American Drama
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set and staging entirely up to the director and designer, rather than to be given authoritative fixity by the playwright.7 Thus the postmodern revolution from Author as controller of the play and its design to being one of the team involved in production is complete.

Even hyperrealist David Mamet refuses to specify the setting, or even the kind of stage or theater for a play as seemingly realistic as American Buffalo. In a 1988 interview in NTQ, Henry I. Schvey tried to get him to say that the play needed a realistic setting:

But does it make any difference whether American Buffalo is set in a realistic space or not?
Well, finally, it is a play. The audience is going to know it’s a play. The important thing is—what does the junk shop mean to the play? …
How important, say, would a box set be for American Buffalo?
It depends on the theatre. And also on what the set means. And then you know how it should look.
Do you think that the set means restriction, claustrophobia in that play?
I don’t know. I never write stage directions. I figure that most of what needs to be said is what is being said in the dialogue. Beyond that, decisions are going to be made by the director and designer anyway. (96)

This is a revealing interview because Mamet will not concede the need for a box set for his most realistic play, and even refuses to specify stage directions. The decentered theatre may not necessitate the death of the author, but there is a death of the author as authoritative voice in staging his or her own play.8 Mamet recognizes that the playwright’s instructions would be irrelevant, because “director and designer” will make their “decisions” anyway; his job is to write good dialogue, not to instruct others on how to perform it. He is the first American dramatist to publish his plays without any directions as to set or staging.