Actor Jordan Pettle on Playwright David Mamet
Soulpepper's Glengarry Glen Ross in Toronto
Apr 21, 2009
Canada’s Jordan Pettle has honed his chops in lead roles from coast to coast, from Louis in Tony Cushner’s Angels in America to Benjamin in Zadie’s Shoes, which was written by his playwright brother Adam Pettle. But playing the raised-on-shrewd office manager John Williamson in David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross – Hell, Jordan Pettle’s enjoying every $%#@ minute of it.
Does David Mamet's writing seem like a symphony of profanity?
Jordan Pettle: “That’s a really good way of putting it. It does feel like a musical score on some level. Mamet has written it so specifically – where he wants the interruptions, where we wants the cutoffs, where he wants people to interrupt their own thoughts, what words are italicized. It does, when you are learning it, feel like a new musical score but fast. Really fast.”
Does Mamet’s dialogue overlap like Caryl Churchill does, or does he have pauses in between?
Jordan Pettle: “Mamet has written all the pauses that he wants in there, and there's lines that are obviously cut off in the middle of a sentence. You have to figure out whether your character’s cutting themselves off, or the other character is interrupting. It’s totally wild. A lot of the rehearsal is about figuring all of that out and rehearsing it, doing it over and over again. This is some of the hardest stuff I have ever worked on.”
The influence of Harold Pinter is also obvious in the read-between-the-lines lives of these guys.
Jordan Pettle: Mamet said Harold Pinter was a huge influence of his. Beckett influences Pinter, and Pinter influences Mamet.
Do you think the action of the play comes mostly from the text…
Jordan Pettle: "It is all action, and I think that is what’s brilliant about it structurally. There is nothing wasted in any scene. Every moment is active and is about action, but the text also moves the story forward. There is nothing extraneous in it. There are three scenes in the first act, two-handers, and you meet all the characters, but you also shoot well into the middle of the story. This contest is ending in two days. You get all the details that you need as far as setting up the circumstances. Yet, Mamet does it all through one character trying to affect the other character. It never feels like oh, here comes the exposition, we have to sit through this. It’s brilliant playwriting.”
Glengarry Glen Ross directed by David Storch, starring Jordan Pettle, Albert Schultz, Eric Peterson, William Webster, Kevin Bundy and Stephen Guy-McGrath, continues at Soulpepper in Toronto to May 9.
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