About the Play:

Race is a full-length drama by David Mamet. Two lawyers – one black and one white – find themselves defending a wealthy white executive charged with raping a black woman. When a new black legal assistant gets involved in the case, the opinions that boil beneath explode to the surface. In Race, when David Mamet turns the spotlight on what we think but can't say, dangerous truths are revealed, and no punches are pulled, all culminating in a plot-twisting surprise ending.

Race tackles America's most controversial topic in a compelling crime mystery of sex, guilt, and bold accusations. When a wealthy white executive is charged with raping a younger African American woman, he looks to a multicultural law firm for his defense. But as his lawyers – one of them white, another black – begin to strategize, they must confront their own biases and assumptions about the issue of race and the American judicial system. When a pretty black legal assistant gets involved in the case, the opinions that boil beneath explode within the lawyers' office. As they prepare for a court case, they must face the fundamental questions that everyone fears to ask. What is race? What is guilt? What happens when the crimes of the past collide with the transgressions of the present? Drawing on one of the most highly-charged issues of American history, David Mamet forces us to confront deep-seated prejudices and barely-healed wounds in this unflinching examination of the lies we tell ourselves and the truths we unwillingly reveal to others.

Race premiered in 2009 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway in New York City. The play has been produced in regional theatres, such as at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, and has been performed in regional repertory, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 1 female, 3 male

What people say:

"Scapel-edged intelligence! Race is an examination of cultural conscience and paranoia, and a topical detective story." — The New York Times

"Mamet is most concerned with the power and treachery of language: a line of dialogue vital to the prosecution case is cynically rewritten by the defense. Mamet's larger contention is that attempts to create a more equal and tolerant society have made race an unsayable word... brilliantly contrives here a moment in which the single most taboo sexual expletive is ignored by an audience which then gasps at the word 'black'... Mamet remains American theatre's most urgent five-letter word." — The Guardian

"Intellectually salacious ... Gripping ... rapid-fire Mametian style ... Deep in its gut, Mamet's new play argues, everything in America – and this play throws sex, rape, the law, employment and relationships into its 90 minutes of stage wrangling – is still about race." — Chicago Tribune

"[Mamet's] exhilarating epigrammatic style broadcasts the will to prevail." — New Yorker

"Mamet lets us see the way sensitivity to the most incendiary topic in our history, as Jack describes race, can breed better liars." — Los Angeles Times

"It's black against white, man versus woman in a typically blunt David Mamet straight-talker about the law and discrimination ... David Mamet doesn't mince his words in Race ... an engaging brew of wit, rage, and shifting sympathies." — The Independent

"During a typically provocative 90 minutes Mamet probes the self-conscious, slippery, hostile and patronising ways in which we so often discuss issues connected to race and racial politics." — Evening Standard

"An offbeat courtroom drama ... This twin-investigation structure is ingenious. And both inquiries are niftily calibrated to pivot on the issues of skin colour, sex and exploitation ... Mamet's taut, fraught, nervy dialogue bristles with shocking and hilarious truths about the legal process." — The Spectator

About the Playwright:

David Mamet is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter as well as a director, novelist, poet, and essayist. He has written the screenplays for more than twenty films, including the Oscar-nominated The Verdict. His more than twenty plays include the Pulitzer Prizewinning Glengarry Glen Ross. His other awards include a Tony Award, an Academy Award, two OBIE Awards, two NYDCC Awards, and Outer Circle, Society of West End Theatre, and Dramatists Guild Hall-Warriner Awards.