David Mamet Reveals Plotline Of His Upcoming Broadway Play RACE To The New York Times

David Mamet has revealed the basic plot details of his upcoming new Broadway play RACE in an essay for The New York Times.

In the piece from the September 9th edition titled, "We Can't Stop Talking About Race in America", Mamet reveals the storyline within this excerpt:

My current play, "Race," is intended to be an addition to that dialogue.

As a Jew, I will relate that there is nothing a non-Jew can say to a Jew on the subject of Jewishness that is not patronizing, upsetting or simply wrong. I assume that the same holds true among African-Americans.

In my play a firm made up of three lawyers, two black and one white, is offered the chance to defend a white man charged with a crime against a black young woman. It is a play about lies.

All drama is about lies. When the lie is exposed, the play is over.

Race, like sex, is a subject on which it is near impossible to tell the truth. In each, desire, self-interest and self-image make the truth inconvenient to share not only with strangers (who may, legitimately or not, be viewed as opponents) but also with members of one's own group, and, indeed, with oneself.

To read the entire essay click here.

RACE recently announced its award winning design team: set designer Santo Loquasto, lighting designer Brian MacDevitt and costume designer Tom Broecker.

RACE, starring James Spader, David Alan Grier, Kerry Washington, and Richard Thomas, will start rehearsals on Tuesday, October 20th, 2009. It will begin its engagement at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre (located at 243 West 47th St.) on Monday, November 16th at 8pm, with the official opening night on Sunday, December 6, 2009 at 8pm.

RACE will be produced by Jeffrey Richards, Jerry Frankel & Steve Traxler, who previously collaborated together on David Mamet's Speed-The-Plow, Glengarry GLen Ross, and November.

Santo Loquasto (Scenic Designer) is widely known as a designer for theatre, film and dance. His work in the New York theatre won him both Tony and Drama Desk Awards for his set design of Café Crown in 1989 and for his costume designs for The Cherry Orchard in 1977 and Grand Hotel in 1990. Most recently he received a Drama Desk Award for his set design for Glengarry GLen Ross in 2005. Other awards include an Obie, a Joseph Maharam Award and Outer Critic's Circle Awards. He received Tony nominations for set designs for That Championship Season, What The Wine Cellars Buy, The Cherry Orchard, American Buffalo, The Suicide, Ragtime, and Fosse and more recently Long Day's Journey Into Night And Glengarry GLen Ross. He has also designed sets for Broadway for A Touch Of The Poet, Three Days Of Rain, Prelude To A Kiss, A Man For All Seasons and Waiting For Godot. He designed sets and costumes for Inherit The Wind and 110 In The Shade. He has worked with Woody Allen on over 22 films. His costume designs for Allen's Zelig and production designs for Radio Days and Bullets Over Broadway received Academy Award nominations. He has worked with most major international dance companies and has collaborated with Mark Morris, Jerome Robbins, Glen Tetley, Helgi Tomasson, Agnes De Mille, James Kudelka, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Dana Reitz, Twyla Tharp and Paul Taylor. For the Metropolitan Opera he designed sets and costumes for Salome, Faust and Luisa Miller.

Brian MacDevitt (Lighting Designer) Recent NYC: Blithe Spirit, You're Welcome America..., Dr. Atomic at the Met, Speed-the-Plow, 13 a New Musical, American Buffalo, Puncture at the Chocolate Factory, A Catered Affair, The Coast of Utopia Part I, Inherit the Wind, The Pillowman, The Color Purple, et al. Future: Merce Cunningham at BAM. Dance: Nancy Bannon's The Pod Project, the Joffrey Ballet, ABT, 25 yrs. w/ Tere O'Connor Dance, Lar Lubovitch. Recipient: Tonys, Obie, Bessie, Outer Critics, Hewes Awards, Drama Desk, et al. Film: Cradle Will Rock. Faculty: Purchase College. Member: Naked Angels. Father: Jake and Georgie.

Tom Broecker (Costume Design) recently designed Will Ferrell's You're Welcome America... on Broadway, Everyday Rapture and Good Boys and True (Second Stage), and Streamers (Roundabout/Huntington) as well as the London and Broadway productions of Side Man. Tom has designed in dozens of theatres across the country including MTC, the Public, Playwrights Horizons, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Hartford Stage, McCarter Theatre, Yale Rep., Shakespeare Theatre Company in DC, Indiana Rep., Center Stage, Opera Theatre of St. Louis and Williamstown. TV: pilot of "Castle" for ABC, "Saturday Night Live" (five Emmy noms.), HBO's "The Comeback," "30 Rock." Upcoming: The Understudy at the Roundabout Theatre Company.

David Mamet, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Glengarry GLen Ross, has also written Sexual Perversity in Chicago, Lakeboat, The Water Engine, The Duck Variations, Reunion, The Blue Hour, The Shawl, Bobby Gould in Hell, Edmond, Romance, The Old Neighborhood and the recent adaptation of The Voysey Inheritance. A two-time Academy Award nominee for The Verdict and Wag the Dog, Mamet's additional film credits include The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Untouchables, Hoffa, Ronin, The Edge, and We're No Angels. His nonfiction work includes The Wicked Son, True and False, and Bambi vs. Godzilla. He is a member of New York's Atlantic Theater Company, which he founded in 1985 with William H. Macy.

James Spader most recently received his third Emmy Award for his portrayal of lawyer Alan Shore on ABC's hit drama "Boston Legal". His numerous film credits include Steven Soderbergh's Sex, Lies, and Videotape, for which he received the prestigious Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival; the critically acclaimed Secretary, opposite Maggie Gyllenhall; David Cronenberg's Crash, opposite Holly Hunter; Mike Nichols' Wolf, opposite Jack Nicholson; Bob Roberts; Wall Street, and Less than Zero, among many others. He co-stars in Robert Rodriguez's film Shorts, to be released this late summer.

Richard Thomas made his Broadway debut at the age of seven in 1959 in Sunrise at Campbobello. His second play on Broadway was The Actors Studio Theatre production of Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude, which ran at the Hudson Theatre in 1963 and starred Jane Fonda, Geraldine Page, Ben Gazzara, Pat Hingle & Franchot Tone.

He is currently starring in a production of Terrance McNally's "Unusual Acts of Devotion" at the La Jolla Playhouse alongside Doris Roberts and Harriet Harris. Since making his Broadway debut in Sunrise At Campobello in 1958, Mr. Thomas has appeared on New York & tour stages countless times, most recently in Michael Frayn's Democracy, As You Like It in Central Park as well as the hit National Tour of Twelve Angry Men. Other oadway credits include: Love Letters, The Front Page, Fifth of July, Everything in the Garden, The Playroom and Strange Interlude. Thomas received his first major roles in film, appearing in the 1969 motion pictures Winning with Paul Newman and Last Summer with Barbara Hershey. Mr. Thomas has starred in more than forty films for television including Terrence McNally's "Andre's Mother" and "Wild Hearts" for Hallmark. His television series have included "It's A Miracle," "Just Cause" and "The Walton's," for which he won an Emmy Award in 1972. Among numerous recent acting projects, he may be mostly in the public conscious (or sub-conscious) as the voice of Mercedes-Benz for the last few years on television and radio.

Kerry Washington Winner of "Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture" for Ray at the 2005 NAACP Image Awards and Nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for "Best Actress" in the film Lift in 2002, she has built an impressive list of credits in a relatively short amount of time. She garnered critical acclaim for her recent roles in The Last King of Scotland opposite Forest Whitaker for which she was nominated for "Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture" at the NAACP Image Awards in 2007, The Dead Girl opposite Marcia Gay Harden and Brittany Murphy, and in Lakeview Terrace starring opposite Samuel L. Jackson and Patrick Wilson. Kerry will next be seen in A Thousand Words starring opposite Eddie Murphy and Howard Zinn's documentary The People Speak, which premieres on History in October 2009. She recently completed filming Mother and Child a drama centered around three women portrayed by Annette Bening, Naomi Watts and Washington. Prior to these films, Washington starred as Alicia Masters in Fantastic Four and it's sequel Rise of the Silver Surfer, I Think I Love My Wife opposite Chris Rock, the Wayans Brothers' comedy Little Man, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Spike Lee's She Hate Me, Sidney Lumet's HBO film Strip Search and the independent film Sexual Life. Other film credits for Washington include Against the Ropes, The United States of Leland, The Human Stain, Bad Company, Save the Last Dance for which she received a Teen Choice Award for Best Breakout Performance, and the highly acclaimed independent film, Our Song.