Oleanna

Don Shirley is right to be concerned that "Oleanna" doesn't reflect the reality of sexual harassment ("Casting's Just One Bug in 'Oleanna,' " Feb. 7). However, "Oleanna" is not a play about sexual harassment. As a UCLA associate dean of students who works with those affected by sexual harassment and whose area of academic expertise is gender issues, I am uneasy with anyone thinking that the interchange David Mamet sets up in the first act bears any realistic relation to the sexual harassment some experience.

Fox will interview Obama President Obama will give an interview to Fox News Channel's Major Garrett, perhaps signaling a thaw in relations between the network and administration. The White House confirmed Tuesday that Garrett would be included among a round of network interviews that the president is giving today in Beijing. Fox and the administration have been in a public fight since former White House Communications Director Anita Dunn said the network acted like the research or communications arm of the Republican Party.

At long last, "Oleanna" is going to Broadway. The revival of David Mamet's 1992 play, starring Julia Stiles and Bill Pullman and directed by Doug Hughes, opened at the Mark Taper Forum on June 5 to largely positive reviews. It will open at the John Golden Theatre on Oct. 11. This will be the first time the play, which revolves around a power struggle between a university professor and his student, has been seen on Broadway. "Oleanna" had its world premiere in 1992 in Cambridge, Mass.

Class soon will be dismissed for David Mamet's "Oleanna." The Broadway premiere of his 1992 play, starring Bill Pullman and Julia Stiles, has posted a closing notice. Producers of the intense, two-person drama about sexual politics in a university town said the play would close Jan. 3 at the John Golden Theatre. Directed by Doug Hughes, the production of "Oleanna" first opened at the Mark Taper Forum in L.A. in June featuring the same cast. It opened on Broadway in October, receiving mixed to positive reviews.

While it's very tempting, I'm trying not to write an "I-just-didn't-like-your-review" response to Don Shirley's dismissive review of David Mamet's "Oleanna," which premiered at the Tiffany Theater on Feb. 4 ("Casting's Just One Bug in 'Oleanna,' " Calendar, Feb. 7). Shirley has two issues with the Los Angeles production: First, the dubbed-by-him "controversial casting" of Lionel Smith, an African American, as the professor, and second, he doesn't like the play itself.

When David Mamet's "Oleanna" emerged in 1992, it was as if a cherry bomb had been planted under the seats of progressive theatergoers. Written in the controversial wake of the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill sexual harassment saga and smack in the middle of the bitterly divisive culture wars, the play took enormous delight in adopting a defiantly politically incorrect stance to the then-hot-button issue of political correctness. Nearly two decades later, it has become possible to respond to this polemical two-character drama with a cooler head.

In response to Camille Paglia's "The Real Lesson of 'Oleanna' " (Nov. 6): I would feel better about the films "Oleanna" and "Disclosure" if Hollywood had first made a movie dramatizing how sexual harassment disproportionately preys upon women in subordinate positions to their male harassers. Why is it that when sexual harassment finally hits the big screen in two major films, men are portrayed as its primary victims? Granted, the issue is sometimes complex and ambiguous, and artists like David Mamet are justified in probing its fuzzier regions.

I can't help but think that in Tammy Bruce's response ("When It Comes to Harassment, Paglia Cannot Speak for Us," Nov. 14) to Camille Paglia's commentary on David Mamet's film "Oleanna" ("The Real Lesson of 'Oleanna,' " Nov. 6), she is succumbing to the very problem Paglia is trying to identify: oversensitivity and overreaction. Mamet's work gives us a very clear picture of how anyone can, through careful manipulation of words out of context, denigrate anyone. As an educator, I have a perspective of the extent to which political correctness has begun to skew the learning process.

Over the past decade or so, David Mamet's "Oleanna" has intrigued audiences with its "Rashomon"-like perspective on a privileged, pedantic professor and the disgruntled female student who accuses him of sexual harassment. Made into a film in the mid-'90s, Mamet's searing examination of the politics of gender toys with our notion of reality. Is the professor an abusive sexist? Or is the student a dangerous ideologue with an ax to grind?

Class soon will be dismissed for David Mamet's "Oleanna." The Broadway premiere of his 1992 play, starring Bill Pullman and Julia Stiles, has posted a closing notice. Producers of the intense, two-person drama about sexual politics in a university town said the play would close Jan. 3 at the John Golden Theatre. Directed by Doug Hughes, the production of "Oleanna" first opened at the Mark Taper Forum in L.A. in June featuring the same cast. It opened on Broadway in October, receiving mixed to positive reviews.

At long last, "Oleanna" is going to Broadway. The revival of David Mamet's 1992 play, starring Julia Stiles and Bill Pullman and directed by Doug Hughes, opened at the Mark Taper Forum on June 5 to largely positive reviews. It will open at the John Golden Theatre on Oct. 11. This will be the first time the play, which revolves around a power struggle between a university professor and his student, has been seen on Broadway. "Oleanna" had its world premiere in 1992 in Cambridge, Mass.

When David Mamet's "Oleanna" emerged in 1992, it was as if a cherry bomb had been planted under the seats of progressive theatergoers. Written in the controversial wake of the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill sexual harassment saga and smack in the middle of the bitterly divisive culture wars, the play took enormous delight in adopting a defiantly politically incorrect stance to the then-hot-button issue of political correctness. Nearly two decades later, it has become possible to respond to this polemical two-character drama with a cooler head.

When Doug Hughes, the director of the revival of David Mamet's "Oleanna," heard that his two stars, Bill Pullman and Julia Stiles, were sitting down with a writer for the Los Angeles Times, he freaked out. "He said, 'Ohmigod! Don't say anything to him or to each other!' " Pullman recalls with a laugh. " 'Just drink coffee,' " Stiles chimes in.

Over the past decade or so, David Mamet's "Oleanna" has intrigued audiences with its "Rashomon"-like perspective on a privileged, pedantic professor and the disgruntled female student who accuses him of sexual harassment. Made into a film in the mid-'90s, Mamet's searing examination of the politics of gender toys with our notion of reality. Is the professor an abusive sexist? Or is the student a dangerous ideologue with an ax to grind?

When South Coast Repertory announced David Mamet's "Oleanna" for the Second Stage, it seemed a failure of imagination. SCR might as well have said that it needed a quick, cheap play to do and that "Oleanna," which opened Friday, was the quickest and cheapest it could find: It has two characters and requires no more than a desk, a couple of chairs and a telephone that rings.

When South Coast Repertory announced David Mamet's "Oleanna" for the Second Stage, it seemed a failure of imagination. SCR might as well have said that it needed a quick, cheap play to do and that "Oleanna," which opened Friday, was the quickest and cheapest it could find: It has two characters and requires no more than a desk, a couple of chairs and a telephone that rings.

When South Coast Repertory announced David Mamet's "Oleanna" for the Second Stage, it seemed a failure of imagination. SCR might as well have said that it needed a quick, cheap play to do and that "Oleanna," which opened Friday, was the quickest and cheapest it could find: It has two characters and requires no more than a desk, a couple of chairs and a telephone that rings.

Most people forget that the term "politically correct" was coined by Adolf Hitler's propagandist Joseph Goebbels as the basis of a single-minded Nazi philosophy. But playwright David Mamet sees a similarity in today's version of political correctness--particularly in our acceptance of being told what to think--and he exposes that danger in his tense, absorbing one-act drama "Oleanna."