The Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, director, and teacher gives us a blunt, irreverent, unsparingly honest guide to acting that overturns conventional truths and tells aspiring actors what they really need to know. David Mamet leaves no acting tenet untouched: How to judge the role, approach the part, work with the playwright. How to concentrate and think about the scene. How to avoid becoming the Paint-by-Numbers Mechanical Actor, the "How'm I Doing?" Ham Actor, the over-the-top "Hollywood Huff" Actor. The right way to undertake auditions and rehearsals. The proper approach to agents, to individual jobs, and to the business in general. The question of talent. --

The Water Engine is a story of a poor young factory worker who invents an engine that runs on water. Big business tries to force him to sell the rights. Mr. Happiness is a companion piece where a host of a radio show attempts to help his listeners in their personal problems.

Crime doesn't pay—or does it? When a con makes you rich, life gets a lot more complicated. For generations, the Voysey family business has been secretly cheating its clients. Edward, a junior partner who plans to take over the company from his aging father, is horrified when he discovers the embezzlement that has been keeping his relatives in the lap of luxury. But nobody wants Edward to dismantle the firm's criminal legacy—not his associates, not the woman he loves, and certainly not his large, pampered family. As the risk of exposure looms larger, and his sense of right and wrong becomes increasingly distorted, Edward comes to fully understand the consequences of his "inheritance." THE VOYSEY INHERITANCE is a witty, impeccably crafted portrait of a family in the midst of a surprisingly modern moral dilemma.