Keep Your Pantheon (and School)

Two Unrelated Plays

David Mamet

• Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781559363914
• eBook ISBN: 9781559367240
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Drama
• Index: Literature

Two comic short plays by one of the theatre's most celebrated and compelling writers:

Keep Your Pantheon is a rousing farce that follows the fortunes and misfortunes of an impoverished acting troupe in ancient Rome. Featuring an over-the-hill acting guru who lusts after both his toga-clad protégé and a spot in the Sicilian Cork Festival, Mamet’s play returns to the roots of comedy, paying homage to the Roman playwright Plautus, whose works also inspired Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors and the musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

“With Keep Your Pantheon, David Mamet, who’s been crowned the heavyweight playwriting champion of trash-talking masculinity, showcases what is perhaps his most underrated gift: his Houdini-like ability to slip out of pigeonholes. Mamet, one of the undeniably great playwrights of the baby boomer generation, is a literary conglomerate all his own, a writer too street-smart to let artistic success suffocate him. Give him a genre—in any medium—and he’ll be more than happy to show you what he can do. Mamet is like a shark shooting through the ocean, his very survival dependent on moving forward.” –Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times

Also included in this volume, School is a crackling curtain-raiser in which two teachers shoot back-and-forth on topics ranging from pedophilia to recycling.

“School offers a textbook example of the style that made its author famous. This merry little sketch moves with the show-off alacrity of a calculus prodigy whizzing through equations at the blackboard. The characters’ words bounce and click like the soles of virtuoso tap dances, riffing with their feet. This is verbal vaudeville as only Mr. Mamet can deliver it.” –Ben Brantley, New York Times

This play is dedicated to Jack Wallace

PRODUCTION HISTORY

Keep Your Pantheon premiered in May 2008 at the Center Theatre Group (Michael Ritchie, Artistic Director; Charles Dillingham, Managing Director) in Los Angeles. It was performed as a double bill with The Duck Variations. It was directed by Neil Pepe. Set design was by Takeshi Kata, costume design was by Ilona Somogyi, lighting design was by Christopher Akerlind and sound design was by Cricket S. Myers. The production stage manager was David S. Franklin and the stage manager was Elizabeth Atkinson. The cast was as follows:

HERALD	Vincent Guastaferro
STRABO	Ed O’Neill
PELARGON	David Paymer
PHILIUS	Michael Cassidy
RAMUS	Jack Wallace
QUINTUS MAGNUS	Steven Goldstein
TITUS	J. J. Johnston
LUPUS ALBUS	Dominic Hoffman
MESSENGER	Rod McLachlan
ENSEMBLE	Jeffrey Addiss, Rod McLachlan, Jonathan Rossetti

Keep Your Pantheon was produced in September 2009 at Atlantic Theater Company (Neil Pepe, Artistic Director; Jeffory Lawson, Managing Director) in New York City. It was performed as a double bill with School. It was directed by Neil Pepe. Set design was by Takeshi Kata, costume design was by Ilona Somogyi and lighting design was by Christopher Akerlind. The production stage manager was Gregory T. Livoti. The cast was as follows:

HERALD	Steven Hawley
STRABO	Brian Murray
PELARGON	John Pankow
PHILIUS	Michael Cassidy
RAMUS	Jack Wallace
QUINTUS MAGNUS	Todd Weeks
TITUS	J. J. Johnston
LUPUS ALBUS	Jordan Lage
MESSENGER	Rod McLachlan
ENSEMBLE	Jeffrey Addiss, Rod McLachlan, Jonathan Rossetti

CHARACTERS

HERALD

STRABO: An actor

PELARGON: An actor

PHILIUS: Strabo’s young apprentice

RAMUS: An old drunk

QUINTUS MAGNUS: The landlord

MESSENGER

MAN

AUDIENCE

TITUS: A jailor

LUPUS ALBUS: The White Wolf of Phrygia, a general

CENTURIONS

ARMORERS

GUARDS

PRIEST

SETTING

Ancient Rome.

The impatient crowd rushed at the dawn of day to secure their places, and there were many who passed a sleepless and anxious night in the adjacent porticos. From the morning to the evening, careless of the sun, or of the rain, the spectators, who sometimes amounted to the number of four hundred thousand, remained in eager attention.

—Edward Gibbon,

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Scene One

An actors’ studio in ancient Rome. Two actors, Strabo and Pelargon, in ratty clothes, are batting their arms, trying to keep warm. Walking up and down.

Outside, in the rain, a Herald walks by the open windows.

HERALD:

O for the tongues of all the gods

To decry that fate, which ’gainst all odds

Has brought the Tenth African Legion low

Oh, Rome, rend your garments and ashes throw . . .

STRABO: Has anybody seen my codpiece? . . .

HERALD:

Has brought the Tenth African

Legion low . . .

PELARGON (To the Herald): Hey, what happened to the Tenth African Legion?

HERALD:

The Tenth African Legion has suffered its first defeat . . .

STRABO: Mee, me, mo mo moo moo . . . Has anybody seen my codpiece? . . .

HERALD:

They have suffered their first defeat

Loss is more bitter than victory’s sweet.

STRABO: Mmee mee hah mah . . . Would you, would you, give a working man a break.

HERALD: Buy Sosostris Sandals—the Egyptians wor...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• KEEP YOUR PANTHEON
• SCHOOL