I played John in a production of OLEANNA by David Mamet, directed by Lucy Bailey and running between 2020-21, first at the Theatre Royal in Bath, then on tour and finally at the Arts Theatre in the West End.
It seems paradoxical that writing which most mirrors the very naturalistic way that humans converse should be the hardest to learn.Mamet is a master at it, but the way he writes people interrupting and cutting each other off in seemingly random ways is fiendishly difficult to get your head around, at least at first. It makes it all the more important to know exactly what your character is thinking at any moment and what they intend to say, regardless of whether they get the opportunity to!The play is a two hander that throws up challenges on the constantly fluid power shifts between the two characters and, of course, accent as it is set in America and my character had a specific, non-generic accent.
I can help you with creating an unbroken internal narrative for your character, how to play with power dynamics in a scene and where to go for a tricky dialect.