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more, Vincent Guastaferro is quite fluent in the art of Mamet-speak By J. Wynn Rousuck SUN THEATER CRITIC incent Guastaferro is a card-carrying member of what has been called the Reaching into his briefcase, the actor removes an engraved notecard on which playwright David Mamet has written: Yo Vincenz Mazel tov! Front sight, squeeze the trigger. Give hell in Love, Dave. Mamet is referring to role in Center production of the Speed-the-Plow which begins performances Friday. Over the last decades, Guastaferro has appeared in a dozen Mamet plays or movies, beginning with a 1979 production of Sexual Perversity in Chicago and continuing through just-released movie, Spartan jump at the opportunity to do his work because face it, I be completely objective I love the guy and I love his Guastaferro says.

think one of the most vibrant voices in American drama That explains why the Los Angeles-based actor has eagerly traveled across the country to portray Charlie Fox, a low-level movie producer in 1988 play about wheeling and dealing, friendship and betrayal, sex and selling out in Hollywood. Nor does it hurt that notoriously challenging dialogue seems to be mother tongue. a language or, more precisely, a dialect that has earned its own name: Mamet-speak. The chief characteristics are repetitions, pauses, unfinished sentences, staccato delivery and more than a dash of profanity. Leaving out the profanity (at least in the course of an interview) and adding a high degree of articulateness, a good deal of Mamet-speak in fast-paced conversation.

He notes the similarity several times when he catches himself interrupting his own thought. For instance, launching into a discussion of language, Guastaferro breaks into his own monologue, saying: do find, and this is funny, let me tell you this, first of all, when I catch myself talking like that saying, my God, a because inserting in the middle of my own sentences, and I think why the fit is good, and I think why he likes me. I label it, but the guy picks me often, and maybe because of Even so, Guastaferro admits that Mamet-speak is difficult to more so, in fact, than Shakespeare. done but for me I almost find Shakespeare a little easier because at least he does like to complete sentences and he does have a definite iambic pentameter rhythm to he explains. He also claims that his familiarity with use of words, however, make it any easier for him to probe the meaning hidden in the text.

because done it a lot and done it often, mean I get it better than anybody else. have never read a Mamet script that I had to read two or three times first just to get it. Just to get it. Especially on the page. When you see it on stage, you go, what that means.

OK. I get But on the page, really, for lack of a better way to put it, confounding to he says. Shakespeare, something called the long he continues. saying one thing, but he takes several stanzas to say it. With David, you have to look for that to uncover the sense of what revealing.

You have to examine his text in the same way you would examine Shakespeare looking for the long thought, the point of what saying, even though disguised with truncated indicative of the Shakespearean level of difficulty, Guastaferro believes, that he is co-starring at Center Stage opposite an actor, David Chandler, who is versed in Shakespeare and has done so many huge classical Similarly, he describes the director, Daniel Fish, as a man who directed a lot of Shakespeare, and he gets Importance of friends Guastaferro does refer to one frequently overlooked element in language that can help actors with the text musicality. Mamet is a very schooled musician. He plays piano. He sings well and a music to The rests, the pauses in his speech, are much like the rests in music. They have to be honored, or the notes following the rests are not as important as supposed to he explains.

not iambic pentameter, but there are iambs in his speech ba BA, ba BA, ba BA with the emphasis on the second syllable often. why you will see in his text, often, the word repeated, and the second time repeated, As for penchant for incomplete sentences, Guastaferro says, leaves thoughts unfinished because the high de- gree of familiarity he establishes between friends is that your friend can complete your thoughts for Friendship is a key element in Speed-the-Plow In the play, the longstanding personal and professional relationship between character, Charlie Fox, and Bobby Gould, the newly named head of production at a major motion picture studio, is put to the test, in part, by the interference of attractive young temporary secretary. Although Guastaferro has not acted in Speed-the-Plow before, this is at least the third time appeared with someone called Bobby Gould. because a character with that name (or, in the case of 1991 movie, Homicide Bobby appears throughout work. a character, Guastaferro explains, who is surrounded by very close friends, and usually that guy.

In other words, if Bobby Gould in this play, for example, is the higher- minded of the two of us, the guy with a little bit of conscience, the more base character of those Gould is generally considered to be the alter ego, an assessment with which Guastaferro agrees. think that the Bobby Gould or Bobby Gold character has more of David in him than any other character that he he says. the Guastaferro met Mamet in the mid-1970s, when the actor was a graduate student at Goodman School of Drama. But he dates the start of their friendship to a few years later, when he was hired to replace actor Jim Belushi in a Chicago production of Sexual Perversity in Chicago I remember is Dave came to see the play, and, believe it or not, I was nervous, even though I had met he says. came back to the dressing room after the play, and he said, like the way you say my And that was it.

And I thought, From him, that was like a real The continuing admiration for acting eventually led to the 1997 Broadway debut in The Old Neighborhood (in which he played, not surprisingly, a friend of a character named Bobby Gould). His casting came about after a small role he played in movie The Spanish Prisoner wound up on the cutting room floor. Guastaferro recalls: called me and said, news put you in the film. out. Good news and his line was the I said, He said, doing this thing, and the guy.

the And you know, it takes you a while to decipher what he means. And what he meant was, casting you in this play, and I want you to come and do it for The performance in The Old Neighborhood won him encomiums in Boston, where the play made its debut, and subsequently in New York. The Boston Globe called him, a Joe Franz The New York Times praised his comic The comparison to Mantegna and Franz, two other Mamet veterans, is hardly incidental. Along with such actors as William H. Macy, Felicity Huffman wife), Rebecca Pidgeon (the wife) and, of course, Guastaferro, they are members of the unofficial Mamet Mafia.

For that reason, casting in Center Speed-the-Plow got to please on some the actor says. would probably take a little bit of pleasure and joy out of knowing that one of his guys is off doing his he explains. always honored to do Theater Center Stage lands a member of the Vincent Guastaferro Mamet-speak Here is an example of David idiosyncratic dialogue, taken from Speed-the-Plow Gould Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Charles you get too old, too busy to have this business; to have then what are Fox Gould What are you? Fox What am Gould Yes. Fox What am I when? Gould What are you, I was saying, if just a slave to commerce? Fox If just a slave to commerce? Gould Yes. Fox nothing.

Gould. No. Fox. absolutely right. Where: Center Stage, 700 N.

Calvert St. When: April 2-May 2. 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 7:30 p.m. most Sundays; matinees at 2 p.m.

most Saturdays and Sundays Tickets: Call: 410-332-0033 Born: New York; raised, Jersey City, N.J. Current home: Los Angeles Education: BFA from the University of Toledo; MFA from the Goodman School of Drama Selected Mamet credits: Plays Sexual Perversity in Chicago Lakeboat The Old Neighborhood (Broadway debut), Speed-the-Plow movies Things Change Homicide The Water Engine State and Main Spartan Other notable appearances: Played Sgt. Vincent Agostini for three seasons on NYPD Blue; Al Capone in the 1988 ABC movie, Frank Nitti: The Enforcer; one of Joe business partners in Barry Liberty Heights. KIM HAIRSTON SUN STAFF Vincent Guastaferro will be appearing in Center production of He has long experience of working in plays and movies written by David Mamet. ASSOCIATED PRESS The playwright David Mamet uses repetition, pauses, unfinished sentences and profanity in a telling way.

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