Cue the Drama

Related Content

• Florida Beer Company Says Bud Light Stole Their Blue Bottle Idea
  December 28, 2011
• Miami-Dade police drones are ready for action
  November 17, 2011
• Compact discs and four other favorite obsolete music formats
  November 17, 2011
• MDPD is First Force to Get FAA Clearance to Fly Drones at Crime Scenes
  November 15, 2011
• CDs Are Dead! Crossfade's Five Fave Obsolete Music Formats
  November 1, 2011

More About

• Speed the Plow
• Hollywood (California)
• William Selig
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media
• Theatrical Plays

In 1896, William Selig founded the first film studio in Hollywood, California, then a sleepy farming town, in order to escape Thomas Edison's Eastern cartel. But what he created was a commodity factory that far exceeded Edison's New Jersey black box and didn't always stay true to its artistic roots.

Speed-the-Plow, a play by David Mamet, breaks down that classic push-and-pull between art and commerce in Tinseltown. Two midlevel execs debate whether to take on an inane blockbuster or an adaptation of an apocalyptic novel, and when their secretary gets drawn into the argument, Hollywood's true identity as a degenerate slum begins to take shape.

In Mamet's own words, Speed-the-Plow is "about work and the end of the world." The play is enjoying its Southeast premiere at GableStage at the Biltmore Hotel, a building that radiates the noir glamour of 1930s Hollywood.
Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 & 7 p.m. Starts: Aug. 15. Continues through Sept. 13, 2009