Glengarry Glen Ross

David Mamet is an American playwright and filmmaker who grew up in Chicago. He wrote his first short play, entitled Camel, as an undergraduate thesis at Goddard College in Vermont. After graduating in 1969, Mamet worked several odd jobs that provided material for his later plays. He worked as a cook on a cargo freighter, a position that later inspired his 1970 play Lakeboat, and he spent a year working for a Chicago real estate office, which would serve as inspiration over a decade later for Glengarry Glen Ross. Returning to Vermont, Mamet taught acting at Marlboro College before taking a position as an acting professor at Goddard College. He began writing plays to be performed by his students, one of whom was future screen star William H. Macy, who would go on to originate several leading roles in Mamet’s plays and films. With Macy (among other students), Mamet relocated to Chicago to start a small regional theatre that would produce premieres of some of Mamet’s early works. Mamet won the prestigious Joseph Jefferson award for Sexual Perversity in Chicago, produced by Chicago’s Organic Theater Company in 1974 and opening alongside Mamet’s The Duck Variations Off-Broadway in 1976. His first major breakthrough success was American Buffalo, premiering at Chicago’s prominent Goodman Theatre in 1975 and then on Broadway in 1977.