After Long Silence, David Mamet Finally Reveals Plot Details for His Upcoming Race

After six months of keeping mum on the subject, Broadway-bound playwright and director David Mamet has finally revealed plot details for his upcoming world premiere of new satire Race. The play, written and directed by the Pulitzer Prize winner, stars James Spader, Kerry Washington, Richard Thomas and Tony Award nominee David Alan Grier, and begins performances at the Ethel Barrymore Theater on November 16. Opening night is set for December 6.

"In my play a firm made up of three lawyers, two black and one white, is offered the chance to defend a white man charged with a crime against a black young woman. It is a play about lies," Mamet wrote in the September 13 Arts & Leisure section of The New York Times. He explained that the new work is intended as an addition to the ongoing dialogue about the subject of race, a conversatio that has been encouraged by President Obama, among others.

"Race, like sex, is a subject in which it is near impossible to tell the truth," he added.

Mamet has kept plot and character details for Race out of the press since the March 2009 announcement that the show would debut directly on Broadway.

Race features sets by Tony Award winner Santo Loquasto, lighting design by Brian Macdevitt and costumes by Tom Broecker. The production is being produced by Jeffrey Richards, Jerry Frankel and Steve Traxler, the team behind Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow, Glengarry Glen Ross and November, as well as August: Osage County, Blithe Spirit and Hair.