Confused? Explore your past. It made you who you are and will show you where you're going.

This is the idea of The Old Neighborhood by David Mamet, a play, or rather a conglomeration of three one-act plays, said Hillary Cook, No Refund Theatre (NRT) president and director of the NRT production of The Old Neighborhood.

Last semester NRT performed Oleanna by Mamet, who in all his plays, like the famous State and Main, is known for his strong dialogue written the way people speak, Cook said.

The main character of The Old Neighborhood is a pseudo-autobiographical representation of the author as he deals with religious ambiguities, confronts his Jewish upbringing and searches for the future direction of his life, Cook said.

The greater message of the play is examining relationships through past experiences, she added.

"Parts are very funny. Overall it's humor, but dark humor, in a way," Cook said. "Intelligent comedy; not slapstick. It's more serious than comedic."

"[Mamet's writing] is a great venue to analyze dialogue. We look at the middle-aged characters and we look at the actors our age ... it's about our experiences and how they affect everything we do more than we know," she added.

The first scene, or the first of the one-act plays, takes place when middle-aged Bobby Gould visits his best childhood friend in the neighborhood where they grew up to reminisce. They quickly realize how unhappy they are these days and reflect on how they wish their lives were.

"Bobby has recently left his wife, for reasons left unexplained in the play. He's confused about where his life is going," said Micah Winarchick, a State College resident who plays the role of Bobby Gould.

Jason Poorman (senior-integrative arts) plays Bobby's childhood friend. Poorman said he can relate to the "back in the day" conversation and reminiscing about "when you were younger and more foolish."

Poorman said his scene has both elements of funny banter and serious conversation as the two characters talk about feeling trapped in marriage.

"The language of David Mamet doesn't seem to make sense on the page," Poorman said. "It has a very nice flow to it once you say it and work with it and memorize it. It's close to how people speak."

The general consensus among the actors complied with that assessment.

"It's a lot harder to memorize [though]," Winarchick said. "Inserting phrases on top of people's lines" is one of the most challenging aspects of performing this play.

The three scenes in this play were written about ten years apart from each other, Winarchick said. Mamet put them together in the early 1990s, though they closely mirror one another.

Cook said the first few weeks of rehearsal the troupe practiced the scenes separately. Winarchick was the only actor to see how the acts pieced together until this week of rehearsal.

"[It was] not as big for me to put them together -- there's a lot of parallelism between acts. It was cool for the other actors to see how their scenes relate to each other," Winarchick said.

The second of the intense scenes, rich with quip dialogue, is Bobby's visit to his younger sister, played by Lindsey Dinsmore (freshman-theatre). The two recall their tough childhood with their mother and stepfamily.

Dinsmore said she is enjoying meeting older students and NRT has given her the opportunity to seek guidance from students further along in her major. Dinsmore was involved with theater in high school but has noted the differences between high school and college theater.

"There's a lot more leeway with content and language," she said.

She is also very impressed with the student directing.

"I directed a one-act in high school and I know how hard that was ... Hillary [Cooke] wants it to be exact," she said. "It was written that way for a reason," Dinsmore, who was not familiar with Mamet before, said. Sticking to the script has been challenging, she said, because she is used to ad-libbing.

The final act of this approximately 90-minute production is a conversation between Bobby and his first love.

"We're very comfortable," Winarchick said. "Just about ready [to perform]."