In 1992 David Mamet, during the case of Anita Hill, who accused Justice Clarence Thomas of harassment, wrote for the theater Oleanna, a play that he himself would bring to the big screen two years later, in 1994.

John, is a brilliant university professor who receives Carol, a disgruntled student convinced of her own stupidity, into his study. The teacher tries to be sympathetic, to help her; caught up from personal problems, such as buying a new house, he ends up making some potentially ambiguous statements. A "normal" conversation turns into a full-blown accusation: machismo, racism, sexual harassment. The professor, helpless, witnesses the reversal of his status, the upheaval of his certainties, those certainties on which he has built his life: affections, a certain affluence, work. A student and a professor within a system of education that promotes, blocks, rewards, backs off, pushes, judges, instructs, shushes, labels. A nail-biting text in which the two sides switch and reverse, descend and ascend in their positions more or less consciously. Thanks to a masterful use of words, lies or simple personal experience, Mamet bisects the analysis of the dynamics of power, of control. More generally he dissects the concept of truth, of events alleged to have happened, in a classroom, locking us inside a ring where the two voices are in seemingly perfect balance. Monosyllables from her, lunges from him, pulls from her, suspensions from him. An alternating ups and downs in search of resolution. Through a "banal" episode that touches two generations, two roles, two genders. More topical than ever, today this text, at a time when ever new "cases" of "sexual harrassment," violence, bullying, in all spheres of society, are multiplying and making the rounds.