Wallace Shawn
Author of Marie and Bruce, Aunt Dan and Lemon, The Designated Mourner, A Thought in Three Parts, Our Late Night, My Dinner with Andre to perform his own work The Fever
Wallace Shawn is one of the most important modern playwrights of our time, yet he thinks few people appreciate his work. Inconceeeeeeeeeeevable!
I have learned more about life, more about the changing world and more about the fragility of the human mind from Wallace Shawn’s work than any other playwright I've ever written about. Combined with a searing insight into today’s global society, Shawn possesses a dark, playful wit.
If you consider yourself a theatre connoisseur and you don’t know Shawn’s work, or have never seen it performed, you are missing out. Get ready to have the crap scared out of you and not in an obvious way. That is far too easy in the world of Wallace Shawn.
His plays are difficult, brilliant, hilarious, almost heart breaking to experience.
If you know Wallace Shawn’s work, you know what I'm talking about.
The words of Shawn’s characters stay with you, be it the unnerving ramblings of cultural fugitive Jack in The Designated Mourner, the sacred and literally profane sexual desire of Marie in Marie and Bruce, or the chilling psychological sojourn of the androgenous Narrator in The Fever.
Shawn’s text haunts your mind forcing you to think about things you may not want to think about, because Shawn hits the subconscious underbelly of one’s judgmental ‘self’ while writing about societal rituals perilously close to reality. He slowly and cleverly makes you look inside your head. You cannot help it, because his work makes you question your very existence in your daily life. It’s both terrifying and exhilarating.
I read long ago that Shawn, who has performed his work in his living room to small groups of friends, said he’d rather have 40 people understand his work, than 400 who have no idea what he's talking about, though ironically that's likely the audience he's writing about.
Shawn still performs to small groups – case in point – New York’s 2000 production The Designated Mourner featuring (Shawn's partner) Deborah Eisenberg as Judy, Larry Pine as Howard and Wallace Shawn as Jack directed by My Dinner with Andre's, Andre Gregory.
The same cast performed Mourner for WNYC FM’s The Next Big Thing in 2002.
To many, Shawn’s playwright status seems like a secret identity, because most people know him for film and television work . He's an extremely versatile actor of stage and screen, having done many a cartoon and movie role from Vizzini in The Princess Bride, which bears Shawn’s immortal catch phase “inconceeeeveable” to his ultra-cool cult status as Ferengi leader Grand Nagus Zek on Star Trek's Deep Space Nine.
Shawn adapted The Threepenny Opera for The Roundabout Theatre to great response and recently performed in Hurlyburly opposite Ethan Hawke, Bobby Carnivale, and Parker Posey for The New Group directed by Scott Elliott.
Elliott, like Andre Gregory, is another of Shawn's preferred creative colleagues and maybe these two had a scathingly brilliant idea. In 1990, Shawn first performed his play The Fever at an apartment for a priviliged few 'somewhere near Seventh Avenue in New York City'. In January 2007, Shawn will perform The Fever for The New Group also directed by Scott Elliott.
To coin a phrase - The Fever is spreading.
Earlier this year Shawn released The Fever in a two disc CD set through The Shout Factory, while Shawn’s plays, especially The Designated Mourner, are being performed on a more regular basis. Marie and Bruce, The Fever, and The Designated Mourner have all been adapted for film, so the audience market for Shawn’s work is growing.
Many people don’t know the flipside of Wallace Shawn, but because of events happening in today’s turbulent world, perhaps some feel the time has come to look beyond Shawn The Actor and discover Shawn The Playwright - an unsettling, yet crucial voice.
