The Designated Mourner

In The Designated Mourner, former English lit student, Jack would rather read skin mags than the poetry of John Donne. He is the only one left of his kind. Why ?

Everyone Jack ever knew, is gone - taken and executed by one of several government factions. Could it be global revolutionaries, the great unwashed "dirt eaters", or has this horror been conceived right in his own backyard. Noone knows, so Jack appoints himself The Designated Mourner.

My husband saw Eric Peterson in The Designated Mourner in 1997.The piece made such an impact that Tom decided he would one day direct this play if we could find the right performer.

Ere the days of Poor Tom we discovered the like-minded Isinglass Theatre, and the only man to play Jack - actor, now photographer, Ted Phythian who one critic called - "a tour de force as the acidly charming Jack." It took almost a year and half of rehearsals to put The Designated Mourner up on its feet. Phythian was nothing short of amazing in (as Eric Peterson noted ) an extremely difficult role with cast members Katharine Mills as Judy, and Scott Crockard as Howard as the ghostly, maybe loved ones, of Jack's past.

I watched Phythian, as Peterson put it, "track through", and "build his own house."

Wallace Shawn's lauguage, the rhythm, the musicality of it, was mesmorizing - the interlocking monologues, beautifully merged with Jack's rambling arias in this chilling Orwellian existence. For the Isinglass production, I was Phythian's line coach and I especially loved Jack's fascination with his 'self.' ... in The Designated Mourner.

From then on.. more and more often I'd find my mind had just slipped away from me, following some peculiar will of its own. One day she (Judy) said to me something like, " I don't understand your relationship to society. I don't understand your relationship to the world you live in." "Can I tell you something"? I said to her snappily. "Do you know something? I don't understand my relationship to my own ass. I mean, I was standing naked in the bathroom this morning, and when I saw my ass in the mirror, I just said to myself, "What is that? What is that? And what does it have to do with me.?"