Wallace Shawn

This unusual person is instantly recognizable to most viewers of American movies and TV. He's less well known for his work as a writer, which is what these notes are about.

Plays discussed here

The Hotel Play (1970)

Our Late Night (1975)

A Thought in Three Parts (1976)

Marie and Bruce (1978)

My Dinner with Andre (1980)

Aunt Dan and Lemon (1985)

The Fever (1990)

The Designated Mourner (1996)

Grasses of a Thousand Colors (2014)

Evening at the Talk House (2015)

Other plays

(All of these except The Mandrake are unpublished, and are described in Writing Wrongs)

The Music Teacher (1983). Libretto for opera, music by his brother Allen Shawn. Had only readings, no full productions, until 2006 when it was produced in New York by The New Group.

The Mandrake (1977). Translation/adaptation of Niccolo Machiavelli's 1524 political satire, with music and lyrics by Howard Goodall. Published in an acting edition from Dramatists Play Service (ISBN 0822207281).

In the Dark (1975). Libretto for one-act opera, music by his brother Allen Shawn. Produced in 1976.

The Hospital Play (1971). Presented as a reading at the Public Theater.

The Family Play (1970).

Four Meals in May (1967).

Short writings

• "Mission: possible". Interview, April 1997. Interview by Shawn with actor Vanessa Redgrave (who later filmed The Fever) on current political trends and the function of theater artists in a troubled world.

• "The Foreign Policy Therapist". The Nation, December 3, 2001. (Also printed in The Guardian, December 3, 2001.) The United States of America asks a therapist for advice: "I don't know what to do. I want to be safe. I want safety. But I have a terrible problem..."

• Letter. The Nation, February 4, 2002. Shawn responds briefly to criticism that "The Foreign Policy Therapist" lacked "compassion": "The patient is armed and dangerous and is killing people between sessions."

• "The Dangerous Restaurant". The Nation, October 28, 2002. The state of the world considered as a small room full of heavily armed people trying to mind their own business. "When the strongest, most successful and most ruthless person in a group claims to be taking some particularly nasty and aggressive action against another member of the group because he claims to be afraid of them, it's sometimes hard to take him seriously—especially if, instead of looking fearful, he seems to have an excited smile on his face, as if he were having the time of his life."

• "Fragments from a Diary". The Nation, March 31, 2003. Notes from the months leading up to the Second Gulf War. "Meanwhile, I read my New York Times, and it's all very calm. The people who write there seem to have a need to believe that their government, while sometimes wrong, of course, is not utterly insane, and must at least be trusted to raise the right questions. These writers just can't bear the thought of being completely alienated from the center of their society, their own government."

Other reading

• Wikipedia - biography etc.
• "The Secret Life of Wally Shawn". Esquire, 1983. Profile by Don Shewey, following the release of My Dinner with Andre. Very thorough.
• Writing Wrongs, W.D. King's 1997 book about Shawn (reviewed here)