A Thought in Three Parts

Publication

In Four Plays; New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998. ISBN 0374525358

Production

First performed in 1976, subscribers-only workshop presentation, by The New York Shakespeare Company (as Three Short Plays); directed by Wilford Leach and Leonardo Shapiro.

Sarah: Deborah Rush

David: John Bottoms

Dick: Jeffrey Horowitz

Helen: Karen Ludwig

Judy: Kathleen Tolan

Bob: Colin Garrey

Tom: Ron Van Lieu

Mr Frivolous: Frederick Newmann

First U.K. production 1977, Joint Stock Company at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; directed by Max Stafford-Clark.

David: Philip Sayer

Sarah: Robyn Goodman

Dick: Jack Klaff

Helen: Stephanie Fayerman

Judy: Robyn Goodman

Bob: Paul-John Geoffrey

Tom: Philip Sayer

Mr Frivolous: Tony Rohr

Ex Nihilo Theatre at the Battersea Arts Centre, London, 2002; directed by Joseph Hill-Gibbins. Review

First U.S. production, Rubber Repertory at VORTEX Theatre, Austin, TX, 2007; directed by Josh Meyer, Matt Hislope, and Carlos Trevino. Production information, article, review

David: Mark Stewart

Sarah: Adriene Mishler

Dick: Josh Meyer

Helen: Roasruby Glaberman

Judy: Kelli Bland

Bob: Matt Hislope

Mr Frivolous: David Yeakle

It's strange, there's nothing, there isn't anything I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't do for pleasure. I'd stick a hot poker up my ass if I thought I would like it.

A Thought in Three Parts (1976) by Wallace Shawn

Summer Evening: A young couple is staying at a foreign hotel. She loses herself in cold, sensual daydreams, while he tries to express his frustrated longing for her and fails.

The Youth Hostel: Dick, Helen, Bob and Judy are sitting around with nothing to do. Bob, who's never had a girlfriend, asks to see Judy's breasts. This sets off a wildly pornographic series of confrontations where no one can avoid saying or doing the first thing that comes to mind.

Mr Frivolous: A man eats breakfast and delivers a brief, dreamy monologue to a lost lover.

Notes

What is the thought made up of these parts? The only obvious through-line is desire, for sex and for connections: unattainable in Summer Evening, absent but childishly dreamed of in Mr Frivolous, and compulsively pursued in The Youth Hostel.

In Hostel, the stage directions as written are not only X-rated, but more or less physically impossible outside the world of movies (it's hard to find a male stage actor who can have three plentiful orgasms in ten minutes, on cue). The piece clearly follows the rules of the typical porn movie, in that no one can enter a room without ending up having sex, and most of the sex ends up being accidentally witnessed by someone else who must then join in. But the dialogue and the emotional action could hardly be less titillating: all of the characters are subject to wild mood swings and are generally unbearably disappointed by everything they try, and when someone actually manages to have fun, the mood is deflated by comically flat dialogue ("Oh, boy—this is really enjoyable!").

The 1977 London production was visited by a vice squad, and led to calls in the House of Lords to stop government funding for the Institute of Contemporary Arts.