Wallace Shawn Plays 1

'There is a quality in Shawn's writing - imaginative verve, quiet intensity, a sort of puritan sensitivity or a blend of them all.' The Times

This first collection of Wallace Shawn's work contains plays from the seventies and eighties, including Aunt Dan and Lemon, described by Frank Rich in the New York Times as 'the most stimulating, not to mention demanding, American play to emerge this year'.

Aunt Dan and Lemon
'A mordant comedy for those who really listen in the theatre... A playwright of astonishing originality and veracity.' New York Times

Marie and Bruce
'A play that sees, hears, smells and tells more about the way we really live now than any American play in years... Wallace Shawn is a true original, one of the most deeply seeing, sharply writing playwrights we have.' Newsweek

The Fever
'A profoundly engaging and provocative journey through the awakening of a pampered man's conscience.' Newsday

A Thought in Three Parts
'Wallace Shawn's highly acclaimed play is a trio of playlets exploring the theme of sexual isolation, each in a very different dramatic style which still retains the author's quite distinctive ability to combine colloquialisms with highly poetic writing in a quirky, sinister way... nasty, hilarious and quite riveting for all the right reasons.' Time Out

Wallace Shawn's first play to be produced in New York was Our Late Night, directed by André Gregory at The Public Theater in 1975. A Thought in Three Parts was staged two years later by the Joint Stock Theatre Group in London, directed by Max Stafford-Clark. Shawn's next three plays - Marie and Bruce, Aunt Dan & Lemon, and The Fever - were all performed in New York at the Public Theater and in London at the Royal Court. Aunt Dan and Lemon was revived in London in 1999 at the Almeida Theatre, directed by Tom Cairns. Shawn's next play, The Designated Mourner, premiered at the National Theatre, London, with Mike Nichols, Miranda Richardson, and David de Keyser under the direction of David Hare, and was then performed in New York by Wallace Shawn, Deborah Eisenberg, and Larry Pine under the direction of André Gregory. In 2009, the Royal Court held a Wallace Shawn season, reviving Aunt Dan and Lemon and The Fever, and staging the premiere of Grasses of a Thousand Colours. Shawn wrote the libretto for Allen Shawn's opera The Music Teacher, directed by Tom Cairns for The New Group in New York (2006). Shawn translated Brecht's The Threepenny Opera (performed in New York at the Roundabout, Studio 54, directed by Scott Elliott). Wallace Shawn and André Gregory wrote and performed in the film My Dinner with André and André Gregory directed Shawn in Vanya on 42nd Street. Shawn has appeared as an actor in many films, including Manhattan, Clueless, Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills,The Moderns, and The Wife. Shawn's Essays was published by Haymarket Books in 2009.