Read more
And so yes, well, I''d simply dropped that whole idea of being a good person, I''d dropped it right down into some hole in the street, and down it had gone into the city''s sewers, and no one ever saw it again. And that was sad, if you thought it was sad, or I suppose it was sad, or some people probably would say it was sad. As an acclaimed writer finds himself drawn towards a hedonistic lifestyle, his neglect of his wife and son reveals his moral turpitude. Wallace Shawn''s first new play in ten plays, another viciously witty indictment of the liberal intelligentsia and its hidden depravity, will be staged in rep with a revival of The Fever at an Off-Broadway theatre in January 2026.
About the author
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.
