The first play by Wallace Shawn to be produced in New York was Our Late Night, which was produced at
Joseph Papp’s Public Theater in 1975, directed by André Gregory. A Thought in Three Parts was done 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, was first
performed at the Royal National Theatre in London by 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. Shawn also wrote the libretto
for Allen Shawn’s opera The Music Teacher, which Tom Cairns directed for The New Group in New York
(2006). Shawn recently translated The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht (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 will be published in June.