Wallace Shawn on his plays

Wallace Shawn talks about three of his plays The Fever, Grasses of a Thousand Colours and Aunt Dan and Lemon.

The Fever

The Fever tells a made-up story, but it is in fact the most autobiographical of any of my plays because it reflects an emotional and intellectual journey that I really did make. To summarize it quickly and perhaps crudely, I did in fact somehow develop an ability to at least briefly see myself in the way that someone who had been harmed by me and who hated me might see me. I somehow was able for the first time (and I was over forty) to see myself not as the person who had X,Y, and Z thoughts and feelings but instead as the person who stood in a certain place in his society and performed X, Y, and Z actions. Strange as it may seem, it came as a blinding revelation to me that a peasant in Cambodia might possibly find me very very similar to a person who lived in air-conditioned rooms like me, ate in nice restaurants like me, and went to the theatre like me, even if that person had totally different taste in music, vegetables, and books. So I made up a story in which the central character faced the same extremely disturbing situation in life which I faced at that time and which I still face today.’

Grasses of a Thousand Colours

Grasses of a Thousand Colours is a mythological tale which, although it takes place in a made-up universe, somehow reflects the way I view the mechanisms of our real universe. Written at a time in which it is being revealed bit by bit that human beings, perhaps in particular male human beings, have been involved in activities which risk the survival of all life on planet earth, the play (itself written by a male human being) speculates on the relationship between man and animals, man and nature. But human beings are animals, are part of nature and nothing but nature, so the story of man and nature doesn’t have a simple or obvious shape. Sex is a force which operates throughout nature and is a particularly vivid representation of nature inside human beings, and the three women and one man in the play are tossed about on an ocean of sex. The play is also about relations of struggle, strife, friendship, and love between women and men. Love takes many forms, and combat takes many forms. It seems that everything will soon be dead. And yet – are there regenerative elements within the universe? Does it contain certain forces which would allow it to save itself? How do these forces work inside and between flawed, obsessed human beings?’

Aunt Dan and Lemon

I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that certain people are terribly attracted to brutality and violence. They find it exciting and in a way even glamorous. And Ive often wondered if Ive been overly flattering to myself in imagining that I’m not one of those people. Different cultures vary in the degree to which it is socially acceptable to gloat and rejoice openly over the suffering of ones enemies. Twentieth century fascists openly glorified the use of force and even offered praise to war itself, while British and American politicians speak of war in lachrymose, tragic tones as a lamentable last resort – but do they, or we, really enjoy it less than the fascists did? More importantly, does it really matter if the fascist exults in the use of force and I whimper miserably about it, if in the end the fascist and I both rely on the use of force to get what we want and share the spoils equally, the fascist laughing, I weeping? Is the fascist not perhaps more honest and less self-deceiving, and thus more attractive? What weapons do we have to fight the terrifying possibilities within ourselves? These questions are at the heart of Aunt Dan and Lemon.