Aunt Dan and Lemon

Aunt Dan and Lemon PDF Author: Wallace Shawn
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN: 9780802151032
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 122

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Book Description
Aunt Dan & Lemon takes us into the world of a young recluse named Lemon (alias Leonora) who spends her nights reading chronicles of Nazi atrocities. Lemon tells the audience about the overwhelming influence in her life of her parents' friend "Aunt Dan," an eccentric, passionate professor whose stories and seductive opinions enthrall Lemon from the time she is a young girl. The relationship that develops between Lemon and Aunt Dan and the conversations that went on in a small house on the bottom of an English garden form the focus of this play about political orientation and the allure of certain ideas-even if they lead to murder. A forceful play exposing the banality of society's evil, Aunt Dan & Lemon explores the ease with which good and bad become reconciled in the human mind.

Aunt Dan and Lemon

Aunt Dan and Lemon PDF Author: Wallace Shawn
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service, Inc.
ISBN: 9780822200765
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 84

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Book Description
THE STORY: The action begins in the London flat of Lenora (Lemon), a rather frail, introspective young woman who tells us, with a chilling calm, why she rather admires the Nazis for their refreshing lack of hypocrisy, and who then, in a series of

The Designated Mourner

The Designated Mourner PDF Author: Wallace Shawn
Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
ISBN: 1559366567
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 73

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Book Description
“The play nicely combines Pinterian menace with caustic political commentary.” –Time “Acerbic, elusive, poetic and chilling, the writing is demanding in a rarefied manner. Its implications are both affecting and disturbing.” –Los Angeles Times “In his exquisitely written dramatic lament for the decline of high culture. . . . [Shawn] offers a definition of the self that should rattle the defenses of intellectual snobs everywhere.” –The New York Times Writer and performer Wallace Shawn’s landmark 1996 play features three characters—a respected poet, his daughter, and her English-professor husband—suspected of subversion in a world where culture has come under the control of the ruling oligarchy. Told through three interwoven monologues, the Orwellian political story is recounted alongside the visceral dissolution of a marriage. The play debuted at the Royal National Theatre in London, in a production directed by David Hare, who also directed the film version, starring Mike Nichols and Miranda Richardson. The play’s subsequent New York premiere was staged in a long-abandoned men’s club in lower Manhattan, directed by Shawn’s longtime collaborator André Gregory. Wallace Shawn is the author of Our Late Night (OBIE Award for Best Play), Marie and Bruce, Aunt Dan and Lemon, The Fever, and the screenplay for My Dinner with André. His most recent play, Grasses of a Thousand Colors, premiered last year in London.

Four Plays

Four Plays PDF Author: Wallace Shawn
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780374525354
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Award-winning playwright and actor Wallace Shawn offers four plays with themes that include sexual convention, historical guilt, and the conflict between high and low culture, all described with remarkable and attentive language. Shawn's plays are prizes for any reader ready to be challenged with new, unflinching (and maybe even dangerous) ways of looking at the world.

Essays

Essays PDF Author: Wallace Shawn
Publisher: Haymarket Books
ISBN: 1608460037
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 121

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Book Description
A collection of “deceptively simple, profoundly thoughtful, fiercely honest” essays on art, life, and politics by the acclaimed actor and playwright (Howard Zinn, author of Political Awakenings and Indispensable Zinn). Whether writing about the genesis of his plays, such as Aunt Dan and Lemon; discussing how the privileged world of arts and letters takes for granted the people who serve our food and deliver our mail; describing his upbringing in the sheltered world of Manhattan’s cultural elite; or engaging in a fascinating interview with Noam Chomsky, Wallace Shawn has a unique ability to step back from the appearance of things to explore their deeper social meanings. In these essays, Shawn grasps the unpleasant contradictions of modern life and challenges us to look at our own behavior in a more honest light. He also finds the pathos in the political and personal challenges of everyday life. With the same sharp wit and remarkable attention to detail that he brings to his critically acclaimed plays, Shawn invites us to look at the world with new eyes, the better to understand—and change it. “Full of what you might call conversation starters: tricky propositions about morality . . . politics, privilege, runaway nationalist fantasies, collective guilt, and art as a force for change (or not) . . . It’s a treat to hear him speak his curious mind.” —O Magazine “Lovely, hilarious and seriously thought provoking, I enjoyed it tremendously.” —Toni Morrison, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

Grasses of a Thousand Colors

Grasses of a Thousand Colors PDF Author: Wallace Shawn
Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
ISBN: 1559367903
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 98

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Book Description
"Brilliantly upsetting and endearing . . . riveting."—Newsday An updated and revised edition of Wallace Shawn's most outlandish work to date. This poetic epic about a scientist, his wife, and his two mistresses as they fend for their lives in a world savagely close to extinction, raises issues of redemption, forgiveness, and responsibility. Grasses of a Thousand Colors is a troubling, erotic adventure that received high critical praise for its first New York City revival in 2013, starring Shawn. Wallace Shawn is a noted actor and writer. His often politically charged and controversial plays include The Fever, Aunt Dan and Lemon, Marie and Bruce, and The Designated Mourner. With Andre´ Gregory, he co-wrote My Dinner with Andre´, in which he also starred.

Night Thoughts

Night Thoughts PDF Author: Wallace Shawn
Publisher: Haymarket Books
ISBN: 1608468135
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 50

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Book Description
This “acerbic yet compassionate” meditation on humanity by the acclaimed actor and playwright offers “curiosity, thoughtfulness, sharp logic, deep emotion” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Beloved actor and Obie Award–winning playwright Wallace Shawn has been an incisive commentator on civilization and its discontents for decades. Now, having recently passed the age of seventy and watched Donald Trump claim the presidency, he offers a late-stage critique of his species, which he sees as being divided between the lucky and the unlucky. In Night Thoughts, Shawn takes the lucky—himself included—to task for their complacency while offering fascinating reflections on “civilization, morality, Beethoven, 11th-century Japanese court poetry, and his hopes for a better world, among other topics” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

Evening at The Talk House

Evening at The Talk House PDF Author: Wallace Shawn
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571328148
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 70

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Book Description
At Ted's instigation, the old gang gather once more at the almost legendary club The Talk House. Ten years on and presided over still by the kindly Nellie, there's the same genteel atmosphere, familiar drinks, unchanging special snacks. But the era of Walter Barclay is long gone. A playwright, a composer, an actress. The possibility of a pleasant night. Evening at the Talk House by Wallace Shawn premiered at the National Theatre, London, in November 2015.

The Fever

The Fever PDF Author: Wallace Shawn
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service Inc
ISBN: 9780822203988
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 52

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Book Description
THE STORY: The nameless narrator of this blistering monologue lies ill and alone in a dreary hotel room in a poverty-stricken country. A political execution is about to take place beneath his window. Far from the glib comforts of his own life, he s

The Hotel Play

The Hotel Play PDF Author: Wallace Shawn
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service Inc
ISBN: 9780822205340
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 60

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Book Description
THE STORY: The setting is a hotel in the tropics where a beleaguered desk clerk tries to placate, amuse and occasionally seduce the widely varied clientele who come and go during the course of the play's quick flowing action, each acting out a brie

Plays One

Plays One PDF Author: Wallace Shawn
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780571190928
Category : American drama
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
'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