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Wallace Shawn (born November 12, 1943) is an American actor and writer. Ubiquitous on film and television, where he is usually cast in comic roles, he has pursued a parallel career as a playwright whose work is often dark, politically charged and controversial. He is known for talking with a lisp, and his high-pitched, nasal voice.
Biography Shawn was born in New York City, where he still lives. He is the son of William Shawn, longtime editor of The New Yorker, and journalist Cecille Lyon Shawn; his brother Allen is a composer. Shawn attended The Putney School (a liberal arts high school in Putney, Vermont), and then graduated with a B.A. in history from Harvard University, and studied economics and philosophy at Oxford, where he originally intended to become a diplomat; he also traveled to India as an English teacher. Since 1979, he has primarily made a living as an actor. Shawn's longtime companion is the writer Deborah Eisenberg. Acting roles
Writing Shawn's early plays, such as Marie and Bruce (1978), portrayed emotional and sexual conflicts in an absurdist style, with language that was both lyrical and violent. In the conversations with Andre Gregory that became My Dinner with Andre, Shawn later referred to these plays as depicting "my interior life as a raging beast". Critical response was extremely polarized: some critics hailed Shawn as a major writer, while John Simon called Marie and Bruce "garbage" and described Shawn as "one of the worst and unsightliest actors in this city". His play A Thought in Three Parts caused a minor uproar in London in 1977, when the production was investigated by a vice squad and attacked in Parliament due to allegedly pornographic content. His later plays became more overtly political, drawing parallels between the psychology of his characters and the behavior of governments and social classes. Among the best-known of these are Aunt Dan and Lemon (1985) and The Designated Mourner (1997). Shawn's political work has invited controversy, as he often presents the audience with several contradictory points of view: in Aunt Dan and Lemon, which Shawn described as a cautionary tale against fascism, the character Lemon explained her neo-Nazi beliefs with such conviction that some critics called the play effectively pro-fascist. The monologue The Fever, originally created by Shawn to be performed for small audiences in apartments, was dismissed by some critics as "liberal guilt"; it describes a person who becomes sick while struggling to find a morally consistent way to live when faced with injustice, and harshly criticizes the record of the U.S. in supporting repressive anti-communist regimes. Three of Shawn's plays have been adapted into films: The Designated Mourner (basically a film of David Hare's stage production), Marie and Bruce, and The Fever. As of 2005, the latter two had been screened only in festivals. Shawn has also written political commentary for The Nation, and in 2004 he published the one-issue-only progressive political magazine Final Edition, which features interviews with and articles by Jonathan Schell, Noam Chomsky, Mark Strand, and Deborah Eisenberg. Shawn is credited as translator of The Threepenny Opera, which opened at Studio 54 in Manhattan on March 25, 2006. He appears briefly in voiceover during Song about the Futility of Human Endeavor. Plays Selected film and television roles Deep Space Nine appearances | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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