{"id":173538,"date":"2026-05-15T14:25:29","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T18:25:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=173538"},"modified":"2026-05-20T12:42:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T16:42:22","slug":"in-mutual-analysis-with-wallace-shawns-moth-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/05\/15\/in-mutual-analysis-with-wallace-shawns-moth-days\/","title":{"rendered":"In “Mutual Analysis” with Wallace Shawn\u2019s Moth Days<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Wallace Shawn in\u00a0The Fever<\/em>. Photograph\u00a0by Julieta Cervantes.<\/p><\/div>\n

At<\/span> an open rehearsal last fall of <\/span>Wallace Shawn<\/span><\/a>\u2019s new play, <\/span>What We Did Before Our Moth Days<\/span><\/i>, the director, Andr\u00e9 Gregory, Shawn\u2019s longtime collaborator and a genially uncompromising trailblazer in American avant-garde theater, turned to the audience from his front-row seat. He announced that while it might appear from the stage that the dramatic ensemble consisted of four characters\u2014a mother, a son, a father, and his lover\u2014there were actually five. At this point, Gregory gestured toward those watching, prompting some nervous chuckles.<\/span><\/p>\n

The audience is always, to an extent, a part of any theatrical production. But in <\/span>Moth Days<\/span><\/i>, the cast is literally addressing the house. \u201cIf I look at someone\u2019s face and they\u2019re looking at me with an expression of utter revulsion, or if they\u2019re smiling, that affects how I\u2019m going to say the next line,\u201d Josh Hamilton, who plays the father, Dick, told me. \u201cIt feels like I\u2019m acting <\/span>with<\/span><\/i> the audience. And so that automatically keeps the speech from being a set thing, or having a set objective.\u201d After I attended a preliminary run-through last October, two members of the audience told me that they\u2019d had the strange feeling of \u201clistening in on voices\u201d rather than of watching a play.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Characters in Shawn\u2019s later works often spend little or no time speaking to one another, instead directing their remarks to the onlookers. They talk in terms that suggest they are presenting not just their story, but also their <\/span>case<\/span><\/i>\u2014shifting abruptly between emotional registers: one minute confessional and penitential, the next self-righteous and defiant. Shawn has talked about putting audience members in a position to adjudicate the scenes they\u2019re watching, yet he also frequently implicates them in the unfolding moral dilemma. The audience might thus think of itself less as a judge than as an especially silent psychoanalyst\u2014recalling, in particular, a practice pioneered by Freud\u2019s acolyte S\u00e1ndor Ferenczi, which he termed \u201cmutual analysis.\u201d In 1932, when both the world and his own personal sanity were unraveling, Ferenczi kept a clinical diary in which he delved deeply into the possibilities of a reciprocal dynamic between doctor and patient, at one point describing psychoanalysis as a \u201cdialogue of unconsciouses\u201d\u2014a phrase evocative of the ecology that binds audience and cast in <\/span>Moth Days<\/span><\/i>, which might be said to transfer its audience back and forth between the chair and the couch.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But the metadialogue taking place during Shawn\u2019s run at the Greenwich House Theater this spring went beyond house and cast. In an unusual feat of staging, two Shawn works began playing concurrently Off Broadway this March: <\/span>Moth Days<\/span><\/i>, a tightly contained four-person story of familial discord,<\/span> and <\/span>The Fever<\/span><\/i>, an expansive one-man show from the nineties, whose speaker is overcome by visions of foreign suffering entangled with American interests.<\/span> This contrapuntal double bill featured Shawn himself performing the latter twice weekly. Shawn told me, \u201c<\/span>Moth Days<\/span><\/i> could be described\u2014I hope it isn\u2019t\u2014but some people would say it\u2019s my least political play. While <\/span>The Fever<\/span><\/i> certainly would be\u2014well, it\u2019s nothing <\/span>but<\/span><\/i> political.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On the face of it, <\/span>Moth Days <\/span><\/i>is probably Shawn\u2019s most straightforward domestic drama. In the three-hour play, a man and woman fall in love when they are young. By providing unstinting support over many years, the woman imbues the man with the confidence he needs to flourish as a writer. The couple have a child, who himself becomes an author of outlandish, erotic short stories. The woman works as a teacher in disadvantaged schools while the now-successful man increasingly gads about with a bohemian crowd; he eventually begins an affair with a fellow writer that destroys the family and blights all three of their lives. It\u2019s a perfectly realistic setup, except that the characters are all speaking to us from beyond the grave. (\u201cMoth day\u201d is Dick\u2019s euphemism for one\u2019s deathday.)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Many aspects of the drama echo Shawn\u2019s own family history. (\u201cThere\u2019s only a very thin curtain between theater and life,\u201d he wrote in the introduction to a 2022 essay collection, \u201cif I may use the metaphor.\u201d) His prominent-editor father had a multidecade affair with the writer Lillian Ross. <\/span>Moth Days <\/span><\/i>depicts a world in which books and authors still preside over the culture, as they did in William Shawn\u2019s heyday at <\/span>The New Yorker<\/span><\/i>. Elle, the name of the mother in <\/span>Moth Days<\/span><\/i>, seems to nestle within the name of Shawn\u2019s actual mother, Cecille, while the name of Dick\u2019s mistress in the play, Elaine, bears a near-anagrammatic relation to Lillian. In Shawn\u2019s play, the lover learns about the man\u2019s death from his wife and then goes to their apartment. In Ross\u2019s memoir, she states that Cecille phoned to tell her of William\u2019s death, whereupon she rushed to their apartment, meeting at the door his son Wallace, who seemed frightened to admit her. In <\/span>Moth Days<\/span><\/i>, when Elaine reaches the apartment after calling Dick\u2019s number and speaking with Elle on the phone, she describes being let in by Dick\u2019s son, Tim, \u201ca young man with a pale face.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Hope Davis, Josh Hamilton, Maria Dizzia, and John Early in What We Did Before Our Moth Days<\/em>. Photograph\u00a0by Julieta Cervantes.<\/p><\/div>\n

The play\u2019s psychoanalytic dimensions are sometimes flagrantly manifest. At one point, Tim confesses to fantasizing about getting his mother away from his father and kissing her; at another, we learn that the short stories he labors over\u2014in the spirit of, and in hopeless competition with, his father\u2019s\u2014feature a \u201csatyr-like figure\u201d with a penis so long he can tie it into a ring with his tail. The actor Maria Dizzia, who plays Elle, told me that the family in the play had always seemed very metaphorical to her. On one level, <\/span>Moth Days <\/span><\/i>is about \u201cpeople living in an institution, an institution that they have built with conviction,\u201d she said, but to whose violence they are \u201ccompletely blind.\u201d \u201cThe whole idea of this little family that Dick and Elle started with notions of love, of nurturing, and of growth, is just a fantasy. Instead, it\u2019s a cesspool.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She recalled that at one point, Shawn asked: \u201c \u2018Do you think it\u2019s okay that we\u2019re doing this? A play about people just talking, and in the middle of that, the world is falling apart?\u2019 And we all said, \u2018Wally, <\/span>that\u2019s what this play is about<\/span><\/i>. It\u2019s about all the promises crumbling.\u2019 \u201d At times, this larger scene of disintegration comes into view. When Elaine, the mistress, first lays eyes on the son after her lover\u2019s death, something about his white clothes and sandals makes her flash \u201cto blurry photographs of horror and violence in frightening corners of the world.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There is a clear family resemblance between the young man of <\/span>Moth Days<\/span><\/i>, who evokes indistinct images of faraway brutality, and the narrator of <\/span>The Fever<\/span><\/i>\u2014another avatar of Shawn. The latter play<\/span> might be said to stage that scene\u2019s inverse: the speaker\u2019s dreamlike encounters with \u201chorror and violence\u201d in a distant country send him into a sickly reverie in his hotel bathroom, mixing flashes of political torture with reminiscences of an affluent upbringing. \u201cWe were the delicate, precious, breakable children, and we always knew it,\u201d the narrator recalls. \u201cWe knew it because of the way we were wrapped\u2014because of the soft underwear laid out on our beds, soft socks to protect our feet.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The drama is effectively a conversion story, from solipsism to Marxism. The narrator discovers <\/span>Das Kapital<\/span><\/i> and begins to comprehend \u201ccommodity fetishism,\u201d along with the invisible labor and bloodshed that went into his bourgeois wrapping. Like <\/span>Moth Days<\/span><\/i>, as Dizzia put it to me, <\/span>The Fever<\/span><\/i> concerns a confrontation with what it means to have chosen \u201cto believe you are the life you live in your head, without any sense of responsibility for the life you live in the physical world.\u201d Ultimately, the education that the narrator undergoes destroys his pleasure in the cosmopolitan comforts he had been raised to expect. Contemplating his return home, he wonders how he will continue to live. \u201cI could change sides,\u201d he reflects. \u201cI could decide to fight on the other side. The life of a traitor? Betraying my own people? Walking into danger? Very difficult, but a possible choice.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This earlier play draws on Shawn\u2019s own encounters with eye-opening foreign realities. He wrote it following several trips to Latin America in the late eighties, where he and his partner, the writer Deborah Eisenberg, observed the results of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua. <\/span>The Fever<\/span><\/i>, Shawn told me, was an attempt to write something absolutely truthful to what he himself had undergone: a stark confrontation with the fact that his own comforts were inextricable from the suffering of others. The land he owned, as the protagonist reflects, had been allocated not \u201cby chance, not by fate,\u201d but had been \u201cpieced together one by one, by thieves, by killers . . . until the beautiful Christmas morning we woke up, and our proud parents showed us the gorgeous, shining, blood-soaked fields which now were ours.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Shawn meant for <\/span>The Fever <\/span><\/i>to provide an analogous shock to spectators. Initially, he performed it at parties in the apartments of friends and acquaintances, sometimes without the guests\u2019 foreknowledge and to occasional outrage. \u201cI don\u2019t think I had the slightest consciousness of the arrogance and presumption involved in asking people to listen to me that way,\u201d Shawn said. \u201cI was just so upset, so concerned with getting people to pay attention.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Shawn\u2019s plays seem to suggest that domestic drama is not merely related to the political arena but can form, or even determine, its shape. \u201cAs all of our attitudes flow into action, flow into history, the bedroom and the battlefield soon seem to be one,\u201d he wrote in an essay on morality from the mid-eighties. \u201cOur political attitudes can only come out of what we are\u2014what we were as children.\u201d The son in <\/span>Moth Days<\/span><\/i> offers a far more rigidly prescriptive version of these ideas. In an early monologue, he describes a state of affairs in which our fates are fixed from before conception:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The book of your life was written many billions of years ago . . . The whole story, everything that will happen to you and everything that you\u2019ll do\u2014it\u2019s all already written in the book, down to the smallest detail. And everything that happens in the world has a chain of causes leading back from it\u2014this was caused by this, and that was caused by something-or-other, back and back to the original elements and the water and the wind and the ultraviolet light.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is a totalizing pessimism to this outlook, Tim suggests, because it presupposes an \u201cinevitable source of misery for human creatures.\u201d Namely: the intractable human \u201cneed to inflict pain, to wound, to maim, to torment, to destroy, to trample, to kill . . .\u201d\u2014be it by blowing up a country or shattering one\u2019s family. But Tim\u2019s viewpoint<\/span> also<\/span> allows for a profound mercy\u2014a belief that those who perpetuate harm could not have turned out any other way. Hence, on some level, all is forgiven.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Hope Davis and John Early in What We Did Before Our Moth Days<\/em>. Photograph by Luis Manuel Diaz.<\/p><\/div>\n

And yet, the worlds of Shawn\u2019s plays are spaces where people <\/span>can <\/span><\/i>act upon one another, as much for better as for worse; where<\/span> fluid and multifarious influences might nudge us to make one choice over another; where the interdependence of even our small decisions\u2014\u201cwhat we\u2019ve become today, what we\u2019ve learned in school, at the playground, at the party, at the beach, at home, in bed,\u201d as Shawn writes in the morality essay\u2014can end up effecting change on a societal scale. \u201cMy political opinions fly out across the world and determine the course of political events,\u201d Shawn continues. \u201cWhat I say to you about my neighbor\u2019s child affects what you feel about the nurse who sits by the side of your friend in the hospital room, and what you say about the nurse affects what your friend\u2019s sister thinks about the government of China.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Shawn also anatomizes the process by which, on a more mundane level, we can debase ourselves in ways that spread through our social circles, often by means of titillating sensationalism. He goes on to describe meeting a young woman at a dinner party who tells him that she sometimes likes to go out with gangsters. \u201cShe describes in detail the techniques they use in getting other people to do what they want\u2014bribery, violence. I\u2019m shocked and repelled by the stories she tells. A few months later I run into her again at another party and I hear more stories, and this time I don\u2019t feel shocked. I\u2019m no longer so aware of the sufferings of those whom the gangsters confront. I\u2019m more impressed by the high style and shrewdness of the gangsters themselves.\u201d By their third encounter, he\u2019s become a \u201cconnoisseur of gangster techniques\u201d and finds her stories comic. \u201cAnd so every day,\u201d Shawn writes, we confront the \u201cnumberless insidious intellectual ploys by which the principle of immorality makes a plausible case for itself.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Shawn acknowledges the paradox of a form of determinism that doesn\u2019t preclude an individual\u2019s responsibility to help cultivate a more just society. \u201cI don\u2019t have the brain that could possibly defend what I believe,\u201d he told me, \u201cwhich is that other people are determined by the forces working on them, but I still have free will and could make better or worse choices.\u201d And yet there is, throughout his body of work, a strain of hopefulness, however faint, that people might be shaken from their preconditioned paths, and that art, in enacting diverse dialogues of unconsciouses, might play a role in bringing that change about. \u201cWally\u2019s plays,\u201d Eisenberg told me, \u201cmake you aware that you are part of a system, that the way you live <\/span>is <\/span><\/i>a choice\u2014that at least you should be conscious of this.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But the manner of awakening this consciousness can be mysterious and subliminal\u2014as is perhaps exemplified by Shawn\u2019s collaborations with Gregory, whose rehearsal process famously stretches on for months or even years longer than the average production, and which more than one cast member likened to psychoanalysis. \u201cHe creates an environment that allows the unconscious to emerge at its own pace,\u201d recalled John Early, who plays Tim. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t coax it out.\u201d The process of listening to the unconscious is enigmatic to Shawn himself. In one essay, he speculates that in the collaboration between his rational self and the unconscious, the latter manifests as \u201cthe voice that comes from outside the window.\u201d He suggests that \u201cif the unconscious has thoughts,\u201d then they must come \u201cfrom the people I\u2019ve met, the people I\u2019ve read about, the people I\u2019ve happened to overhear on the street. So it\u2019s not just a theory that society is speaking to itself through me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The actor Hope Davis, who plays Elaine in <\/span>Moth Days<\/span><\/i>, told me that when she and Shawn look at each other, sometimes \u201cone of us will just start to cry. He\u2019s just wide open. It\u2019s his just <\/span>wonder<\/span><\/i> at being with another human being and looking them in the face.\u201d Her description recalled Ferenczi\u2019s note that a final, \u201cnot unimportant factor\u201d in \u201cmutual analysis\u201d was \u201cthe humble admission, in front of the patient, of one\u2019s own weaknesses and traumatic experiences and disillusionments.\u201d The idea was to abolish the patient\u2019s feelings of inferiority and unbreachable distance and create a simultaneous revelation of emotion in which \u201cthe tears of doctor and of patient<\/span> mingle in a sublimated communion.\u201d The intimacy itself served as a \u201chealing agent, which, like a kind of glue, binds together permanently the intellectually assembled fragments,\u201d endowing the sufferer \u201cwith a new aura of vitality and optimism.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Ferenczi\u2019s account seems consonant with the sort of exchange Shawn and Gregory seek to cultivate between actors and audience\u2014a kind of visionary mutuality that might nurture our capacity to picture a better world, even if the sight is often blurred by our tears. The question of how art might facilitate a transformative encounter\u2014probing the depths of our individual unconsciouses even while augmenting our <\/span>social <\/span><\/i>consciousness\u2014haunts their plays. It was a subject that also came up repeatedly in a series of conversations I held with Shawn, Gregory, and the cast of the production of <\/span>Moth Days<\/span><\/i> in the fall and winter of 2025.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Maria Dizzia, backstage at What We Did Before Our Moth Days<\/em>. Photograph by Julieta Cervantes.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

I. On Beginnings<\/strong><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

What was the genesis of your involvement with this particular production?<\/span><\/p>\n

ANDR\u00c9 GREGORY<\/p>\n

Wally asked me to do it.<\/span><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Was it something that you debated at all?<\/span><\/p>\n

GREGORY<\/p>\n

Well, I debated it a little bit. No more than I ever debated the other plays he\u2019s asked me to do. Because what happens is, I read the play and totally don\u2019t understand it. I have no idea what it\u2019s about. I think, I\u2019ll never be able to do this. And it was the same with this. I thought, I just don\u2019t get it.<\/span><\/p>\n

But it seemed unlike anything I\u2019d read of his before, which was part of why it was so intriguing. The playwright and director David Hare put it quite well. He flew from London just for a day to see it, and we were talking about how different it was. And he said, \u201cYes, these are bad times. These are not times for fucking <\/span>Cats<\/span><\/i>.\u201d And there\u2019s something in that.<\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think Wally and I have ever had a conversation about what the play is about. But of course, one of the things that\u2019s interesting about getting older is you realize you don\u2019t know a goddamned thing.<\/span><\/p>\n

JOHN EARLY<\/p>\n

I became pen pals with Wally and Deborah during early <\/span>COVID<\/small><\/small><\/span>. We would write to each other. I suddenly felt terrified of them getting <\/span>COVID<\/small><\/small><\/span>. That\u2019s how it started. Once things opened back up again, I started to have dinners with them. Wally emailed me out of the blue. I had no idea that he had a new play. I was completely shocked by how beautiful it was. Bursting into tears reading it. Screaming. Laughing. I swear to God, I was not thinking of myself in the young male role. I mean, I often think of myself as the woman, so I just wasn\u2019t even thinking about it.<\/span> But then a few weeks later, he was like, \u201cI\u2019ve never cared about age-appropriate casting. So would you want to read for this part?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

MARIA DIZZIA<\/p>\n

When I was in college, my mom sent me the script of <\/span>The Fever<\/span><\/i>. For me, it was my introduction to socialism, to the very personal morality of how we contribute to and benefit from all those structures. I would read it aloud in my dorm. I mean, that\u2019s really the actual story: she sent me the book, and I would read Wally\u2019s words out loud by myself.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

HOPE DAVIS<\/p>\n

I was initially very daunted by the idea of doing a play. I felt like, Are people able to concentrate anymore? Is the attention span able to handle just sitting and listening? People like to say, \u201cOh, it\u2019s only ninety minutes.\u201d And we all feel that, right? You feel this kind of relief when someone says that. Like, Oh, great, soon I can be back in my bed. But is that all we can give at this point? You know, this isn\u2019t the Mahabharata. It\u2019s not nine hours and it\u2019s not hard to follow. It just requires a little bit of people\u2019s time.<\/span><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

II. On Rehearsal<\/strong><\/p>\n

GREGORY<\/p>\n

I think there is something shamanic about what I do. I know nothing about shamanism, but I know enough to know that there\u2019s some kind of magic going on. Even though I\u2019m doing it, it\u2019s a mystery. I\u2019m just an antenna. The antenna goes up into space to receive messages. All I do is make sure the antenna is clean.<\/span><\/p>\n

JOSH HAMILTON<\/p>\n

What Andr\u00e9 does is: You come in. You read through the first half. You have some coffee or tea, and you sit. You have a nice little chat about any movies or plays or anything in the news for five or ten minutes. Then he goes, \u201cOkay, let\u2019s begin.\u201d And he basically just beams his undivided love and attention at you. Every once in a while, he just says, \u201cGood, good, good.\u201d You don\u2019t even really know what he means. Then you order some sandwiches and you read the second part.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

HOPE DAVIS<\/p>\n

The way Andr\u00e9 works is that he listens. That\u2019s what he does. It\u2019s extraordinary to be with any human being who can sit day after day and listen.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

EARLY<\/p>\n

I mean, it must be said, this is a ninety-one-year-old man who has never once fallen asleep. And this is a three-hour play.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

DIZZIA<\/p>\n

He doesn\u2019t say anything. He just watches the whole time. It\u2019s something that I was really craving as an actor\u2014to feel supported in my own subconscious figuring-out of the text, rather than to be interrupted and rescued from it by someone.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

DAVIS<\/p>\n

With Andr\u00e9 just sitting and listening, the play shifts. There isn\u2019t that sense that we\u2019re trying to achieve a certain sound. There\u2019s more of a sense that you\u2019re on a river that\u2019s flowing and this is life, and you\u2019re just continuing to flow with it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

DIZZIA<\/p>\n

There\u2019s this great book, <\/span>The Inner Game of Tennis<\/span><\/i>, and it\u2019s written by a tennis coach. He taught a lot of pros. He was saying that as he progressed in his coaching, he spoke less and less. And he realized that it was better\u2014the less he spoke, the less he praised someone. When someone was really struggling, the best thing to do was to put them in front of a reflective surface and just have them hit the ball. I feel like Andr\u00e9 came to the same conclusion.<\/span><\/p>\n

GREGORY<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think of one single thing in the three hours that the play is taking place. I\u2019m just watching. I love hearing that the actors liked what I was doing. Because I sometimes think, God, I don\u2019t do anything.<\/span><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

III. On Art and Barbarism<\/strong><\/p>\n

EARLY<\/p>\n

I kind of have a little mantra now before I go onstage. It\u2019s: <\/span>I am Tim. Tim is me. I have an enormous cock. <\/span><\/i>\u201cI have an astounding member\u201d\u2014those are his words. I\u2019ve imagined Tim as a child, realizing he has an astounding member, and how terrifying that must be. It actually feels almost essential to Wally\u2019s whole worldview. Like: With this thing, this mighty, terrifying thing, I could do really bad things. Or I could do really fun, pleasurable things. But I could do really evil things.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

WALLACE SHAWN<\/p>\n

I suppose it\u2019s fate that my least aggressive play is coming out at this particular moment. In a way, I wish I were presenting an aggressive play against fascism or against Donald Trump. B<\/span>ut the truth is that at this moment, to show any sensitivity, delicacy, gentle feeling at all is to take a radical stand against the thugs who are running our country, because their ideology is so opposed to any sort of delicate feeling. Their aesthetic is even opposed to any sort of charm at all.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Maybe if we paid more attention to our capacity to savor beauty, we might defang our primate selves a bit?<\/span><\/p>\n

SHAWN<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what <\/span>The Fever <\/span><\/i>keeps circling and circling around. I mean, the poor character keeps saying, \u201cI love the violin.\u201d And then his other side says, Well, who paid for your violin? Who had to die so that you could hear the violin, or so that someone could make a violin? Who had to be tortured so the concert hall could be built?<\/span><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

It reminds me of the famous Walter Benjamin quote: \u201cThere is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.\u201d It\u2019s usually taken to mean that every document of civilization is <\/span>actually <\/span><\/i>a document of barbarism. But I think he\u2019s instead asking us to hold in mind two disjunctive truths: the genuine splendors and the horrors pertaining to their production.<\/span><\/p>\n

SHAWN<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t resolved that in my own mind. I do say to myself every day, Well, these crimes that have been committed in order for me to have this lovely fruit salad are inexcusable, but shouldn\u2019t I at least enjoy the fruit salad? I mean, if I don\u2019t enjoy it, I\u2019m just going to throw it out. And that won\u2019t erase the crimes that have been committed in order to bring it to me.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

EARLY<\/p>\n

I\u2019m very compelled by restaurants. I often write characters for myself that are, like, upper-middle class, panicking at dinner parties. And there\u2019s this kind of seductive pull of restaurants in so much of Wally\u2019s work\u2014I\u2019m saying that in a funny way; it\u2019s more than just restaurants\u2014but that\u2019s often one of the settings that stands in for our capacity to be seduced by amorality, to <\/span>give in to it<\/span><\/i>. Now, in this play, that impulse is placed into someone who is very loosely modeled after his father, and also into the son, who is very loosely modeled after Wally.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

IV. On the Bourgeois\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

SHAWN<\/p>\n

Well, in <\/span>My Dinner with Andr\u00e9<\/span><\/i>, I am stubbornly defending a bourgeois approach to life. One hundred percent. I\u2019m refusing to budge and basically saying I don\u2019t care about anything except leading a comfortable bourgeois life. Andr\u00e9 is questioning that. He\u2019s saying, You seem like an intelligent guy. Do you really think there\u2019s nothing more\u2014that\u2019s all you want? And I\u2019m sort of pigheadedly saying, Yes, that\u2019s all I want.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, interestingly, when I was fifteen and I read <\/span>Zen Buddhism<\/span><\/i>, I also read <\/span>Ulysses<\/span><\/i>, and I put the two together. I sort of made my own fifteen-year-old synthesis of Suzuki and Joyce, basically to the effect that we should celebrate the joys of the most mundane aspects of daily life\u2014you know, Bloom eating his kidneys (not his own kidneys, the kidneys that he buys) is where we should all be. And there\u2019s an aspect of at least the fifteen-year-old\u2019s understanding of Zen that says, If you can be alive and awake to the lunch that you\u2019re eating, or to the small rock that you\u2019re sitting on, that could be the highest form of enlightenment.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In <\/span>My Dinner with Andr\u00e9<\/span><\/i>, I sort of merge that with the enjoyment of the bourgeois lifestyle. That seems to imply that D. T. Suzuki would have thought that sitting on a pleasant sofa and watching TV is what he was trying to get at, which I\u2019m not sure is true. But in my own mind, I think I was counterpoising something like that to what Andr\u00e9 was saying. On one level, I was just saying, No Andr\u00e9, forget all of that. The bourgeois lifestyle contains everything of value. But I think I was also defending my fifteen-year-old synthesis of Suzuki and Joyce, even as I was arguing against Andr\u00e9\u2019s spiritual quest. Which is possibly why I think you can see that by the end of the film, our points of view converge. I\u2019m much more sympathetic to what he\u2019s saying than I was at the beginning. We converge on the idea of experiencing the moment. And that\u2019s what these four people in <\/span>Moth Days <\/span><\/i>are doing in front of your eyes. People are having an awareness of their own impulses and following them\u2014living in the moment onstage.<\/span><\/p>\n

HAMILTON<\/p>\n

I did Wally\u2019s last play, <\/span>Evening at the Talk House<\/span><\/i>, in London at the National Theatre. And it was such an interesting experience, because the whole cast had this wonderful time creating this production that we all were in love with. And then the subscription audience at the National started coming. It was the first year that the artistic director from the Royal Court had taken over from Nicholas Hytner, who\u2019d been such a crowd-pleasing, popular, brilliant director. The audiences had had at least a decade of seeing things that were just pretty fun to watch. And then Wally\u2014I just think they didn\u2019t really know what they were coming to or why they were watching this, or even understood all of it. It was a very dispiriting experience because people would walk out. You\u2019d hear these flaps of the chairs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

EARLY<\/p>\n

I think there are some uncharitable interpretations of his work where people become defensive. They think that they\u2019re being lacerated, eviscerated, like they\u2019re being punished or called out.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

SHAWN<\/p>\n

You could say that people who are brought up in a privileged environment are stupider than people who are brought up in a more desperate environment. There\u2019s an idiocy built into being a privileged person, and when you\u2019re raised in that environment as a child and as a young person, you can\u2019t see around it or through it.<\/span><\/p>\n

EARLY<\/p>\n

I was reading reviews of <\/span>The Designated Mourner<\/span><\/i> last night, and there were people who thought it was making fun of people who appreciate poetry and music. But I think that\u2019s totally wrong. When the protagonist says at the end, No one is reading John Donne anymore, that\u2019s not a joke. It\u2019s okay if you find it funny\u2014a lot of Wally\u2019s work invites that specific kind of laughter. But to me, that sentiment is tragic. What Wally\u2019s saying is that if the world were a more just place, and we didn\u2019t insist on poverty, more people might like Beethoven. More people might like John Donne. And what a better world that would be.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

HAMILTON<\/p>\n

Wally doesn\u2019t set out to write plays that he thinks people are not going to enjoy. But I think sometimes that has been the case, because often what he\u2019s writing about is not what a lot of people go to the theater<\/span> for<\/span><\/i>. Sometimes people are like, What are we watching? Why is this person telling us that we need to look at ourselves in the deep, dark, truthful mirror?<\/span><\/p>\n

EARLY<\/p>\n

But for those people who think that he\u2019s making fun of the bourgeoisie, what this play reveals is that the source of his moral fixation is entirely personal\u2014not in a crass, confessional way, but this play includes this very personal thing where the father <\/span>does<\/span><\/i> give into amorality. It\u2019s not just a random character this time, someone you could perceive as maybe a metaphor. It\u2019s actually something that he experienced. In that way, it\u2019s maybe his most accessible work.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

V. On Art and Action<\/strong><\/p>\n

SHAWN<\/p>\n

For a long time I went through a process of thinking, If only I could tell my audience what the world is like and show them their involvement in creating that world and sustaining that world\u2014the world in which the oppressed are crushed in order to create a pleasant environment for the privileged\u2014if I could show my audience how that world works and how they fit into it, they would be shocked and want to change the world.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There was a time when it really hadn\u2019t occurred to me that people in my audience might <\/span>not<\/span><\/i> be shocked. At any rate, I thought that they might be a little bit surprised by what they saw. I didn\u2019t realize that they would accept it. But their conclusion after seeing that they were not nice guys was to accept the fact that they were not nice.<\/span><\/p>\n

GREGORY<\/p>\n

I feel that we\u2019re living in a world where there doesn\u2019t seem to be any truth anymore. Maybe there is never any truth. But now lies are being propagated on purpose. Art itself, I think, has become one-dimensional, rather superficial. So work that is <\/span>actually<\/span><\/i> stripped of artifice and is telling the truth, talking about the way things are, has become quite radical and in a way political.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

EARLY<\/p>\n

I was really noticing this thing happening online, where I was just feeling the limits of the language we were all using to talk about progressive politics. There became such a uniformity in the language. There\u2019s probably a more derogatory word than uniformity, like <\/span>sludginess<\/span><\/i> or <\/span>assimilation<\/span><\/i>. It was all very academia inflected, very social justice inflected. It\u2019s really hard to not feel this total paralysis and self-consciousness every time you open your mouth. Especially my generation, I really do think the only thing we\u2019re taught is to <\/span>vamp<\/span><\/i>, just to keep talking. It\u2019s not about what you\u2019re saying; it\u2019s about holding the floor and just filling the silence.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In Wally\u2019s writing, there\u2019s an almost fairy-tale quality to the way he talks about the world. It\u2019s generous. The way he tells you about power and politics is almost magical. And frankly, it\u2019s more clear. It\u2019s just easier to understand for someone like me, who feels alienated by the way people talk about politics, where everyone\u2019s competing to outdazzle each other.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

SHAWN<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t feel that people will see my plays and change. But awareness of something being wrong is nonetheless the first step for change to become possible. If people became aware en masse, then maybe change would take place.<\/span><\/p>\n

EARLY<\/p>\n

SHAWN<\/p>\n

I keep coming back to the question, Why isn\u2019t Donald Trump more interested in painting? Why didn\u2019t he devote his life to writing monographs about Munch or Vermeer? Instead, he was so interested in money, and now he\u2019s interested in power. I realize that\u2019s almost the definition of a stupid or shallow thought, but I keep coming back to it. I mean, Donald Trump keeps talking about America\u2014America, it\u2019s a great country, the greatest country. It should be great again.<\/span> But I\u2019m more interested in John Ashbery. How can you be interested in America more than in John Ashbery? That seems insane to me. And I don\u2019t claim to understand Ashbery, or any poetry. I, in fact, claim to not understand it. But it\u2019s so fascinating, so wonderful. I don\u2019t care if America is great. Ashbery is great.<\/span><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

VI. On Laughter<\/b><\/p>\n

EARLY<\/p>\n

There\u2019s this note Andr\u00e9 gave me that I always come back to. He said about Tim: \u201cI think that he finds this all funny.\u201d This was one of the first changes Wally made in the script. He was like, \u201cI\u2019ve made some changes.\u201d And then I got the new pages, and it was one stage direction. It wasn\u2019t even a line change. It was just one stage direction in parentheses after\u2014sorry, I\u2019m just going to have to say the first two lines: \u201cThe thought did occur to me after we pulled into my garage, that simply by sitting there for a while and failing to turn off the car\u2019s ignition, I could perhaps inspire a curious story on the local radio station, something along the lines of, you know, \u2018Unfortunately, the police have still not uncovered the specific motivation that drove these two obviously desperate young people to end their lives in a sordid corner of Wood Street last night. But sadly, we fear that\u2019\u201d\u2014and then this is what he added: \u201c(<\/span>He chuckles<\/span><\/i>.)\u201d They just added, \u201c(<\/span>He chuckles<\/span><\/i>).\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

HAMILTON<\/p>\n

There\u2019s maybe only one line that, no matter how I did it, always got a laugh. It\u2019s in this section where I finally get a room of my own and I start writing on the weekends. My wife is working during the week, so on the weekends she wants to see me all the time. But that\u2019s when I am writing. So Dick says, \u201cI\u2019m sorry, I can\u2019t write if somebody else is in the room.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And she says, \u201cSomebody else? What do you mean? I thought I was a part of you, the way you\u2019re a part of me.\u201d And I say, \u201cYes, of course, that\u2019s true, but somehow I can\u2019t seem to write my stories if the part of me that\u2019s you is sitting in the room.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That line always gets a laugh. Wally notoriously does not like to change much in the script, but at the end of one rehearsal, he said, \u201cI\u2019m going to take away that line.\u201d All the other actors said, \u201cNo, we love that line.\u201d And I wrote to him that night. I said: \u201cI\u2019m sure you\u2019re right, but I just have to understand. Why? Does it sound like I\u2019m making fun of her?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And he wrote back: \u201cThe cut line is undeniably a line that\u2019s meant to be funny, so if the audience laughs, the whole story comes off as snarky. I don\u2019t like snarkiness. The audience <\/span>loves<\/span><\/i> snarkiness. I don\u2019t like having Dick and the audience sharing that, or Dick bringing out their less good selves. Without the line, the passage is still funny in a way, but Dick knows that it\u2019s basically not very funny. My not-best self wrote the line, and I want to be my better self.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

EARLY<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a purity to Wally\u2019s language, to the images\u2014a frankness, to use his word. It\u2019s created a standard for me for directness. Andr\u00e9\u2019s part in this, in my relationship to language, is only speaking when necessary. Allow things to emerge and say them. But don\u2019t force them. Don\u2019t wrest them from the earth\u2014only if they bubble up. And if they\u2019re not bubbling up, don\u2019t say anything.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

George Prochnik is at work on a study of Walter Benjamin\u2019s travels. He is the author of six books, and has written for\u00a0<\/em>Granta, The Times Literary Supplement, The Literary Review, The New Yorker and\u00a0<\/em>The New York Times.\u00a0He is editor-at-large for\u00a0<\/em>Cabinet magazine.<\/p>\n

<\/em>This post has been updated to correct a transcription error in John Early\u2019s penultimate quote. It was Gregory, not Shawn, who noted that Tim \u201c<\/span>finds this all funny.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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I love the Mark Strand <\/span>interview<\/span><\/a> that Wally did. He says that the point of a poem is actually to stage a kind of encounter. It\u2019s like a painting; you stand in front of it in awe. But it\u2019s not just creating awe; it is giving you a way to process death. Poems, paintings, plays can be a kind of safe way to encounter some sort of fundamental mystery\u2014<\/span>death<\/span><\/i>\u2014even if it\u2019s not explicit.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n