Wallace Shawn

Writer and actor

• Born: November 12, 1943
• Place of Birth: New York, New York

AMERICAN PLAYWRIGHT, SCREENWRITER, AND ACTOR

Biography

Playwright, screenwriter, and actor Wallace Shawn was born in New York City, the elder son of Cecille Lyon and noted New Yorker editor William Shawn. After attending Dalton School, a private high school in New York, and the Putney School, a preparatory school in Vermont, he studied history at Harvard University, from which he graduated in 1965. Shawn subsequently studied philosophy, politics, and economics at Magdalen College, Oxford University, from which he received a Bachelor’s degree in 1968 and a Master’s degree in 1975. In 1965 and 1966, he taught English as a Fulbright fellow at Indore Christian College in India.

Shawn’s work as a playwright led him to study acting to sharpen his skills in creating and developing characters for the stage. Like many who pursue a career in the theater, he has held numerous jobs unrelated to his art practice, such as clerking in New York’s garment district, teaching Latin, and photocopying documents. For many years, Shawn has lived with his longtime partner, writer Deborah Eisenberg, in a Manhattan loft.

Shawn’s interest in the theater and the performing arts dates back to childhood productions that he and his brother, the composer Allen Shawn, would create and produce for the family’s enjoyment. As a young man, he considered a career as a diplomat; however, while attending Oxford University in 1967, he wrote a script titled Four Meals in May and entered it in a playwright competition. The script did not win, but Shawn discovered his calling in the theater and continued to write plays. He won a 1974 Obie Award for playwriting from the Village Voice for his Off-Broadway play Our Late Night (1972), directed by André Gregory. Shawn subsequently received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1978.

Shawn began acting more than ten years after he started writing plays. Professional acting, like clerking, teaching, and photocopying, was initially merely a source of income, more remunerative, and less time-consuming than other jobs. Yet he expanded his range with a diversity of remarkable performances on stage and in films, and his talent has circumvented the typecasting that his puckish appearance invites. His first role was in his own translation of Niccolò Machiavelli's play The Mandrake (1524), which premiered at the Public Theater in Manhattan in 1977. This performance brought him to the attention of Woody Allen, who cast him in his first film role as Jeremiah in Allen's 1979 film Manhattan (1979). Shawn’s most noted subsequent film appearances include roles as Wally in My Dinner with André (1981), cowritten by Shawn and Andre Gregory (who played the titular André) and directed by Louis Malle; as the wicked Vizzini in The Princess Bride (1987), directed by Rob Reiner; as a doctor in Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills (1989), directed by Paul Bartel; and as Vanya in Vanya on 42nd Street (1994), also directed by Malle. He has also appeared in All That Jazz (1979), Atlantic City (1980), Strange Invaders (1983), The Hotel New Hampshire (1984), Prick Up Your Ears (1987), and dozens of other films. In the twenty-first century, he wrote the script for A Master Builder (2013), adapted from Henrik Ibsen's 1892 play The Master Builder (1982), and also starred in the film alongside My Dinner with André costar and fellow screenwriter Andre Gregory. Other projects in which Shawn has been involved in the twenty-first century include voice work in Toy Story 4 (2019) and The Addams Family 2 (2021), as well as roles in Marriage Story (2019), Book Club (2018), and The Only Living Boy in New York (2017). Shawn has also appeared in many television roles, including the popular sitcom, Young Sheldon (2017-2024), as well as voiced video game characters. Shawn's written works in the twenty-first century include: Essays (2009), Night Thoughts (2017), and Sleeping Among Sheep Under a Starry Sky (2022).

Shawn’s playwriting is noted for its shockingly explicit yet realistic language and the conversational interactions among characters. The plot takes a backseat to character, and action is subordinated to words. The quintessential setting in a Wallace Shawn play is a public place such as a restaurant, a cocktail party, or a hotel, and the quintessential purpose of the characters is to socialize and interact with others. In Shawn's work, countering this public and social element is an opposing tendency toward isolation and soliloquy; characters in public places sometimes fall into prolonged disquisitions that silence (and not infrequently shock) everyone else present. The most positive of these self-absorbed speeches is perhaps André’s lengthy and fascinating exposition of his worldwide quest for reality in My Dinner with André. At the extreme, direct address to the audience may replace meaningful interaction with other characters onstage; in fact, The Fever (1990) is a monologue spoken by one character and designed for performance in living rooms for small groups of guests (though it was later adapted into a 2004 film). In this case, the play becomes the pretext for public interactions among audience members, who can reasonably be expected to socialize before and after viewing the play that has brought them together.

Bibliography

Billington, Michael. "A Play of Ideas Stirs Political Passions." The New York Times, 27 Oct. 1985, www.nytimes.com/1985/10/27/theater/a-play-of-ideas-stirs-political-passions.html. Accessed 8 July 2024.

Franks, Lucinda. "The Shawns--A Fascinating Father-and-Son Riddle." The New York Times, 3 Aug. 1980, www.nytimes.com/books/98/06/07/specials/ross-shawns.html. Accessed 8 July 2024.

King, W. D. Writing Wrongs: The Work of Wallace Shawn. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1997.

Posnock, Ross. “New York Phantasmagoria.” Raritan, vol. 11.2, 1991, pp. 142–59.

Rees, Jasper. "A Life in Two Halves." The Telegraph, 3 May 1999, www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/4717003/A-life-in-two-halves.html. Accessed 8 July 2024.

Shawn, Wallace. Interview by David Savran. In Their Own Words: Contemporary American Playwrights. By Savran. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1988, pp. 207–22.

Shawn, Wallace. "Why Write for the Theater? A Roundtable Report." The New York Times, 9 Feb. 1986, www.nytimes.com/1986/02/09/theater/why-write-for-the-theater-a-roundtable-report.html. Accessed 8 July 2024.

Shawn, Wallace, et al. "David Edelstein Talks to Wallace Shawn, Andre Gregory, and Jonathan Demme about Their New Collaboration." Interview by David Edelstein. Vulture, 25 July 2014, www.vulture.com/2014/07/conversation-wallace-shawn-andre-gregory-jonathan-demme-master-builder.html. Accessed 8 July 2024.

“Wallace Shawn.” IMDb, www.imdb.com/name/nm0001728/?ref‗=fn‗al‗nm‗1. Accessed 8 July 2024.

“Wallace Shawn: Credits, Bio, News & More.” Broadway World, 2024, www.broadwayworld.com/people/Wallace-Shawn. Accessed 8 July 2024.

Wetzsteon, Ross. “The Holy Fool of the American Theater?” Village Voice, 2 Apr. 1991, pp. 35–37.