Imploding Fictions' Blog

Acting in Hollywood blockbusters for kids and overt Marxist politics don’t generally go hand in hand. So it’s probably fair to say that amongst contemporary playwrights Wallace Shawn wins the award for quirkiest CV. He’s a comedian, writer, political activist, translator of Brecht, essayist and social commentator with degrees in history and economics from Oxford and Harvard. Amongst the many facets of his artistic career however, personally he sees himself first and foremost as a playwright. It’s a lovely paradox that while his theatre work is often dark and confrontational and has caused outrage, he is loved by millions as the voice of Rex in Toy Story.

Despite one critic describing him as ‘one of the worst and unsightliest actors in this city’ his appearance in The Princess Bride turned him into a cult figure and ever since he’s been plying his trade as the Hollywood oddball. On the other end of the spectrum he’s also appeared in the semi-autobiographical dialogue My Dinner with Andre, and a deconstruction of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya titled Vanya on 42nd Street, both directed by the legendary Louis Malle. Shawn’s theatre work began in 1978 with the play Marie and Bruce and he polarised critics and audiences from the start. 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. Shawn was back in London last year, this time treating viewers of his new play Grasses of a thousand colours to graphic descriptions of sex with cats. This time no legal action was taken! His language is both lyrical and violent and his themes often overtly political. Shawn is a master of drawing parallels between the psychology of his characters and the behaviour of governments and social classes and this culminated in his work The Fever.

The Fever follows a nameless character’s journey as he awakens on a bathroom floor in a nameless poverty-stricken country. Sick and alone, this everyman recounts the story of how he has arrived at this particular hotel, and the painful realisations that has accompanied his journey. It’s a journey that brings him face to face

with the grotesque inequalities at the heart of modern existence. Shawn asks us to look at the choices we make, on a daily level, to see how we are each continuing the flow of keeping the poor in the poverty zone and the rich in the insulated levels of power. His wealth, he realises, depends on others’ poverty, his comfort on

others’ deprivation. He comes to see that his life is ‘irredeemably corrupt’. Shawn then continues to depict the torturous reasoning of a mind trying to find its way back to acceptance of a state of affairs it has discovered to be morally untenable. He eventually shifts from spasms of disgust for his part in the world’s injustices to

coolly logical arguments for maintaining the status quo. Wallace Shawn deconstructs the contradictions and compromises of the urban liberal mind with wit and rigour. The play asks us if we should feel guilty once we realise that our hard work does not justify our comfort, when in reality all work hard but not all are comfortable? And what steps should we take when that realisation is made?

The Fever has been described by Shawn as his ‘most autobiographical work’. He has been working on it constantly for many years and the work and its form have undergone many permutations. Shawn originally intended it as a piece of political activism rather than ‘a play’. In the 80s he performed it himself at dinner parties in peoples living rooms all around New York. He says he would ideally perform it after his audience had tucked into a nice meal and still had a glass of champagne in their hands. He would proceed to tease away at the things that underpin the lifestyles

of middle-class liberals. The central conflict would unfold directly between the play and the audience. In 1990 The Fever became a stage play and was performed in both New York and at London’s Royal Court Theatre. Most recently, in 2004, Shawn turned The Fever into a tv show for HBO starring Vannessa Redgrave and Michael Moore. The Fever remains a powerful and probing assault on the distribution of wealth in our society and our privileged existence. OIT are proud to be presenting the play for the first time in Oslo.