The Designated Mourner

by Wallace Shawn

Woven out of three monologues in what one reviewer called "a triple sonata of oppression and incomprehension" (The Sunday Times), Wallace Shawn's new play, The Designated Mourner, is a masterful drama about the pursuit of aesthetic subtleties in brutal times. The three characters include the eponymous designated mourner, Jack; his wife, Judy; and his erudite father-in-law, Howard. Although Judy is tied to her famous father by a passionate bond, she is nonetheless drawn toward Jack, whose taste in cultural forms follows a disturbing path. When Jack abandons both Judy and Howard, he continues his riveting societal free-fall into a world of gleeful savagery.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Theatre, Fiction, Politics, American, Philosophy

103 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1996

About the author

Wallace Shawn, sometimes credited as Wally Shawn, is an American actor and playwright. Regularly seen on film and television, where he is usually cast as a comic character actor, he has pursued a parallel career as a playwright whose work is often dark, politically charged and controversial. He is widely known for his high-pitched nasal voice and slight lisp.

Reviews

[Sarah Far]

نمایشنامه
آمریکایی
امروزی

اگر نمایشنامه‌دوست هستید، اگر نوشته‌های آمریکایی امروزی از این نوع رو دوست دارید، پس مشکلی برای خووندن ندارید.
چون کمی پیچیده، خاص و حتی میشه گفت یه جورایی درهم و برهمه!
جودی:
به پوستش که دست می‌زدی عینِ سفالِ سرد بود.من می‌خواستم بشورمش، باهاش بازی کنم، برش‌گردونم به زندگی. ولی اتفاقه نمی‌تونست بیفته. تقریباً همه چیش مرده بود.
جک:
تو خوابم دودِ آبی تو اتاق شناور بود. درِ طویله شکست، گاوها ماغ کِشیدن. از رو زمین پا شدم، حس کردم خیلی گیج‌وویج‌اَم و تندتر و تندتر خاکستر می‌پاشیدم.


در مجموع خووب بود و از اینکه شخصیت‌ها (رو به تماشاگر) حرف می‌زدند و اعتراض و کنایه‌شون رو به رفتارهای انسانی در قالب حرفهای به ظاهر نامفهوم ولی جنجال‌برانگیز (در واقعیت) می‌گفتند خوشم می‌اومد و تقریباً شبیه مونولوگ‌ بود
و در آخر فکر میکنم این کتاب، برای جامعه‌ی آمریکایی خیلی خووندنی‌تر باشه.

۴ روز دیگه هم تولد این نمایشنامه‌نویس، صداپیشه،کمدین،بازیگر و مقاله‌نویس نیویورکی هست.
عکس انتخاب شده روی تصویر از نشر بیدگل، هم خودِ آقای نویسنده هست.

تئاتر عزادر اجیر:
https://youtu.be/xNGza3wmn28

[Roya]

تصمیم گرفتم پرونده‌ی والاس شان رو ببندم چون با نمایشنامه‌هاش اصلا ارتباط نمی‌گیرم😭
همه‌ش برام بیهوده به نظر میاد.

[Pouria]

عزادار اجیر / والاس شان / ترجمه ی بهرنگ رجبی / نشر بیدگل / 97 صفحه / تاریخ اتمام کتاب: 10 خرداد 1398/ امتیازم به کتاب از پنج: یک و نیم
نمایشنامه سه تا شخصیت داره که هرکدوم واسه خودشون دارن حرف میزنن و اصطلاحا مونولوگ طور میره جلو. کل داستان با وجود همه ی گنگ بودن هاش اینه که یکی از این سه شخصیت قدیما چنتا مقاله اجتماعی نوشته و الان دولتشون سر اون مقاله ها اومده سراغ خودش و خانواده ش. از مونولوگ به طور کلی اصلا خوشم نمیاد و این نمایشنامه هم که دیگه افتضاح ترینِ هرچی مونولوگ بود. به طرز مسخره ای هرکدوم واسه خودشون حرف میزدن و حرفاشون اکثرا هیچ ربطی هم به هم نداشتن و اعصاب خورد کن بود. کتاب در کل فقط چنتا جمله ی قشنگ داره و چنتا جمله خنده دار هم داشت. غیر از این ها به شدت حوصله سر بر و بدون محتوا و رو مُخی بود فقط. دقیقا اینجوریه که انگار یه سری جمله که هیچ ربطی به هم ندارنو ریختن تو یه قابلمه کنار هم قرار گرفتن و بعضیاشون به هم میخورن یک ذره. نمی دونم این سبک های مسخره ی نوشتن چیه واقعا. وقت خواننده رو تلف می کنه اینقدر میپیچونه و سعی میکنه در ابهام حرف بزنه. ابهامش هم از نوعی نیست که باید روش فکر کنی تا متوجه بشه، نه، اینقدر ناقص و بریده بریده نوشته شده که انگار خودت باید فرض کنی اکثرشو! شاید فکر می کنن اینجوری خفن تر میشن. در مجموع اصلا دوستش نداشتم به استثنای اون چنتا جمله ی خوبش.

[Maryam]

جک: بعدِ یه مدتی به این نتیجه رسیدم که هیچ امیدی نیست-برداشتِ مهمی بود که بهش رسیدم. من تو زندگی خودم به هیچ خوشبختی‌ای نمی‌رسم، صلح هم تو کل دنیا حاکم نمی‌شه. پس چیزی هست که من بتونم تو این سال‌های آینده منتظر باشم بهش برسم؟ خب شاید بتونم یه جوری ذهنمو تربیت کنم که کم‌تر بدونِ این که خودم تصمیم بگیرم، روی تصویرهای هولناکِ مرگ و مریضی تمرکز کنه. شاید بتونم یاد بگیرم از یه لحظه به لحظه‌ی بعدی راحت‌تر رد شم و بگذرم، همون‌جور که میمون، جدِ ما، شب‌ها تو جنگل، مسیرِ اصلی‌شو خیلی راحت از شاخه به شاخه میره، بیاین یاد بگیرم چطوری یه تخته شکلاتِ قشنگ، یه تیکه کیکِ قشنگ، بشه سایه‌ی خلوتی که آدم توش آرامش پیدا کنه. شاید دست‌وپا کردنِ یه فنجون چاییِ خوشمزه اونقدرها سخت نباشه؛ قلقش اینه که یاد بگیری وقتی داری میخوریش، به چیزهای دیگه فکر نکنی.

[Mahsa]

والاس شان نمایشنامه نویس عجیب و نامتعارفی است، در نمایشنامه هایش بی پروا قدرت را به نقد میکشد و از این نظر در بین نمایشنامه نویس های دیگر آمریکایی متمایز است. یکی از نمایشنامه هایش با عنوان فکر سه بخشی ۲۰ سال در امریکا ممنوع بود و وقتی در انگلیس اجرا شد بلافاصله پلیس به صحنه آمد و پارلمان به شدت بازخواست شد که چرا اجازه اجرا داده است، مشکل چه بود؟ واضح است : کشورهای متمدن تا جایی آزادند که نظم تعریف شده در جامعه اجازه می دهد. نمایش نامه های شان به شدت دولت ها را می ترساند و از نگاه آنها زیادی رادیکال است و با معیارهای جهان سرمایه داری مطابقت ندارد. در عزادار اجیر ما با مشکلات جامعه روشنفکران و وجود خشونت حاکم بر زندگی اشان آشنا می شویم، زندگی که هر لحظه ممکن است در معرض خطر قرار گیرد و نابود شود. کتاب جالبی بود و پاراگراف هایی از کتاب را خیلی دوست داشتم ....
قسمتی از کتاب : منظورم اینه که شما دارین توانتونو صرف تحسین کردن یا سرزنش کردن آدم ها می کنین و می گین کی بهتره کی بدتره، این وسط حواس تون کلا پرته از درد و رنج های بشری ای که دورتادورتون برقراره، کلا پرته از این مسئله ی پیچیده ای که جواب دادنش هم سخته: چی باعث این درد و رنج شده، منظورم اینه که عوض محکوم کردن مارتین یا هر کس دیگه ای، کار باارزش تر این نیست که سعی کنیم چیزهای مختلفیو بفهمیم؟ مثلا بفهمیم چه شرایطی تو دنیا یا تو زندگی شخصی آدم ها ممکنه باعث شده باشه جوری رفتار کنن که مارتین رفتار کرد؟ چه شرایطی تو دنیا به وجود امده که باعث این قضیه شده؟ و چه طور شده که این شرایط به وجود اومده ان؟ می خوام بگم همه ی قضاوت کردن ها، همه ی محکوم کردن ها، اینکه کی بالاتره، اینکه کی پایین تره، حق با من بود و این ها، خیلی به کار و کمک این همه آدمی نمیاد چون آنها واقعا قربانی انواع جورواجور وحشت ان .......

[Kathleen]

From Howard: “I mean, you’re putting your energy into praising people or blaming people and saying who is better and worse—and meanwhile your attention is entirely turned away from the human suffering that is going on all around you and from the extremely difficult, hard-to-answer question of what’s bringing it about. I mean, rather than condemning Martin or whomever, wouldn’t it be more valuable to try to understand various things? —for example, to understand what circumstances in the world or in a person’s life might lead them to behave the way Martin behaved? What are the circumstances which come up in the world and lead to that? And how do they come up? I mean, all the judging, all the condemning, who’s superior, who’s inferior, ‘I was right,’ and so on, are not terribly helpful to all the people who might actually be falling victim to every sort of horror while you’re taking the time to debate these things” (21-22)



From Jack: “After a while I just concluded that there wasn’t any hope—an important insight. There’d be no happiness in my own life, nor would peace be won in the world at large. Was there anything, then, that I could expect to achieve in the coming years? Well, perhaps I could somehow train my mind to focus less compulsively on terrifying images of death and disease. Perhaps I could learn how to pass more easily from one moment to the next, the way the monkey, our ancestor, shifts so easily from branch to branch as he follows the high road through the forest at night. Let me learn how to repose in the quiet shade of a nice square of chocolate, a nice slice of cake. A delicious cup of tea isn’t, perhaps, that hard to come by; the trick to be learned is just not to think of other things while you drink it” (75-76).

[Jim]

I have been familiar with Wallace Shawn primarily as an actor, but impressed with my memories of My Dinner with Andre, I decided to read one of his plays. The Designated Mourner is a strange set of monologues mostly in a world which, at first, seems very much like our own, particularly in Manhattan.

Suddenly, we are made aware of violence at the edges of society, of people being killed on the street and in restaurants. There are changes in government. Two of the characters are imprisoned for five years for an unspecified offense. In one of his monologues, Jack says:

It was one of those weeks when loose ends, apparently, were being tied up. You know, once the people who do cause trouble are gone, then it's time to get the ones who might cause trouble, who who might once have been able to cause trouble twenty years ago....

Eventually, Jack realizes he is the only person left who could read John Donne.

I heard John Donne crying into a handkerchief as he fell through the floorplummeting fast through the earth on his way to Hell. His name, once said by so many to be "immortal" would not be remembered, it turned out. The rememberers were gone, except for me, and I was forgetting: forgetting his name, forgetting him, and forgetting all the ones who remembered him.

As I read this play, I felt myself in the middle of one of those unforgettable Luis Bunuel films such as The Exterminating Angel or The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie in which strange inexplicable things were happening.

I must read some more of Shawn's work. Also, I had better read some John Donne before it's too late.

["Greg Adkins"]

When Wallace Shawn dies, his obituary will inevitably begin by citing his most famous roles -- in The Princess Bride, Clueless, and the "homunculus" in Woody Allen's Manhattan. Eventually, a few paragraphs in, it'll mention that he was also a playwright of some minor note. What a sad and strange fate awaits one of our best writers, to be immortalized in a million Facebook memes-in-waiting ("Inconceivable!"), while his true intellectual and artistic merit goes largely unremarked.

Not that it's a surprise: The Designated Mourner, like all of Shawn's plays, is an uphill struggle of a text, even for veteran performers. Huge blocks of text, dense with allusion and intellectual debate, can be difficult to parse on first pass. And considering that the "action" of the play -- such as it is -- is propelled mostly by implication and omission, with direct conflicts taking place off stage or not at all, it can be a slog to start off on. But oh, what a magnificent slog it is. Shawn's off-kilter sense of detail and simmering below-the-surface contempt for the world is magnificent in its obscurity.

[Elly Tarahimofrad]

نمایشنامه رو با یک شناخت جزئی از والاس شان و چیزی که از "شب من با آندره" تو خاطرم بود خریدم. واقعا نمی‌دونم چه انتظاری داشته باشم اما لذتی که از نمایشنامه‌خوانی‌های همیشه می‌بردم رو بهم نداد. شاید برای ساختار نمایش و مونولوگ‌های سه شخصیت کاملا متفاوت با هم که به سختی هم با هم مکالمه داشتند. شاید اگر روزی این گفتگوها رو به صورت اجرای نمایش روی سن تئاتر ببینم خیلی بهتر باشه.

[A Yawner]

خوب نبود - توصیه نمی شه

[Kaveh Rezaie]

سه شخصيت كه هركدام خاطرات خود را، به صورت مونولوگ، پاره پاره روايت مى كنند. زمان و مكان اتفاقات مشخص نيست اما شبيه آن چيزى ست كه در كشورهاى امريكاى لاتين روى مى داده ست و شورش هايى كه عليه حكومت هاى خودكامه شده است. البته اين هم در متن واضح نيست كه واقعا شورشى دركار بوده است يا نه، و اينكه آيا دولت حلقه ادبى آنها را از بين برده است يا شورشيان.
اما آنچه مرا بيشتر جذب كرد نه اين اتفاقها، بلكه روابط بين دو زوجى ست كه تاثير مى گيرد از آنچه روى مى دهد.

[Andy]

Along with Adorno's Minima Moralia, Brecht's poems, and Phil Ochs' last few albums, the work that cracked my little aesthete head open in relation to politics, political art, and the relation of interpersonal ethics to social conscience. Also amazing writing, brilliant in detail and large-scale form.

[Ben Callahan]

pretty sure the protagonist takes a shit in the bathtub and it's never fully explained

[draxtor]

After 4th read of Infinite Jest (coz 30th anni) I picked up Wallace Shawn' "The Designated Mourner" coz Annie Levin wrote about it in @curaffairs = powerful and scary how relevant in light of fascism + tech (AI in particular) trying to finalize the solution of erasing humanity :(

Her article = https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/t...

Page 50: "But one morning in my new apartment I did something funny - at least I thought it was funny. I put a book of poetry in the bathtub, and I urinated on it."

Note to self: need to read more Wallace Shawn!

[Craig Werner]

My response to The Designated Mourner reminds me a bit of my first encounters with Henry James. I simply didn't like, and wasn't much interested in, the people. In his theoretical writings, James offers the best (maybe the only) response, insisting that a reader has to grant the writer his/her donee, the "givens" of their choice of material. If you accept the premise, The Designated Mourner probably deserves more like four stars. Shawn (whose My Dinner with Andre is one of my favorites pieces) has a sense of rhythm and image that matches his characters as they lament the passing of a particular style of "highbrow" culture grounded in the belief in a unified self. All of that's collapsing in this play built around the monologues of three characters with slightly different relationships to the "diminished thing." There's a sense of political apocalypse/transition/uprising in the background, not particularly compellingly sketched, a variation on Coetze's Waiting for the Barbarians and Ishigura's The Unconsoled, both of which I vastly prefer.

[Saman Mahdavi]

بیرون پنجره ماه پر نوره; اسب ها رو می بینیم که دارن تو چمن بازی می کنن و پرنده هارو که دارن تو آسمونِ بالای سرِ اسب ها بازی میکنن.دستِ خیلی سردِ جُن داره آروم با یه حرکتِ فکر شده ی خیلی ظریفی منو ناز میکنه،رو تنم بالا پایین میره و من به این مسئله ی کلا خیلی پیچیده شده ی مرگ فکر میکنم و به خودم میگم محضِ رضای خدا،میشه دست از دست و پا زدن برداری؟ به پشت دراز بکش.سرتو بذار رو بالش.چشم هاتو ببند.بلد نیستی چه طوری از همه چی لذت ببری؟فقط منتظر لحظه ش شو که می دونی سر میرسه.آهان .آهان.یک،دو-سر رسیدنش قطعیه.

[Hanna]

So scary!!! I love Wallace Shawn so much. I read a little Wallace Shawn play in a day and I wildly gesticulate between feeling far less and far more insane about my evil stupid miserable shithead country run by anti-social middle managers who can’t speak, can't do much of anything beneficial, even if it's all they goddamn talk about, and bold, charismatic (or revolting) pedophiles.

But I love Mister Shawn! I'll love him forever.

[Mommalibrarian]

Pretentious people observed and discussed by Wallace Shawn and two other actors. Not fun like HA HA but interesting in a tickle your brain fashion. I am a big fan of My Dinner with Andre

http://www.wnyc.org/articles/arts/200...

[Gregory Butera]

Why did this take me so long to read? It's only 100 pages! Well the first 20 or so were tough to get through and then you really need to read it straight through in one sitting. So, are you a rat or a dirt eater? Which would you prefer to be? Do you have wealth and privilege but feel guilty? When the revolution comes will you be heading to the guillotine?

I can't imagine being an actor trying to memorize these lengthy thick passages. In all of his plays, Wallace Shawn deals with some difficult issues, taking on privilege, selfishness, interpersonal relationships, and the characters wildly swing between compassion and violent outbursts. It is sometimes very jarring. I understand that he's trying to show how the inner monologue that we each hear inside our heads is often jarring, selfish, and horrible to the people external to us. But that's also what makes the play a challenge to those of us living our soft, safe little lives. Not wanting to think about those hard questions, or think about how things that benefit us may negatively impact others. I think he writes about important subjects, but the main characters in all of his plays that I have read so far are hard to like, and that makes what they have to say hard to get through sometimes.

This one is also a film with Mike Nichols and Miranda Richardson playing the two leads.

I think Shawn is an important playwright and I am glad I've stumbled upon his work.

[B. Rule]

This is an incisive, brutal work, made all the more so by what Shawn chooses to leave out more so than what he includes. Vast political horrors are only hinted at, occasionally bursting through the "action" with terrible and sudden reality. While the fates of two of the three characters are described, it's the hazy, episodic nature of the telling that inspires real terror.

Further, "Jack" is an amazing "villain": he's self-interested, endlessly self-justifying, deluded, squeamish, cowardly, but sympathetic as well. His rationalizations for cutting and running as the fate of his intellectual cohort falls is all too believable, and the retreat to platitudes about the beauty of nature and the illusory nature of the self are easy refuges from the hard work of confronting human horrors and facing inexorable power with courage. Sure, the self may be an illusion, but it's also the locus of moral judgment. Something real is lost when the illusion is dissolved. Shawn also makes a strong though indirect case for seeing the value in intellectual culture even when it's maudlin, self-serious, and ineffectual. Because once the brutality of leveling removes all those who can read John Donne, what are we left with of value?

The play is stagey and impressionistic, but also hilarious and just beautifully written. I'm not too familiar with Shawn's output for the stage, but I will definitely be picking up more based on the strength of this piece. It hits like a knife.

[Victoria Martin]

This is a deep and disturbing read. I loved it both because, and despite the fact that, you have to do a lot of work to understand it, as with Pinter and Beckett. It's nightmarish, heartbreaking and puzzling in more or less equal parts. I absolutely must get hold of the film version, directed by David Hare.

Three or four years ago I attended a stand-out evening in London featuring Michael Billington and John Lahr talking about their 5 favourite plays of all time. The only one I'd never heard of, rated by Lahr as his number two, was this play. Having finally read it, I agree it's right up there.

In case you're interested, the top 5 for Billington were:

1. Henry IV parts I and II (He cheated here) by Shakespeare
2. The Cherry Orchard, by Chekhov
3. The Wild Duck, by Ibsen
4. The Importance of Being Earnest, by Wilde
5. The Entertainer, by Osbourne

And for Lahr:

1. The Glass Menagerie, by Williams
2. The Designated Mourner, by Shawm
3. Joe Turner's Come And Gone, by Wilson
4. American Buffalo, by Mamet
5. The Homecoming, by Pinter

[Paul Narvaez]

This is a very verbal social critique.
A play to be read more than to be dramatized.

In some future time (that feels uncomfortably close to our own), a totalitarian regime starts to systematically dismantle independant thought by killing off it's independant thinkers.

Shawn portrays these people as self-satisfied elites whose detachment from the working class fuels populist rage. Tne intellectuals believe their refined taste and literary achievements protect them, rendering them completely helpless when actual physical and political force is deployed against them.

Survival requires the abandonment of personal loyalty, love, and intellectual honesty. Some people are willing to sell out friends and family for the comfort of their own "freedom". The designated mourner is about the complicity of the bystander. A play about living in bad faith. It speaks to different readers in different ways.

[R.G. Evans]

Early on in The Designated Mourner, one of its narrators relates how the world is divided into "highbrows" and "lowbrows." After reading some of the praise for this dramatic work, I hereby conclude must be in the latter category. I'll admit my experience with Shawn's play may have more to do with the way I experienced it (a newly produced six-part podcast production directed by Andre Gregory) than with the play itself. Had I read it on the page or seen it performed, I might have appreciated it more. While I enjoyed the inventive lyricism of Shawn's three narrators, I made very little connection with the actual narrative they conveyed. I remained very much in the moment listening to this podcast, like a man walking on a bridge made of sand which, cartoon-like, disappears behind him as he takes each step.

[meg]

hmmm I didn't really know what to expect from this but I didn't really love this. Due to the structure of the play, it wasnt told in traditional dialogue but in a series of monologues with the characters barely having true conversations, and the bulk of the plot and action (the coup and they and all their friends being arrested) took place entirely off stage. Maybe this works better when it's performed live but it didn't work particularly well in text. There were some magnificent turns of phrase and it did succeed in squeezing some pathos out of me at the end but overall I don't think this will stick with me

[Jordan Muschler]

Hmm.

I want to see this staged. I am curious how much a director would choose to reveal and keep hidden in a text that is extremely slow to reveal itself.

Shawn knows how to write monologue - I love his voice, and his dark sense of humor. I just didn’t find the meat of the play until the very end - kind of like with Aunt Dan and Lemon, but more so here. However, I think this will get richer after another reading or viewing, as I delve more into what it’s saying with some expectation of its intention. The ending surprisingly moved me, and I think more viewings will make it grow more powerful.

[Rachel]

The end of this play is fascinating and thought-provoking, but the problem is that I almost didn’t get there. Maybe the first Act would be more engaging in performance, but I actually had the thought that this is a play I might ditch at intermission. Which, of course, would be a shame (and really, I never would). The last third of the play was strong enough to almost warrant a three star review, but really, if the reader (or audience) is in danger of never reaching that point, maybe it’s fair to rate it by the first two-thirds, which feels confusing, aimless, and self-indulgent.

[Mitchel]

Shawn's play is inscrutable, provoking, engrossing, and - ultimately - deeply humane. The text is all the more impressive given its slight structure. Indeed, the conceit's limitations could easily lend themselves to droning repetition. But, like a street corner magician, Shawn continuously makes wondrous things appear using only his characters words. A truly great achievement of American playwrighting.

[Mattschratz]

In my reading of plays over the last few months, I've thought a lot about the high, "stagey" emotions that they represent and the need, in my opinion, for some weird thing to shoot through and trouble the successful ones (the toasters in True West, the Lincoln costume in Topdog/Underdog, the sheer speed of Yellow Face, etc). Shawn says: what if we built the whole play out of the weird thing? Five stars.

[Regan]

Again, just NOT a fan of reading plays. I'd rather see a play over reading it.

On the back cover, one of the words used to describe this piece is "unsettling" and I'd say that's about right. It's dark, heavy, ugly. I like Wallace Shawn, and there's no doubt that this piece was intense as hell on stage. It's smartly written. I just...yeah...it's ugly and hard and intense. There you go.

[Cameron Tief]

Read this play for a book club at the American library in Paris. It was ok but I can’t imagine being an actor on the stage. It read more like a novel than a play, only having 3 actors who barely interacted in conversation on the stage. Topics explored include class, political revolution, love, and relationships with in-laws. Not my fave