The Designated Mourner

Wallace Shawn

• Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781559363624
• eBook ISBN: 9781559366564
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Drama
• Index: Literature

“The play nicely combines Pinterian menace with caustic political commentary.” –Time

“Acerbic, elusive, poetic and chilling, the writing is demanding in a rarefied manner. Its implications are both affecting and disturbing.” –Los Angeles Times

“In his exquisitely written dramatic lament for the decline of high culture. . . . [Shawn] offers a definition of the self that should rattle the defenses of intellectual snobs everywhere.” –The New York Times

Writer and performer Wallace Shawn’s landmark 1996 play features three characters—a respected poet, his daughter, and her English-professor husband—suspected of subversion in a world where culture has come under the control of the ruling oligarchy. Told through three interwoven monologues, the Orwellian political story is recounted alongside the visceral dissolution of a marriage. The play debuted at the Royal National Theatre in London, in a production directed by David Hare, who also directed the film version, starring Mike Nichols and Miranda Richardson. The play’s subsequent New York premiere was staged in a long-abandoned men’s club in lower Manhattan, directed by Shawn’s longtime collaborator André Gregory.

Wallace Shawn is the author of Our Late Night (OBIE Award for Best Play), Marie and Bruce, Aunt Dan and Lemon, The Fever, and the screenplay for My Dinner with André. His most recent play, Grasses of a Thousand Colors, premiered last year in London.

PART ONE

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JACK

(To the audience) The designated mourner. I am the designated mourner. I have to tell you that a very special little world has died, and I am the designated mourner. Oh yes, you see, it’s an important custom in many groups and tribes. Someone is assigned to grieve, to wail, and light the public ritual fire. Someone is assigned when there’s no one else.

Christ, you know, I remember so clearly the moment—when was that?—years ago—when someone was saying, “If God didn’t like assholes, He wouldn’t have made so many of them,” and the person who was saying it looked right at me as he said it—ha ha ha—

I think someone asked me, “Say, are you all right?” And I said, you know, “Oh, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t bother me. I mean, I’m fine, really.” By the way, do you remember when people used to say that all the time? “I’m fine, really,” “I’m fine, really” . . . Ha ha ha—I must admit, it was an expression I always absolutely hated, but anyway, you know, we all used it—aha ha ha—

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I remember saying to Judy, “I don’t sort of understand this need you have to look for beauty in subtler things. Look at your own hand—look at your hand, the plate, the cake, the table . . .”

JUDY

(To the audience) I guess the search for more refined forms of punishment never comes to an end. After all, there are so many ways that life can be squeezed out of a human body. “Can a method be found that is more in keeping with the essential sweetness of our human nature?” a rather cruel queen once plaintively asked, or so it’s said.

I loved him so much, it was a kind of torture. Every morning, waiting, watching his face, in those squirming long moments of sleep and half-sleep as he turned and stretched—I sat there beside him, my hand beside him, not touching him, and pain would fill up my body inch by inch, as if someone were pouring it out of a pitcher.

JACK

(To the audience) You see, I think we ought to be precise about facts—I mean, very, very precise about historical facts. Or I mean, for God’s sake, let’s try to be. Or I mean, for God’s sake, let’s pretend to be. Or something, anyway. Well, at any rate . . . At any rate, there are those who believe that it was a columnist for a newspaper called The New York Sun who, in 1902, first coined that wonderful pair of neatly matching phrases “highbrow” and “lowbrow.”

JUDY

I watched him wake up, the squirming stilled, touched his face, his neck, his mouth, kissed him, one hand lying deep in his hair, oily and thick like a bucket full of worms. The one thing he never would say—the word he couldn’t stand: love. I love you.

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JACK

A “highbrow” was a person who liked the finer things—you know, saving the Rembrandt from the burning building, rather than the baby or the fried chicken or whatever—while a “lowbrow” was someone who you might say liked to take the easy way in the cultural sphere—oh, the funny papers, pinups—you know, cheap entertainment.

JUDY

There are ideas that are almost like formalized greetings. Everyone agrees with them, but we keep repeating them anyway, all day long. Everyone keeps saying, for example, “Human motivation is very complex.” But, if you stop and think about it, you have to admit that human motivation is not complex, or it’s complex only in the same sense that the motivation of a fly is complex. In other words, if you try to swat a fly, it moves out of the way. And humans are the same. They step aside when they sense something coming, about to hit them in the face. Of course, you do see the occasional exception—the person who just stands there and waits for the blow.

I love silence, the beauty of silence. The shadows of trees. Japanese monasteries buried in snow, surrounded by forest. Loneliness, death, in the dark forest. But my life was different, a different way: A city. People. Concerts. Poetry.

Altogether, I was lucky—one of the few—because I paid a little price for the things that I thought. I paid a price, so my life was not nothing, my life had something in it.

JACK

All human beings have a need to hear stories, and a rather pretentious fraud I knew in school even used to say that stories are actually “as necessary as food.” I hated that. But, do you know, it’s true? If people don’t dream at night, they go insane, and by day, they need stories—it’s just that simple. Now, some people like to get their stories from gossip, and some people like to get them from novels or plays, but personally I’ve always liked newspapers the best. The stories in newspapers are brief, they’re varied, and, every once in a while, you get to read about someone you know—a friend or an acquaintance suddenly pops up.

Incidentally, have you ever noticed the way that people are always asking, as if there would be a new answer each time, “How can this have happened?” “How can that have happened?!” “Why, it seems impossible!” et cetera. And yet, actually, the answer to those questions is always the same. You remember I was mentioning God a moment ago? Well, that reminded me of something an old acquaintance of mine always used to say when people said things like that. He always used to say, “God’s not in His heaven. And all’s not right with the world.” Aha ha ha ha—aha ha ha ha. But to me, you see—well, he always seemed to me to have the right idea. I always thought, frankly, it was a point well taken.

But shall we get off the very boring subject of me? I’m not interesting. You can sum me up in about ten words: a former student of English literature who—who—who went downhill from there! Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha! Oh for God’s sake. For God’s sake—no. Now, I’m serious—honestly—let’s forget me, and let’s talk about someone who actually is interesting— let’s talk about someone we can all revere!—now that would be enjoyable. In other words—yes—let’s talk about—Howard!

But—er—ah—er-hrr—mm-hmm—er—now what can I say on such a fascinating subject? How should I begin to tell you about this remarkable man who responded so sensitively to the most obscure verses—and also to the cries of the miserable and the downtrodden, sometimes virtually at the same instant, without ever leaving his breakfast table? I mean, if I’m going to speak of Howard, what should come first? What should be the very first thing that I ought to say? I mean, I really ought to say many different things simultaneously, because, you see, he was so outstanding in so many ways. But that’s not possible. So, what can I do? Oh what the hell—let’s just calm down—I have to start somewhere—so—well—all right—I’ll start by describing one of Howard’s truly most exceptional qualities—well, let’s just call it—his capacity for—for contempt. Yes. Good. All right. So. “Howard’s Capacity for Contempt.” Now really, of course, that’s really the subject for a lengthy monograph, I can only just sketch it, you know, a superficial sketch, but it really is a good place to begin, because Howard’s capacity for contempt was so—well—incredibly vast. In fact, he really had contempt for pretty much everybody on earth. Isn’t that absolutely wonderful?

HOWARD

(To Judy) All right, my darling. Hold my hand for a moment.

JACK

An apostle, you see, of universal love, but flying through each particular day “on wings of scorn,” as some amusing wag said of someone once. Oh, it was impressive, really.

HOWARD

(To Judy and Jack) Oh God, I had to laugh when I heard what Tom was saying on the radio—ha ha ha—I really laughed.

JACK

It was wonderful, the way he could draw us all into it. Pretty soon we’d all be laughing.

(They all laugh.)

HOWARD

He was chattering, chattering, of course—to Eddie!—and all of a sudden—to Eddie’s surprise—he was giving his famous views on “morality” again—aha ha ha!—

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JACK

His contempt didn’t come out of nowhere, of course. I mean, you had to understand that over the years—and a bit more each year, one could say, I suppose—poor Howard had really been frightfully mistreated in every possible way. Why, it was just outrageous! You know, a month after his very favorite little tea house in the park had been closed for good, they’d actually cut down his favorite grove of trees! And that’s just one example. So naturally this was an angry man!

HOWARD

(To Judy and Jack) So immediately Eddie got very very serious. Oh yes, very serious—you know the way he gets. His lips get sort of—stuck in place—like this—you know?—so his voice is sort of “er er er”—hee hee hee—

(They all laugh.)

JACK

(To the audience) Now, one of Judy’s problems, I’m sorry to say, was that she refused to wear clothes in front of her father, which I, as her husband, found somehow always vaguely unnerving. I mean, her usual outfit around the house was this rather well-worn pair of ratty old trousers, some bright-red lipstick, and a rather frilly brassiere. The trousers and lipstick never varied, but the brassiere would be forgotten on certain occasions. In other words, she was sometimes topless. All right, all right, you think I’m a prude, but one of the main reasons it bothered me, honestly, was that as Howard, of course, always went around in his bedclothes and dressing gown, it meant that usually I was the only one dressed. I mean, that was a little unfair—don’t you think so? I was the one who felt out of place. I felt out of place because I was dressed! Ha ha ha—

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JUDY

(To the audience) Shall I tell you about the first time I met the very amusing and extraordinarily long-lived President of our country? I was about six years old, and I was strolling happily through the park with my nurse, running off the pathway every few moments to chase a squirrel or a bird, and all of a sudden we passed the President, also strolling, with a huge entourage. He was heavily guarded in those days, obviously. Well, as soon as we passed he ran back towards me, with his whole group following ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• OTHER WORKS BY WALLACE SHAWN
• Dedication
• PRODUCTION HISTORY
• CHARACTERS
• PART ONE
• PART TWO
• Copyright Page