Humanities & Cultures

Inconceivable!

When I ask Wallace Shawn how he cast his latest stage work, What We Did Before Our Moth Days, the actor and playwright smiles matter-of-factly: “Well, I think that’s secret. I don’t think I’ll tell you.” It’s polite, to the point and sets a clear boundary: something that I soon discover that the charming 82-year-old is entirely comfortable with.

On an overcast Wednesday, we are in a restaurant atop the hip Manhattan arthouse cinema Metrograph, watching people trickle in a few days before a retrospective of his films opens there. Spending time with Shawn feels like stepping into his own constant sense of wonderment: something midway between a knowing shrug and puzzlement over his immediate situation. When the cinema’s publicist offers him a Twix bar, he cocks his head and asks what that is, but politely accepts one. (When she returns with more options, he opts for popcorn instead.)

Born in New York and a theater mainstay since the late 60s, Shawn has reached the farthest from his native island through memorable turns in Hollywood hits like The Princess Bride and Marriage Story. After making his first big-screen appearance in Woody Allen’s 1979 film Manhattan, he popped up in cult hits like Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz and Alan J Pakula’s Starting Over before indelible leading turns in My Dinner with Andre or Vanya on 42nd Street, both co-written with Shawn’s longtime collaborator André Gregory. Acting is a miracle, he tells me, because while actors “look like us, like we could do what they do … we can’t, really”.

It’s a curious comment from someone with more than 200 screen credits, but Shawn has been pushing himself to the limit this spring. On the two nights a week that Moth Days is not in performance, he has been restaging his blistering 1990 monologue, The Fever.