Summary

"The Designated Mourner by Wally Shawn" is a chapbook inspired by the famous play of the same name, written by Wallace Shawn in 1996 and adapted for the screen in '97 by David Hare. "The Designated Mourner" takes place in the near future, in an unnamed Western country ruled by a fascist party which, threatened by a communist guerrilla movement based in the lower class, is imprisoning and executing anyone suspected of subversion. There are three characters: concerned with Howard, a respected poet, his daughter Judy, and her husband, Jack. There is no visible action within the play, just a series of monologues in which the three characters describe their memories and their fates.

The chapbook is narrated from the first person point of view of an unnamed speaker who attended a staging of the 2013 New York City production of...