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FOR RELEASE ON THURSDAY, JANUARY 22, 2026 

WALLACE SHAWN
RETURNS TO THE STAGE
IN HIS INTERNATIONALLY ACCLAIMED OBIE AWARD-WINNING SOLO PLAY
“THE FEVER” 

PERFORMANCES BEGIN MONDAY, FEBRUARY 16
TICKETS ON SALE NOW

IN REPERTORY WITH SHAWN’S NEW PLAY
“WHAT WE DID BEFORE OUR MOTH DAYS”
AT THE GREENWICH HOUSE THEATER

To download key art, click here.

New York, NY (January 22, 2026) – Producers Scott Rudin and Barry Diller announced today that Wallace Shawn will embark on a remarkable theatrical double venture this winter at the Greenwich House Theater (27 Barrow Street): performing his Obie Award-winning solo masterwork, The Fever, in repertory with the previously-announced world premiere of his latest play, What We Did Before Our Moth Days. Shawn, will perform in The Fever two times a week, Sunday and Monday evenings, beginning Monday, February 16, while What We Did Before Our Moth Days — directed by Shawn’s longtime collaborator André Gregory — runs concurrently.

In The Fever, a nameless narrator, confined to a squalid hotel room inside a poor nation, lies feverish as political repression takes place just outside his window. While he recovers, he starts to question his own privilege and in particular his complicity, as he grapples with the stark realities of inequality and human suffering.

Shawn is particularly happy to present The Fever now because its themes strongly resonate with the current political climate, saying, “I have always been a person who enjoyed the pleasures of life, including the turkey dinners and hot fudge sundaes that come with being an American. I began writing The Fever when I came to understand that to enable me to live the life that I lived, various other people had been starved and killed. And there’s undeniably a certain anxiety involved in enjoying that particular way of life today when one listens to the nakedly brutal pronouncements of the thugs who currently run our country.”

The Fever was first performed in friends’ living rooms, followed by the play’s premiere at The Public Theater in 1990 (winning the 1991 Obie Award for Best Play). Since then, it has been performed regularly in both theaters and unconventional spaces throughout the world including London’s Royal Court, the Avignon Festival, and at the ARCUB in Bucharest. In recent years, The Fever has been performed by such varied and acclaimed actors as Cate Blanchett (BBC, 2025), Lili Taylor (Off-Broadway, 2021), and Tobias Menzies (London, 2015), among many others. In 2004, the work was also adapted into an HBO film starring Vanessa Redgrave and directed by Carlo Gabriel Nero. This winter’s programming marks a rare theatrical convergence: a playwright both performing his most enduring solo work while simultaneously unveiling his latest ensemble play— offering audiences two distinct perspectives on Shawn’s evolving moral and political inquiries.

Tickets for The Fever are available now at www.MothDays.com, via the TodayTix app, and at www.TodayTix.com.

To download Wallace Shawn’s headshot, click here.

For more information, please visit www.MothDays.com.

“Wallace Shawn has an adorably unthreatening persona; as a writer,
though, he bites savagely at the hands that have fed him all his life.
The Fever doesn’t want to make you sick.
What it says, with ineluctable directness, is: You are sick already.”
Adam Feldman, Time Out

“A corrosive exercise in theatrical conscience-baiting.  The Fever offers an intimate tour of the tortured consciousness of an angst-ridden, well-to-do American, but Mr. Shawn’s real goal is to hold an unflattering mirror up to his well-meaning audience.”
Charles Isherwood, The New York Times

“The Fever leaves no place to hide.”
Hephzibah Anderson, The Guardian

The Fever is ferocious and wryly funny.”
Lyn Garnder, The Guardian

“Wallace Shawn’s voice, spoken and written, is unmistakable.”
Ben Brantley, The New York Times

“Wallace Shawn is the most underrated playwright in America.”
Neil LaBute, The Guardian

“Wallace Shawn’s plays are high-minded and intelligent, deceptively brutal.”
Vinson Cunningham, The New Yorker

“Wallace Shawn’s writing possesses a remarkable mixture of unabashed intellectualism and visceral appeal. He is an underappreciated master among contemporary artists.”
Henry Hitchings, Evening Standard

ABOUT WALLACE SHAWN

Wallace Shawn started writing plays in 1967. His play Our Late Night, directed by André Gregory, was done at the Public Theater in New York in 1975 by André’s group, The Manhattan Project.

His plays have been performed at The Public Theater and Scott Elliott’s The New Group in New York and in London at the National Theatre and the Royal Court Theatre. They include Maire and Bruce, Aunt Dan and Lemon, The Fever, The Designated Mourner, Grasses of a Thousand Colors, and Evening at the Talk House. The plays are published in the United States by TCG Books and Grove Press and in the UK by Faber and Nick Hern Books. The current version of The Fever and What We Did Before Our Moth Days will be published in the United States and the UK by Faber.

His work as a film actor includes appearances in Manhattan, Clueless, Radio Days, Toy Story franchise, The Moderns and Rifkin’s Festival. Wallace is also known as Dr. Sturgis in the television show “Young Sheldon.”

Wallace’s three films with André Gregory, available in a boxed set from Criterion, are My Dinner with André and Vanya on 42nd Street, both directed by Louis Malle, and A Master Builder, directed by Jonathan Demme. He and André co-wrote My Dinner with André in Vanya. Wallace played Vanya in the production directed by André, and in A Master Builder he played Solness in the production directed by André.

André directed Wallace’s play Grasses of a Thousand Colors at the Royal Court in London and, in a co-production with Theatre for a New Audience, at The Public Theater. André’s production of The Designated Mourner was first produced by Celeste Bartos and Scott Rudin in a deserted men’s club near Wall Street. It has also been done at The Public Theater and Redcat in Los Angeles.

His latest book is a long essay, Night Thoughts. His earlier essays are collected in Essays. Both books are published by Haymarket Books. In the U.K., his essays are collected in the book Sleeping Among Sheep Under a Starry Sky.

Allen Shawn’s opera The Music Teacher, with a libretto by Wallace Shawn, is available from Bridge Records.

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