This is an entirely unofficial site which I created because there may be other people who, like me, discovered and loved some piece of Wallace Shawn's work long ago but may not have been aware of the rest. My theater background is too informal for me to approach these things in any scholarly way (that's already been done better in print), so the "notes" on the plays are just my best attempt to pick out some of the interesting threads in the fabric. The lists of productions are by no means complete.
I've never met the guy, but I can attest that he is a mensch. Here's the story: Years after I first picked up The Fever (at random, never having read his other plays, and it hit me like a ton of bricks), I was finally able to take part in a small production of it which was, I think, pretty damn good. At the time, exclusive rights to do the play in New York had been granted to Vanessa Redgrave, who wanted to do it solo on Broadway but never got around to it. But the director of our production got a hilarious five-minute answering machine message from "uh... Wally", nervously explaining that he was still happy to see us doing the play; he suggested that if he couldn't figure out a loophole in the rights, "you could always, uh... steal it."
Nevertheless, if you want to produce his work, you must contact him through his agent: Howard Rosenstone, 3 East 48th St, New York, NY 10017.