QUESTIONS FOR WALLACE SHAWN
Stage Leftish
Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON
Published: January 11, 2004
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Do you follow Broadway theater?
No. I don't see that many plays, and for me, musicals are rarely pleasing. I feel the actors are being put through a kind of nightmarish labor. They're like animals being forced to pull heavy carts of vegetables at incredible speeds.
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So you take some pride in American culture.
To be honest, I see myself as a citizen of the planet. Even as a child, I always found it mindless to root for your own team. I was puzzled by the fact that people said their own team was better than other teams simply because it was theirs.
But it would be even odder and potentially self-destructive if we assumed that our own team was inferior to other teams.
Well, there is a reason my brother and I are taking care of our own mother first, before we worry about your mother. It's great to love your own mother, but I sincerely believe that if Bush and Cheney recognized the full humanity of other people's mothers around the world, they wouldn't commit the crimes they commit.
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