A Thought in Three Parts
Produced by Groundwater Productions at SummerWorks ’07, Canadian Premiere
By Wallace Shawn
Directed by Brendan Healy
Featuring Wes Berger, Noa May Dorn, Ryan Hollyman, Stephen Gartner, Pierre Simpson and Tanya Smith
Produced and Assistant Directed by Gideon Arthurs
First produced at the Royal Court in 1975, its notoriety was sealed when the British vice squad closed it down due to its explicit portrayal of violence and sexuality, A Thought Three Parts receives its Canadian Premiere.
In the play’s first act, Summer Evening, the audience is caught within the entanglement of a honeymooning couple’s perpetual game of foreplay. In the second act, Youth Hostel, they are voyeurs to a feast of desires where the appetites of five vacationing youths are indulged and their every impulse consummated. In the final act, Mr. Frivolous, a lone figure is trapped in the memory of a past sexual conquest and audiences are left wondering what remains after sexual hunger is satiated.
Part porn, part debate, still shocking after thirty years, A Thought In Three Parts boldly looks at the lines between love and hate, sexuality and intimacy, indulgence and exploitation.
“NNNN ... All three pieces are full of dramatic subtext, and the company unerringly mines the nuances in Shawn’s seemingly simple words.”
- John Kaplan, Now Magazine