Ageing, gender, and ’other disasters’: An age-focused analysis of Wallace Shawn’s Evening at the talk house

Abstract

Various narrative forms have long responded to major global crises, among which the demographic ageing of the Western world is increasingly coming into focus. Through theatre’s capacity to engage with social anxieties, new dramaturgies have begun to explore the role that old age plays in our ever-shifting social landscapes. Some of them have examined the implications of the ageing population through the lens of (demo)dystopia, a genre that has become more popular in fiction but remains comparatively rare on the stage. This article offers an age-centred analysis of Evening at The Talk House (2015), a (demo)dystopian play by American playwright and actor Wallace Shawn. It examines the meanings of (old) age in the play’s apocalyptic world, while at the same time exploring the particular position of (ageing) women (frequently submitted to cultural erasure or complete invisibility) within its crisis-ridden dramatic universe. Overall, the article aims to contribute to sharpening cultural awareness of dominant narratives of (female) ageing founded on sexist and ageist assumptions. It concludes that theatrical explorations of later life offer rich ground for the critical interrogation of contemporary unease surrounding the process of growing old and its broader social consequences.