In this episode, writer, actor and director John Cotter joins hosts Catherine Nichols and Sandra Newman to discuss Wallace Shawn's 1996 play "The Designated Mourner," about the fate of intellectuals during an authoritarian coup in an unnamed country.

John Cotter directed The Designated Mourner in Denver in 2013 & 2014. There's a chapter about one of the performances in his forthcoming memoir,Losing Music, which is due out from Milkweed Editions in 2022. Elisa Gabbert, who played the role of Judy in that production, wrote a book of poems inspired by the experience, L'Heure Bleue, or The Judy Poems, which was published by Black Ocean Books in 2016. 

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