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William Shatner’s “Yellow Wallpaper”
By: Jason Lebaron
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” has been widely interpreted as a
milestone in early American feminist literature, and rightly so. Written as a collection of journal
entries that vividly unfold the narrator’s imaginative paranoia, the heroine spends her days
gazing into the yellow walls that surround and confine her, driven mad by her obsession over
patterns and shapes that she believes are living within the wallpaper. The story has inspired a
great deal of critical attention over the years: analyzing the symbolic meaning of the wallpaper,
deconstructing the Victorian mansion as a setting, forwarding feminist critiques of medical
patriarchy and 19th century gender hegemony, and so on. It’s all a little tedious and
overwhelming. So rather than tread where so many others have waded, my stage adaptation
leaves that whole discourse in the lobby.
The first question on everyone’s mind: “Is this a one man show?”
Yes it is. Why? Just uttering the phrase “one man show” evokes a certain image… a
certain caliber of performance: mercurial, naked, full of equal parts risk and glory. And William
Shatner was the man to do it. Bottom line: a marquee superstar of Shatner’s magnitude in a solo
performance was sure to attract keen interest from the entertainment media and blogosphere.
The inevitable Tony-award buzz surrounding what was sure to be an acting tour de force would
have kept the house packed in perpetuity.
Of course, anyone familiar with the history of the production would know that I am guilty
of a little historical revision here. There were trade-offs to be made, this is theatre after all, and
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some of the inevitable compromises led not only to “William Shatner’s Yellow Wallpaper”
becoming a one-man performance but also to its infamous reputation in certain theatre-circles.
For example, Shatner’s exorbitant salary left the production with a threadbare budget that
precluded the possibility of securing even a meager supporting cast. Producers scrambled to
recruit a small army of inexperienced volunteers and interns. Added to that, the crew found it
quite impossible to cope with Shatner’s notoriously demanding work ethic. Early in rehearsals,
what was described by one observer as an “Epic Shatdown” was captured on video and uploaded
to YouTube, where it quickly went viral and spawned numerous parodies and remixes. When
the target of this particularly vicious tirade stormed from the stage in tears (an unfortunate 19year-old starlet from Grand Rapids, MI who has since retired from show business), Shatner
announced that he would play all the parts himself or walk away from the production. He
immediately departed on a month-long cattle ranching and Shoshone vision-questioning
expedition in Colorado, instructing the producers to make whatever changes they felt were
necessary before his return.
Under orders from the producers, who were desperate to save the show, a small team of
eager writers quickly drafted a new treatment that had Shatner as the sole player, delivering long
and impassioned monologues while strapped to a hospital bed at center-stage. In order to get the
most from the actor, the director originally planned to film Shatner miming both the ‘husband’
and ‘nurse’ parts on a soundstage and have these images projected (fittingly, through a yellow
filter) onto a screen. Shatner, a skilled impressionist, would recite his lines live from the bed at
center-stage. This approach would have been faithful to the source material, with the narrator’s
growing madness brought to life by Shatner’s bizarre, seemingly drunken performance. The
climax of the play was to have Shatner responding to his own pre-recorded image, a massive HD
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projection cast on the audience. The projection would read key passages from the story-- a
brilliant voice-over of Shatner reading in his inimitable style and rhythm-- while the actor
writhed and convulsed on stage. In short, Shatner wouldn’t have any difficulty whatsoever
accomplishing what would otherwise be an impossible task for a lesser talent.
The second question I anticipate, “Uh, William Shatner? Isn’t this story supposed to be
about a woman or something?” is much simpler to answer. But to put it another way, why isn’t
the lead a woman?
Throughout his career, Shatner has been a paradigm-shifter, a game-changer, always laser
focused on his goal of challenging social norms and pushing boundaries. Racial and gender
equality have always been core issues for Shatner (he famously kissed Nichelle Nichols on Star
Trek, marking the first interracial kiss in television history). He has claimed that he is unable to
note differences in skin color and considers himself a militant feminist. As such, Shatner’s solo
performance exaggerates the absurdities and atrocities of 19th century patriarchal hegemony and
cuts to the core of contemporary gender discourse. The audience would be treated to the yellow
tinted image of Shatner prancing on-stage in nurse’s drag, providing voice-over medical advice
to the audience; alternately, the doting “husband” is again Shatner in drag, performing what can
only be interpreted as an extremely bizarre, inappropriate, and offensive caricature. Careful
analysis of these disturbing images would allow the audience to recognize the logical and ethical
incongruancies found in both Shatner’s performance and Victorian patriarchy. By showing a
man bravely facing these challenges, rather than a woman, the audience is assaulted by the same
feelings of unease and horror that are hallmarks of the source material. By confounding and
upsetting the audience in this way, Shatner forces upon them the radical ideas that his
performance magically brings to life on the stage.
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Unfortunately, these ideas had to be scrapped due to poor planning, budgetary
constraints, a disinterested crew, and several inexplicable production decisions. Wholesale
changes ensued, and the final result had Shatner reading “The Yellow Wallpaper” word-for-word
and in subdued monotone from a rocking chair at the center of an otherwise empty stage. Images
from Shatner’s private collection of sepia photography were projected onto a screen behind him,
using Microsoft Power Point.