Tony Award–nominated playwright Lucas Hnath’s darkly clever A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney centers on the reading, in a generic corporate conference room, of a stylized screenplay written by the great man himself, in the ultimate act of self-mythologizing.
Read by the people it’s about—Walt himself, his brother/henchman Roy, and Walt’s resentful daughter and her ex-jock husband, it’s about Walt’s last days on earth. It’s about a city he’s going to build that’s going to change the world. And it’s about his brother. It’s about everyone who loves him, and how sad they’re going to be when he’s gone.
Can Walt control the future from the grave? Why does his daughter hate him so much? Were thousands of lemmings harmed in the making of a famous Disney nature film? Stay tuned . . .
In a corporate conference room, a screenplay written by Disney in which the idea of his own demise is self-mythologised gets read out by Walt and by the other people involved in his life. From the acclaimed writer behind "Red Speedo" and "Hilary & Clinton".
