The Designated Mourner by playwright Wallace Shawn is a fiercely political, deeply personal play concerning class, identity, culture, and enemies. Through a series of monologues and short scenes, three characters walk us through a labyrinthine tale spanning the years before, during, and after a populist uprising in an unnamed country, now teetering on the edge of authoritarianism, whose government has targeted the cultural intelligentsia for imprisonment and execution. As the story unwinds, it plumbs the depths of love, contempt, privilege, enemies, beauty, envy, “the self,” and what, if anything, we are willing to sacrifice for the things we believe.