The Fever
1995, silkscreen poster
Client: Fells Point Corner Theatre
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A nameless person from a privileged world, suffering from a sense of disconnection from his (or her) comfortable life, travels to a country in the midst of civil war. Suddenly deliriously ill, the narrator collapses in a hotel bathroom, and confronts an internal chorus of conflicting voices: dreams of comfort, images of physical and economic violence, accusations of indifference, and cold-blooded arguments in favor of oppression. The central question: what, if anything, is a morally consistent way to live in the world as it is?
http://www.graphesthesia.com/ws/plays/fever.html
Wallace Shawn’s The Fever is the winner of the 1991 Obie Award for Best Play and soon to be a film starring Vanessa Redgrave. While visiting a poverty-stricken country far from home, the unnamed narrator of The Fever is forced to witness the political persecution occurring just beyond a hotel window. In examining a life of comfort and relative privilege, the narrator reveals, “I always say to my friends, We should be glad to be alive. We should celebrate life. We should understand that life is wonderful.” But how does one celebrate life - take pleasure in beauty, for instance - while slowly becoming aware that the poverty and oppression of other human beings are a direct consequence of one’s own pleasurable life? In a coruscating monologue, The Fever is most of all an eloquent meditation on living a life with conscience and action in ethical relationship to others in the world.
