'The Fever' Makes Audience Sweat with Self-Awareness

Author: Laura Rockefeller

On Saturday afternoon I wandered happily into the Hepburn Zoo Theater and was surprised and delighted to find coffee and a delectable assortment of cookies laid out on a table next to the entrance.
I poured myself a much-needed cup of java with plenty of sugar and quickly claimed one of the large, comfortable chairs, which had been mixed in with the normal Zoo chairs and arranged in a circle around the playing space.
Soon some of my friends started to arrive for the performance so we sat around talking about work, drinking our coffee and making ourselves comfortable in an atmosphere that seemed much more like a Starbucks than the Zoo.
As the house lights dimmed we all sat back in our chairs, eager for the dramatic action to begin.
Then there was a complete blackout and suddenly multiple voices cried in unison, "I'm traveling - and I wake suddenly in the silence before dawn in a strange hotel room, in a poor country where my language isn't spoken, and I'm shaking and shivering."
With the quick light change and these few words I, along with the rest of the audience in the Zoo, was hurled into one of the most intense theatrical experiences I have had at Middlebury.
The play, by well-known actor and playwright Wallace Shawn, used text and movement to tell the story of an upper-class American who becomes completely disillusioned about her privileged and sheltered life after reading the writings of Karl Marx and traveling extensively in what were referred to as "well-known revolutionary countries."
In her program notes, director Joya Scott '03.5 wrote, "When I decided that this was a story I needed to tell here, I had no idea what I was getting into - indeed, I think I still have no idea. But I know one thing: to question is one of the most human of acts, and in times like these, 'The Fever' is more relevant than ever."
And the play was extremely relevant. The horrendous conditions of coffee pickers in South America were exposed as the audience sat clutching its coffee cups with a growing discomfort. The horror of war and torture unfolding in other countries was also juxtaposed against the isolated and blissfully ignorant world of the American upper and middle classes. The cast of four actors, Ben Fainstein '04, Elizabeth Hammett '05, Dan Pruksarnukul '04 and Seda Savas '05, worked together beautifully as an ensemble, taking over the narration from each other seamlessly and making sharp and unified transitions in physicality and tone - from parties on Fifth Avenue to prisons in South America.
The actors' extensive and adept use of choreographed movement was particularly effective, from the initial image of Hammett and Pruksarnukul lurching up and down, tied together in the death throws following their violent execution, to the final image of the four actors piled in the center of the floor, viewed through the railings of chair backs that suggested prison bars.
Precise changes in the lighting, designed by Caitlin Hicks '04, heightened the contrast between the two worlds of the play: serene America and the war-torn countries the narrator visited.
After shattering the soothing spell of the dim houselights with the opening blackout, the play alternated chiefly between a warm yellow light in the scenes of happy memories in America and a harsh, bluish light in the scenes of prison and war.
For 90 minutes, without intermission, the actors shared scenes of extreme happiness and acute terror, often sitting down next to audience members and speaking directly to them in an exceedingly effective attempt to force the audience to truly become engaged in the events occurring before it.
The piece was an unrelenting expose of America's "fetishism of commodities" and self-centered disregard of the plights of people in other parts of the world.
Scott definitely managed to burst the proverbial Middlebury bubble and to force her audience to confront the pain and suffering caused by war, which is so often repressed in happily sheltered communities like ours.
The perceptibly deep emotional investment of the actors, director and production team could not help but elicit an equally powerful response on the part of the audience.