The Fever

Synopsis

Written by Wallace Shawn, The Fever places the audience inside the spiraling consciousness of a person whose comfortable life is destabilized by a reckoning with suffering, violence, and complicity on a global scale. Delivered with striking intimacy, the play dissolves the boundary between speaker and listener, turning the theatre into a shared moral space where comfort is challenged and certainty erodes.

Lumen Rep’s production at BABS’ LAB puts the audience close to the confession, making the room itself part of the confrontation. Directed by Noah Bennett and performed by Jessica Racaniello, the production emphasizes the play’s immediacy, its unnerving direct address, and the uneasy question of what it means to keep looking away.