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When Simona Maicanescu took to the Brehmer Theater stage last weekend to
perform Wallace Shawn’s The Fever, the connection between the work and
the university was at first oblique. But her arresting performance of
the 90-minute monologue on materialism, Marxism, and the inequitable
distribution of wealth invited the kind of debate that takes place at
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“We are here for a reason — to educate,” said Adrian Giurgea, professor of English and director of the University Theater, who challenges audiences to cross international, political, and social boundaries.

Giurgea said he chose The Fever by Wallace Shawn because “it relates so well to current issues, from the riots in London to debates on the Tea Party’s agenda.” And he chose Maicanescu — a Romanian actress, living in France, who performs an American play in both French and English — “because our identity is a complex one,” Giurgea said. “The time for insularity has passed.”

“But what really determines the value of a coat?” asks the character on the stage. “The coat’s price comes from its history, the history of all the people involved in making it and selling it and all the particular relationships they had. And if we buy the coat, we, too, form relationships with all those people, and yet we hide those relationships from our own awareness by pretending we live in a world where coats have no history but just fall down from heaven with prices marked inside. ‘I like this coat,’ we say, ‘It’s not expensive,’ as if that were a fact about the coat and not the end of a story about all the people who made it and sold it.”

Monika Burczyk, lecturer in University Studies, suggested her students in Core 152 Challenges of Modernity attend the play, as they had been studying Karl Marx just the week before. “I was struck by how creative work adds to the literary texts,” she said. “The play and the actor brought emotional resonance to our historic and contemporary understanding of Marx, which was an exceptionally enriching and aesthetic experience for students.”

The Fever was produced with support from the Cathy McNeil Hollinger ’83 and Mark Hollinger ’81 Artist-in-Residence in Theater.