Play addresses social catastrophe of the Black Plague

The Black Plague reduced the world's population from 450 million to 350 million and catalyzed major social, economic and religious upheavals in 15th-century Europe. Naomi Wallace's "One Flea Spare," set in the midst of this catastrophe, grapples with what happens when the world as one knows it completely falls apart.

"‘One Flea Spare' illuminates harsh reality in the midst of metaphor and gesture," said Carly Flint '10, who is directing the upcoming production of the play. The show, which goes up on Thursday, Feb. 25 and closes the following Saturday, is the thesis project of four Vassar drama majors: Flint, Deadria Harrington '10, Christine Hottinger '10 and Mike Faba '10.

"Naomi Wallace's plays have a social conscience," said Talaya Delaney, a Post Doctoral Fellow of Drama who is well acquainted with Wallace's work. "She looks at how we function via class and under capitalism."

Wallace wrote "One Flea Spare" after the Los Angeles riots of 1992, comparing the excessive individuation produced by the plague with the social unease of the riots. The play takes place in the home of a wealthy couple who has spent several weeks barricaded inside for fear of disease. Two characters penetrate the fortress: a 12-year-old girl named Morse and a lusty sailor named Bunce, played by Andrew Massey '12.

"The play opens and closes on a young girl, and in a sense we are seeing the world through her eyes," said Delaney. "It's interesting that the story is told from the perspective of someone who is conventionally powerless in society. By putting Morse in this role, Naomi Wallace is actually imbuing her with influence."

The play is thematically dense, combining ideas of individual empowerment and class dissolution with concerns of the flesh, in terms of both sex and sickness. The woman of the house, Mrs. Stillgrave (played by Harrington) is horribly covered with burns, and the sailor bears a literal wound in his side that never heals.

"Wallace doesn't ignore the fact that plays consist of bodies on a stage. She uses them," said Faba, the show's production designer.

"In the midst of chaos, class is broken down, and people take their own rights back. It's a personal revolution, and the body represents that. What is completely yours? How do you escape the horror?" asked Flint, before answering herself: "The orgasm is a revolution. So is dreaming."

Faba, who designed the show's set and lighting, thinks that the play's political message is secondary to its beauty as a piece of literature. "Wallace's language verges on poetry," he said. The one-room set Faba designed and built for the Powerhouse Theater is meant to be somewhat anachronistic. The house, while designed in a 1665 Tudor style, is constructed of sheets of heavy plastic, and the white and blue tile floor looks like linoleum for a reason.

"The play represents a lot about the modern day, and I wanted to reflect that," said Faba. 
All five members of the ensemble cast will be in full period costumes, but the disquieting nature of the play evades association with any particular time period. The fear of apocalypse inhabits us all, excepting those of us who hope for it instead. To quote Wallace, "Lust in his limbs and rust in his skin/ A bear without and a worse beast within."