ahh, there’s nothing like the smell of liberal guilt in the morning…

Risa Morris performs Wallace Shawn’s monologue, The Fever. The stage is bare except for a wicker armchair and a harsh spotlight spangling Morris’ hair as she sits, leans, and wriggles uncomfortably through the 90 minute performance. Her voice is soft at first, self-effacing, and then picks up speed and intensity, the white bourgeoisie narrator recounting the framing experience of kneeling over a toilet bowl in a third-world country wracked by civil war and communist rebellion, watching water-bugs crawl in “increasingly complex patterns” on the cheap floor, finally vomiting her torture and self-flagellation in a stream of self-directed invective.

It is a performance meant to startle, to knock out of serene complacency the professed non-involvement of the spectator, to confront head on the privileges of living comfortably in a country like Canada. Morris’ performance is with little flaw, only stumbling over a few words and seeming to lose a little conviction when ranting about Marx’s Das Kapital. But otherwise she draws us in completely with her steady, intelligent eyes, focusing on each member of the audience in turn, bringing each and every spectator into an individual accounting of their actions. Nothing is left innocent – in fact the very idea of innocence is upturned like a cool stone in the forest to reveal the nest of wriggling worms in its dark underbelly. Every action we take, Mr. Shawn proposes, whether it be as innocuous as drinking coffee in the morning or as fraught with peril as giving change to a beggar, is an action that rests on a long and invisible history of injustice, of cruelty, of the most unimaginable and unjustifiable violence.

But we know this, right? After all, we are the liberal elite. We are those ‘enlightened people’ who know about class privilege, about the inequitable economic relations that lie beneath and behind every act of commerce, about how drinking a cup of Nestle’s Nescafe is a direct infringement on the rights to a fair trade with farmers in countries like El Salvador and Nicaragua, about how the gap between the rich and the poor is self-justified through market forces that merely work to maintain the status-quo while presenting the facade of progress. We know these things, we have beliefs. As the narrator states,

“Every person is a person, every person believes certain things. My friend Bob—my friend Bob believes that “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” And Fred—Fred believes that “today’s rebel is tomorrow’s dictator.” And Natasha believes that peasants in poor countries just want to be left alone to farm their fields in peace and quiet, and they couldn’t care less about the ideologies of the right or the left. Mario believes that social criticism in plays and films can be expressed most effectively through the use of humor. And Indrani believes that works of art, including performances of opera and ballet, can change individuals and, through them, society. And Toshiko believes that the only real contribution that people can make toward solving the problems of the world is to raise their own families with good values. And Ann-Marie believes that the rich and the poor should live as friends and should work together to make the future better than the past.

But the question—the question is—Would it really matter if it were Fred who believed that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others? What if Fred were to wake up one morning and think he believed that, forgetting that that was actually the belief of his friend Bob?

Fred believes certain things—you can say that. But what does it mean? Does it mean something? I don’t remember . . .”

This is the power of the play – it forces us to confront the convoluted knots of self-deception that maintains our sense of decency, of comfortably staking the moral high ground. We are good people, we think. We are people who buy fair trade and local, we participate in communities, we are involved in labor organizing, we slip in Socialist thought in our critiques of government, we give money to charities, we create art that creates sympathy with the poor, we are aesthetes, we are the informed Left dammit, and we are decent people!

Right?

Wrong, argues Wallace Shawn and Risa Morris:

“Do you remember that day in school when you were playing with those three other children, and the teacher appeared in the room with four little cakes and gave all of the cakes, all four of the cakes, to that little boy called Arthur, and none to you or your two other friends? Well, at first all four of you were simply stunned. For that first moment, all four of you knew what had happened was unjust, insane. But then your friend Ella tried to make a little joke, and Arthur got furious and he hit Ella, and then he went into a corner and he ate all the cakes. It was an example of someone getting away with something.

And your life is another example. It’s the life of someone who’s gotten away with something. And yet your fanaticism is so extreme that you won’t let that thought come into your mind….

Now, a decent person cannot be a person who’s gotten away with something. A decent person cannot have what it’s not appropriate for them to have. And this understanding of yourself gives you the basis for a view of the world. And so you can look out at the way the world works, and sure, there are many many things that of course disturb you—the situation of your Knut, who loves Wagner, but who’s so badly paid by his publishing house that he can’t even afford to go see the operas he so deeply loves, or all the examples of man’s inhumanity that you see on your television every single night, like that terrible overseer on that rubber plantation in southern Malaysia—but still you can say that the way the world works is fundamentally not unjust, because you’ve received a share of things which you know it’s appropriate for you to have, and it’s appropriate for all the people who are like you all over the world to have the share that they have, that means that it’s not inappropriate for all the others to have the share which remains. You know that what you have is what you deserve, and that means that what they have is what they deserve. They have what’s appropriate for them to have. And you must admit it…”

The play ultimately becomes more than an indictment, it becomes a fascinating display of just how to deal with the basic injustice and indecency of our lives, of how to deal with not being a good person. In effect, how to live without self-delusion and still maintain a functioning level of sanity.

“Sometimes I was fine. I remember one morning—a marvelous blue sky—I had my hair cut. Gentle hands molded my hair so that it fit over the shape of my scalp like a cap. Then I bought myself a pair of comfortable socks, and then I looked at them carefully, and I bought two more pairs, because it’s not easy to find the kind of socks I like! Then I went to a sweet little restaurant and had lunch with a woman in a lemon-yellow suit whom I’d known since I was eight. But then I got into a taxi, and as I was riding across the city, that feeling, that sickness, filled me up again. It seemed to start in my stomach and move out through my legs, my chest. And my stomach was beating, it was just like a heart. A cold sweat on my forehead and neck. I wasn’t me. When the taxi arrived, the person who got out of it wasn’t me. I was nowhere. The person who paid the driver was actually no one.”

Volunteering for Fringe has many benefits, and one of the best is getting to meet the actors and directors. Talking to Lisa Morris beforehand, she seemed bubbly, jovial, eager to show off pictures of her five-year old daughter in a handy album she carries around with her, and casually expending that liberal energy in sweeping gestures and a wide, open smile. But after the performance I was tongue tied, and I stumbled stupidly saying in a voice a mouse would scorn, “Er… how can you…?” – “Live with yourself?” one of her friends finished for me and laughed. “No,” I said, recovering a little, “how do you manage doing an intense performance like that every night?”

It was a cop-out – “How can you live with yourself?” was exactly the question I wanted to ask, but that is not a question you ask of anybody. It is a question you ask of yourself.

There’s a performance schedule on Lisa Morris’ website and the Fringe homepage. Check it out if you’ve got the time. Tickets are 10 bucks and all the proceeds go to Doctors Without Borders. If you’re anything like me, this is right up your privileged leftie alley.