Illness as Metaphor by Dead Centre – Dublin Fringe Festival 2024

In her book Illness as Metaphor, Susan Sontag sets out to diagnose the problem with the way we think about illness. Her discovery was not to focus on sickness itself, but the language surrounding disease – language that can, in her view, quite literally kill.

Whether it’s the metaphor of “battling cancer” or the image of “front-line workers” during the pandemic, Sontag claims that metaphors distort our way of thinking – since neither cancer nor Covid are states of war.

Working with six participants living with long-term illness, Dead Centre adapts this groundbreaking text for the theatre. But isn’t the theatre itself a metaphoric space? If all the world’s a stage, how can theatre try and deal with reality? Perhaps, through listening to the testimony of real people, theatre can be re-invented as a place where we might live, and die, without metaphor.

The world premiere of Illness as Metaphor is taking place as part of Dublin Fringe Festival 2024. Co-produced with Project Arts Centre and funded by the Arts Council. Supported by Réalta, the National Resource Organisation for Arts + Health in Ireland.

Feature image © Nancy Crampton. Image Edit: Jason Booher.

Book tickets here