The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution
The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution
A forensic insight into the adjustment of morality for the sake of conscience.
Algeria, 1956 – a country desperately fighting for independence from French colonial rule. Frantz Fanon is head of the psychiatric department of the Blida-Joinville hospital in Algiers, treating both oppressed and oppressor. But who are the real victims?
A civil servant presents his psychologically disturbed daughter to the hospital for assessment and insists on her admittance. An inspector demands treatment for his helpless violence against his own wife and child. Three in-patient revolutionaries are delusional and paranoid. These products of a broken society are beginning to show symptoms, how should they be treated?
Caryl Churchill's play The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution was inspired by the life and work of Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), the Martinique-born psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary and writer whose best known works include Black Skin, White Masks and his masterpiece The Wretched of the Earth.
The play was first published in 1990, but remain unperformed until 2013, when it was staged at the Finborough Theatre, London.
'An important play... appallingly relevant'
Guardian'Packs a powerful punch... an intense 90-minute drama'
British Theatre Guide'Charged as the writing is, it is also balanced... a sense of conflict as something toxic, capable of contaminating, runs through the play'
The Stage
