If you go
› What: ‘Consumption’› Where: Covenant College, Sanderson Auditorium, 14049 Scenic Highway, Lookout Mountain, Ga.› When: 6:30 p.m. Sept. 29; 8 p.m. Sept. 30 and Oct. 6; 2:30 p.m. Oct. 7› Admission: $7 adults, $5 senior adults, students and staff› For more information: 706-419-1051
Covenant College Theatre Department will open its 2017-2018 season this weekend with Courtney Baron’s “Consumption,” a fever dream meditation on 19th-century youth and tuberculosis. Four performances will be given on Sept. 29-30 and Oct. 6-7 at the Lookout Mountain college.
An ambitious nurse, a young man of privilege, a wandering preacher and an Appalachian farm girl living states away from each other seem to have nothing in common but their youth and a bone-rattling cough. Yet, miraculously, they share the same fever dreams. As these strangers’ malady intensifies throughout the 50-minute vignette, they realize they might be each other’s last confidants.
“The four are dying of tuberculosis, whether they accept the fact or not, and find themselves together in the same mental space even though they are miles apart,” says Abigail DeGraaf, who portrays nurse Hannah O’Flannery for her senior thesis.
“However, the story isn’t about their deaths, but the lives they are leaving behind and could have lived.”