Presented until April 4 at the Paris-Villette Theatre, the play This Evening I Have a Fever and You Die of Cold takes us into the studios of Fréquence Gaie, a reference point of free radio in the 1980s.
A word to nostalgia enthusiasts of pirate radio’s verve. At the Paris-Villette Theatre, the play This Evening I Have a Fever and You Die of Cold opens a time capsule to a September evening in 1989 for the last episode of a cult show from the no less mythical Fréquence Gaie radio: Lune de Fiel.
Written and directed by Julien Lewkowicz, the creation begins with a simple gesture: a man finds an old tape recorder and plunges back into the memory of that show broadcast in the late 1980s. On stage, where five performers meet (Laure Blatter, Sarah Calcine, Valentin Clabault, Guillaume Costanza and Julien Lewkowicz), sound archives and fiction mingle to recompose its behind-the-scenes in a whirlwind of listener calls, bawdy jokes, and militant memories.
Fréquence Gaie, Gays on FM
Created in July 1981 at the legalization of free radios that followed François Mitterrand’s election to the presidency, Fréquence Gaie (renamed Radio FG) was nothing less than the first gay FM radio on continuous air in the world, broadcasting gay and lesbian voices across the Île-de-France area. The show Lune de Fiel embodies all its essence: a somewhat chaotic space, often funny and sometimes vulgar, where speech flows without a filter. While homosexuality remains largely taboo and the HIV/AIDS epidemic is decimating a generation of gay men, these open mics are both a refuge and a political act.
The staging by Julien Lewkowicz recreates the community energy of Fréquence Gaie with contagious jubilation. The humor is blunt, liberating. People talk about sex, about fantasies but also about loneliness, without shame and without judgment. When the laughter stops, the fear of AIDS surfaces and the anxiety of seeing not only friends disappear but also this fragile space of freedom. The emotional power of the show feeds on this oscillation between celebration and worry, which, as you leave, you tell yourself is probably the through-line of the queer condition.
