Madrigals for Nausea 1 is a musical adaptation of an excerpt from Jean Paul Sartre’s 1938 novel, Nausea. 

It is the first part of an ongoing project to transpose the text to musical format. 

Nausea is written from the perspective of its protagonist Antoine, a young scholar who is estranged from his surroundings and thus experiences repeated bouts of nausea when observing everyday occurrences, such as sitting at the cafe and noticing the purple color of a man’s overalls, his own hand inside the palm of another as he shakes hands in greeting, people walking on the seashore on a sunday and the roots of an oak tree. 

Through these observations the narrator experiences a sort of physical ailment, a destabilizing of body and mind which produces said Nausea. The format of musicals produces a similar de-stabilizing effect, disturbing yet accepted. 

The work is an attempt to embody the moments of nausea, animating it bodily through song and movement.