EdFringe2025: The City for Incurable Women

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

The actor appeared crouched in the centre of the stage, dressed in pale white—her costume, made from crinkled, waterproof, futuristic sportswear, conjured the image of an anonymous contemporary body. Not a figure from the past, but a witness to it—one who looks back at history not to reenact it, but to interrogate it from the uneasy present. She watched us quietly as we entered the theatre.

"Theatre"—that was the first word put into question. Historically, the theatre has always been a hybrid space—a place of both surgical operation and performance. That is where our show begins: in a Victorian hospital, where women diagnosed with hysteria were brought before a public audience to “perform” their “symptoms.”

These symptoms varied, from seizures to hallucinations. The actor introduced this context by embodying the doctor Jean-Martin Charcot, who was said to have “invented” hysteria. He made his female patients into public spectacles. To portray him, she wore a man's jacket. Pre-recorded voices of “anonymous audience members” played from the back of the theatre, posing detailed questions to the doctor—an effective way to recreate the atmosphere of the historical scene with vivid immediacy..

She drew us into one particular moment: not only did the doctor present his patients for display, he also photographed them mid-attack.” At that time, photography required long exposure, so one can easily imagine the patients being forced to hold strange, exaggerated, even sexually suggestive postures for extended periods—caught in the male doctor’s imagination and desire. What was presented as “documentation” was a carefully staged performance.

The show blended multiple narrative modes. The actor shifted between roles: sometimes the doctor, sometimes the patient (she chose two special case studies and performed them in first person), and sometimes an omniscient narrator guiding us through history. She connected this legacy of misogyny—medical, visual, and cultural—to modern consumerism. The gestures of Victorian hysteria, she suggested, echo in contemporary yoga poses, where women twist their spines in search of healing, peace, and self-control—perhaps still trying to soothe the same ancient rage.

But I especially loved one scene where the stage transformed into something unmistakably familiar: the actor burned a bundle of sage as a form of "treatment," and the scent filled the theatre, turning it into a modern wellness centre. In that moment, it became clear to everyone how today’s language of “healing” and “self-care” is merely a polished continuation of older practices—once used to tame witches. 

Perhaps because it was a relaxed show and the lighting was never completely dark, I wasn’t able to immerse myself in it as fully as I should have. The title of the play is taken from an academic book on the history of hysteria, and the performance itself also carries a particular “classroom-like” atmosphere.