Fringe News
Fringe News
Good Old Neon is proud to officially announce our debut production – The Hystericon, written and directed by Alexander Offord, starring Renée Haché, Nicholas Porteous, Lesley Robertson, and Nicole Wilson.
In late 19th century Paris, Augustine, Blanche, and Geneviève are the most famous patients of Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot at the Salpêtrière insane asylum for women. They are his personal lab rats and performance artists, models and test subjects, as he conducts his experiments in “hysteria,” that dark recess of psychiatric medicine. Through the nascent technologies of photography, and the black arts of hypnotism and psychopharmacology, Charcot turns them from troubled women into Hysterics, celebrities of the Belle Epoque: Augustine the Photogenic, whose pictures adorn Charcot’s publications; Blanche, “The Queen of Hysterics,” star performer in his public lectures; and Geneviève la Pucelle, who talks to God and believes she is possessed by demons – tonight they perform for their audience an hysterical revue, a cabaret, en Comédie en vaudeville, demonstrating the history and pathology of hysteria – but something seems to be going wrong. As lines are dropped and cues missed, the show starts to crumble, and the odyssey takes turn for the strange…
The Hystericon was inspired by the true life-stories of Augustine, Blanche, and Geneviève, and by the hundreds of black-and-white photographs taken of them by Dr. Charcot and his associates, found in the infamous Iconographie photographique de la Salpêtrière, the asylum’s annual photo album. Long a subject of fascination for art critics, historians, psychologists, feminists, and the darkly curious, now the first time a stage play is devoted not to the doctors and their experiments, but to the women themselves; their hopes, desires, loves, and fears.
Details can be found here: http://goodoldneonblog.wordpress.com/2013/05/18/ladies-and-gentlemen-this-is-the-hystericon/
The Hystericon
At Theatre Passe Muraille Mainspace
show times
July 05 03:30 PM
July 06 05:45 PM
July 07 11:00 PM
July 09 02:45 PM
July 11 05:15 PM
July 12 08:00 PM
July 13 08:45 PM
Please note there is absolutely no latecomer seating.
Toronto Fringe Festival, July 3-14
Fringe Box Office Information: On-line sales www.fringetoronto.com
By phone: 416-966-1062; Ticket cost: $10.00 (at the door); $11.00 (in advance)
Photo: Harrison Coe and Quancetia Hamilton. ©2013 Ampex Entertainment.
2013-07-04
The Hystericon