Some Historic, Some Hysteric

Some Historic, Some Hysteric discovers the world’s first site-specific experimental performance group in an unlikely place: Dr. Jean Martin Charcot’s offices in a Parisian asylum in 1862. Ildiko Lujza Nemeth and Jessica Sofia Mitrani expose the father of neurology’s contributions to vaudeville and art by re-creating the doctor’s salon-style, publicly performed lectures. They extract an iconography from the photographic documentation of these experiments. The multi-media theater piece confronts the ambiguities between performed and real behaviors, and examines the role of audience/observer in the development of personal identity.