After a construction vehicle blocked our last 2 days of Hysteria Project/beautiful women eating cake, we are back! Come see us at chashama’s window space next weekend!
chashama
266 W 37th Street
Sat April 21 & Sun April 22
1pm, 2pm, 3pm both days!
Free! (Viewed from the street)
Thank you to everyone who saw and supported Hysteria Project/beautiful women eating cake. It was a thrilling adventure in performance and audience. I am happy to say it was a great success.
In the meantime, please consider donating to the project through IndieGoGo. THANK YOU to those that contributed thus far:
Four Wonderful Anoynmous Donors
Jacqueline Young-Malina
Pirronne Yousefzadeh
If you would like to be added to this small but strong list, click here: http://www.indiegogo.com/Inverted-Hermit
Also, thank you to chashama, Materials for the Arts, Fractured Atlas, and Esther Neff/C.O.N.C.H. Thank you thank you thank you thank you!
Theatre is a community activity and it can’t happen without the support of a community.
Photos and video to follow…
Tonight we had what’d I’d like to call our “final dress.”
It was an “invited open rehearsal.” It is such because we are performing in a glass enclosed storefront space on 37th Street near 8th Avenue in Manhattan. And I am amazed at our audience – a truly diverse crowd. It’s the crowd that one doesn’t normally reach in a subterranean black box somewhere in the city.
In this piece, we are presenting women performing hysteria – may I remind you it’s thrashing, seizure-like, eyes rolling back, pained –and I am hearing things from our audience like:
“yeah this is totally turning me on”
“I’d like to see her in bed”
“thats one crazy bitch”
My performers are being fetishized and sexualized at their most vulnerable state–they are behind glass and they are rolling in bedsheets. The voyeuristic gaze couldn’t be more apparent.
Not surprising.
Fascinating.
Am I perpetuating this fetishization by presenting this? It is meant to partly be a historical study on the founding of female hysteria and the sexualization of the female hysterics by the doctors who studied them. Funny thing – there is literally a storefront around the corner on 8th Avenue advertising “PEEP SHOW” in bright flashing lights.
Does our audience feel guilty for watching our piece? Is it okay because its art? Can we unabashedly gaze at the female form in action because it is behind glass, framed in a window? The women do not speak after all. They are objects of action.
I would like to think that we are re-creating and thereby re-claiming knowing full well the images and performance we are presenting. I want to be emboldened by this performance – my performers are strong, beautiful, powerful, profound women. So, let’s pay tribute to Hysteria.
Let’s break down and cry our hearts out.
Let’s stuff ourselves with chocolate cake and love it.
Have a tantrum.
Let them look.
Hey, they are watching. This unlikely audience is absorbing experimental performance art movement object physical theatre or whatever you’d like to call it. And they are entranced. They can’t stop watching.
Who’s in control here?
Come see it next week.
266 E 37th Street (between 7th and 8th Ave)
February 13, 14, 15, 17 @ 6pm & 7pm
February 18, 19 @ 4pm, 5pm & 7pm
Featuring: Jeanne Lauren Smith, Melanie Siegel, Stephanie Patent
Presented by chashama
Friends,
It’s a crazy sexy grotesque piece about the viewership of female hysteria both in its historic and contemporary forms.
February 13, 14, 15, 17 @ 6pm & 7pm
February 18, 19 @ 4pm, 5pm & 7pm
@chashama 266
266 W 37th Street (between 7th and 8th Ave)
Presented by chashamaFREE!!
(This is in a storefront and can be viewed from the street/sidewalk. Feel free to stop by at any time.)
Hope to see you at one of the performances!
xo
Dara
PS-
**SAVE THE DATE**I Love Dead Things by Caitlin Saylor Stephens
Directed by moi
Tuesday, April 3
7:30pm
@Dixon Place
WHO!?
conceived and directed by Dara Malina
Featuring: Jeanne Lauren Smith, Melanie Siegel, Stephanie Patent
Collaborators: Caitlin Saylor Stephens, Mandy Kelsey, Lindsay Casale
WHAT?!
HYSTERIA PROJECT/BEAUTIFUL WOMEN EATING CAKE is a crazy sexy grotesque piece about the viewership of female hysteria both in its historic and contemporary forms.
“Female hysteria” was famously explored by the Doctor Charcot at the Salpêtrière hospital in late nineteenth-century Paris. Voyeurism at its finest, Charcot displayed his patients performing stages of hysterical attack before a live audience. In Hysteria Project/beautiful women eating cake we recreate the act of “performing hysteria.” To compare and contrast, we present female hysteria as examined through emotional eating – filthy, glorious, powerful women breaking down or celebrating and eating cake.
HOW?!
Performance cannot exist without patrons. And we are asking for your help. Your contribution goes directly to rehearsal space rental, props, and design. All donations support the current experimental process of HYSTERIA PROJECT/BEAUTIFUL WOMEN EATING CAKE and in turn will support future incarnations of this project and future work from Inverted Hermit.
WHEN??? WHERE!?!
We are PUMPED to be presenting this work with chashama and C.O.N.C.H. this month and we are ecstatic to share it with you.
February 10
8pm-1am
@Wildlife Loft
(245 Varet Street, L to Morgan)
February 13, 14, 15, 17 @ 6pm & 7pm
February 18, 19 @ 4pm, 5pm & 7pm
@chashama
266 W 37th Street (between 7th and 8th Ave)
Jessica Tandy as Blanche Dubois (1947) photo from walnutstreettheatre.org
Right now, I’m reading A Streetcar Named Desire and am having a bit of a Tennessee Williams love affair. Must be that connection to St. Louis…
First, I wanted to share a quotation from the introduction to my edition of A Streetcar Named Desire:
The sort of life which I had had previous to this popular success was one that required endurance, a life of clawing and scratching along a sheer surface and holding on tight with raw fingers to every inch of rock higher than the one caught hold of before, but it was a good life because it was the sort of life for which the organism is created. (from On A Streetcar Named Success by Tennessee Williams, Nov 30, 1947, The New York Times)
This small paragraph resonated with me and I hope it’s inspiring to all artists. In his essay, Williams goes on to express the difference he feels post “success.” It is definitely troubling and he describes how this new world filled with fame and money makes it harder for him to work. It’s not until he leaves the States for Mexico where he can write again. Either way, just knowing and understanding that Tennesee Williams felt he was rock climbing perilously to achieve that which he desired makes me feel better. What I enjoy most is his last line: “but it was a good life because it was the sort of life for which the organism is created.” Yes! This is why we were CREATED. We endure and we struggle but it is a GOOD LIFE because this work feeds us.
Second, I am utterly fascinated by Blanche (and Williams’s women in general). I’m realizing that Blanche is referred to as hysterical a number of times throughout the play. Perhaps a study on Blanche is needed to add another depth of conversation to Hysteria Project/beautiful women eating cake? I don’t know what I have to say about Blanche that is purposeful and nuanced at this time. But I will say that I want so badly for her to survive.
She is almost successful at starting her new life but she absolutely falls to pieces. Is Stanley the sole impedance? Was it fate? Was society already opposing her from the start? I associate with Blanche, I understand the inner workings and the anxiety which leads her to outburst and react the way she does. Really, all she needs is someone to love her and help her heal. But Stanley’s universe is filled with apathy and brash unfeeling reasoning. He is the King, as he says, and she is doomed.
I guess my question is: What does Blanche’s journey tell us about society then and now?
More hysterical and gendered analysis to come…
-Dara
Just met last week with fabulous performers Jeanne Lauren Smith and Melanie Siegel to start talking about our next Performance Art piece HYSTERIA PROJECT/BEAUTIFUL WOMEN EATING CAKE. So inspiring!! We’re reading ALL about Charcot at the Salpêtrière Hospital during the late-nineteenth century and his founding of HYSTERIA in women.
Meanwhile…here is Arch of Hysteria (1993) by Louise Bourgeois
for some inspiration.
It’s in the collection at the National Gallery of Canada. This is what they have to say:
Stemming from her interest in the physical, emotional, and psychological aspects of pain and fear, Bourgeois was drawn to the arch of hysteria as theorized and represented by the nineteenth-century neurologist Jean Martin Charcot (1825-1893). While working at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, Charcot sought to represent hysteria by documenting the performances of his female patients. The physical tension of the hysterical arch – an intense muscular contraction, resulting in immobility and paralysis of the limbs – is emblematic of an equally extreme emotional state. Bourgeois makes this highly vulnerable position even more so by suspending her male figure from the ceiling. In choosing to represent him in an attitude traditionally associated with the female, the artist transgresses the social and sexual roles assigned to women, challenging the misconception of hysteria as a female malady. http://www.gallery.ca/en/see/collections/artwork.php?mkey=100798
This is just the beginning of our exploration! More information to come….
-Dara
Come check out our final performance of Barnaby tonight! It’s been a great run and we would love for you to join us.
7:10pm – Sunday June 26
For tickets visit:
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/176311
$15 online
$18 (cash) @ door
Deity Lounge @368 Atlantic Ave b/w Hoyt & Bond
Thank you to everyone who came out to see les boudoirs des deux femmes yesterday at Anita’s Way! If you walked in or by the through-block between 42nd and 43rd, between Broadway and 6th Ave around 2 or 5pm, you may have seen our work. It was a great success and we had a blast. Thank you to Joe the security guard for his help and Janusz at chashama for supporting us!
If you happened to have taken a photo during your stroll on 42nd or 43rd street past our performance, feel free to send it along to invertedhermit@gmail.com.
Also, if you liked what you saw and want to see more, email us and we’ll add you to our mailing list.
Thanks!!
Dara
Come check out our re-installment of les boudoirs des deux femmes at Anita’s Way as part of the chashama windows program this FRIDAY!! And Barnaby opens this week with performances WED, THURS, FRI, and SUN! See both! Have a fun-filled week of inverted hermit. We would love to see you.
BARNABY written by Liza Birkenmeier; directed by Dara Malina
FEATURING:
David Riley
Matt McDonald
Carolina Reiter
DATES & TIMES:
Wed 6/22 6:50pm
Thurs. 6/23 8:00pm
Friday 6/24 9:50pm
Sunday 6/26 7:10pm
BUY TICKETS:
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/176311
$15 online OR $18 (cash) @ door
(Seats are filling! Buy your tickets now!)
LOCATION:
Deity Club and Event Space
les boudoirs des deux femmes created by Dara Malina & Julia Mancini
FEATURING:
carolina reiter
jeanne smith
barrie golden
laura harrison
performances @ 2pm & 5pm
Friday June 24
FREE!
LOCATION: Anita’s Way
This location is the through-block between 42nd and 43rd, between Broadway and 6th Ave.
This performance piece examines two women – one historic and the other contemporary. We watch as they enter and leave the space several times throughout their day to dress and undress in preparation for various events. The women and their dressers function with machine like precision and focus, representing the mechanization of their simplified roles – only to dress and redress. While witnessing a highly private act become public, viewership becomes voyeuristic as we are permitted to watch the intimate procedure of dressing.
Presented by chashama as part of the chashama windows program.
www.chashama.org
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
