The University of Notre Dame presents
The Hysterical Alphabet
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
8 pm
Browning Cinema, DeBartolo Performing Arts Center
Free, but ticketed event
For tickets phone 574-631-2800 or visit performingarts.nd.edu
Co-sponsored by Gender Studies Program
The ABCs are seized by a convulsive fit in Terri Kapsalis’ The Hysterical Alphabet, each letter introducing an episode direct from the annals of medical lore.
“…wickedly funny, surprisingly heart-wrenching and not to be missed.
-Valerie Jean Johnson, New City
Backed by Danny Thompson’s disquieting film collages and John Corbett’s vinyl manipulations, The Hysterical Alphabet explores a 4,000 year history that deeply inflects our contemporary ideas about gender and illness.
26 Letters of the alphabet
Episodes from the history of hysteria
Short films with live sound track
THE HYSTERICAL ALPHABET
A Live Audio-Visual Performance
produced by Theater Oobleck
“The Hysterical Alphabet is a beautifully nuanced mixture of historical treatise, medical discourse and poetic archive, chronicling the sometimes hilarious, often horrifying saga of the ‘female malady’ that is hysteria throughout the centuries. . .The trio packs an astounding amount of information into little more than an hour’s time – delivering a lesson that is wickedly funny, surprisingly heart-wrenching and not to be missed.”
-Valerie Jean Johnson, New City
Hysterical historia. Historical hysteria. The ABCs are seized by a convulsive fit in Terri Kapsalis’ The Hysterical Alphabet, each letter introducing an episode direct from the annals of medical lore. Backed by Danny Thompson’s disquieting film collages and John Corbett’s vinyl manipulations, The Hysterical Alphabet tracks centuries of female malady, disproving the theory that time heals all wombs.
Hysteria has an under-recognized (and under-appreciated!) four-thousand-year history that deeply inflects our contemporary ideas about gender and illness. The ancient Greek myth of the traveling uterus, shrieking Clytemnestra, Freud’s Dora, the French-Victorian electromechanical vibrator, the films of John Waters—one doesn’t have to look far to see the manifestation of hysteria as a cultural symptom. Drawn from primary medical writings from ancient Egypt to the present, The Hysterical Alphabet is an abecedary offering condensed history of hysteria with levity, playfulness, and critical insight.
The Hysterical Alphabet performance (ca. 70 min.) premiered at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago as part of the 2007 Outer Ear Festival of Sound. Since that premiere, there have been four additional performances in Chicago and Milwaukee followed by performances at Bates College and the University of Illinois - Champaign/Urbana.
The Hysterical Alphabet (WhiteWalls/distributed by U of Chicago Press, $15) is a book as well, with drawings by Gina Litherland. An event at Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee combined an exhibition of Litherland’s original drawings and Kapsalis’ one sentence captions with the Hysterical Alphabet live performance by Corbett, Kapsalis, and Thompson.
PERFORMER’S BIOS:
John Corbett (sound) is a writer, sound-artist, and curator. He teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is the co-director of the art gallery Corbett vs. Dempsey. In 2002, Corbett served as Artistic Director of JazzFest Berlin, and he co-curated the Empty Bottle Festival of Jazz & Improvised Music for nine years. He is the producer of the Unheard Music Series, an archival program dedicated to creative music issues and re-isssues, and he is the author of Extended Play: Sounding Off from John Cage to Dr. Funkenstein (Duke, 1994). Corbett can be heard on a number of CDs including I’m Sick About My Hat and has brought his sound skills to two previous Theater Oobleck productions.
Terri Kapsalis’(voice/sound) recent fiction, “Most Beautiful Experiments,” was published in Parakeet and nominated for a Pushcart. Other writings have appeared in such publications as Short Fiction, The Baffler, Denver Quarterly, new formations, Public, and Lusitania. She is the author of Public Privates: Performing Gynecology from Both Ends of the Speculum (Duke University Press) which Kapsalis imagines is the only book ever to have been reviewed by the New England Journal of Medicine, The Village Voice, and The Amateur Gynecologist (a medical fetishist website). As an improvising violinist, Kapsalis has a discography that includes work with Tony Conrad, David Grubbs, and Mats Gustafsson. She is a founding member of Theater Oobleck and has performed in 15 Oobleck productions. She teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Danny Thompson (video/voice) is a founding member of Theater Oobleck, for which he has written too many plays, including "Necessity," "The Complete Lost Works of Samuel Beckett as Found in an Envelope (Partially Burned) in a Dustbin in Paris Labeled "Never to be Performed. Never. Ever. Ever. Or I'll Sue! I'll Sue from the Grave!!!," and "Big Tooth High-Tech Megatron vs. the Sockpuppet of Procrastination." In addition he has appeared in twenty-five Theater Oobleck shows. "The Complete Lost Works . . ." was given the "Comedy Excellence Award" at the 2000 New York Fringe Festival, "Top Ten of the Fest" at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland, and extensively toured the United Kingdom. He currently lives in Worcester, MA, home of the monkey wrench, the rickshaw, the steam calliope, the first perfect pitched game of Major League Baseball (1880), Robert Benchley, Abbie Hoffman, Sam Fuller, and the yellow smiley face.