It’s 1880s Paris and Dr Jean-Martin Charcot is studying hysteria at the Salpêtrière Hospital. Here, the doctors go to extraordinary lengths to prove their theories about the four stages of madness, having female patients perform ‘hysteria’ to the public. Discovering the hilarious absurdity and disturbing darkness of this story, theatre collective, The City for Incurable Women offers a queer perspective on a feminist history, exploring the repercussions for all genders.
- Thank you for chatting with A Young(ish) Perspective! Introduce us to who you are and what your doing at the Edinburgh Fringe this year?
Hiya! We are fish in a dress – Christina, Charlie and Helena – a London and Berlin based theatre collective formed in 2024. To our very first Fringe we bring our very first show: The City for Incurable Women. Paris, 1880s. In a psychiatric hospital, female patients performed ‘hysteria’ for the public. The doctors went to extraordinary lengths to prove their theories about the four stages of madness. Today, in the 21st century, the storyteller Kae, begins to explore this history, trace the echoes to today, feeling them linger in their own body and perhaps gets a little too caught in the story.
- A Youngish Perspective platforms accessible arts and champions the huge scope of different perspectives – can you tell us about the show you’re taking to Edinburgh Festival Fringe as if you’re flyering to both a young first-time-Fringe goer and a festival veteran returning every year?
Charlie: Hysteria, hypnosis, history and hilarity. This is a story about a hospital. A hospital where, in the 19th century, female madness became a theatrical attraction. People came from all over to see these performances, which masqueraded as medical demonstrations. And this Theatre of Madness lives on today. Who is really mad? Aren’t we all?
- Medical misogyny is still an issue across the globe today, how has the development of The City for Incurable Women impacted your understanding of this issue in a modern context?
Helena: The City for Incurable Women takes us through many crackpot cures for women throughout history: being held over a fire, made to sneeze, having your ovaries pressed on. Looking to the past we realised the deep-seated prejudices that continue to have consequences for women all over the world. The average diagnosis wait for endometriosis is 8 years and 10 months. In 2022, Roe vs Wade was overturned in the United States, repealing reproductive autonomy. The Nurofen Gender Pain Gap shows that 1 in 2 women feel belittled and not taken seriously when they ask for medical help. The more we developed the play, the more we realised that medical misogyny is unfolding in front of us right now. Whether you’re being saged in Ancient Greece, or not taken seriously in 2025, women’s pain continues to be a place of exploitation and abuse.
Charlie: Tracing back through history has certainly made me engage with how rights are not accumulated. We don’t have them, so we fight for them. We gain them, and lose them. We fight again. And in the decades it takes to make societal change, it can be overturned in days. The City for Incurable Women has certainly made me realise how urgently we need to be fighting.
- The concept of the “mad women” is still relevant in media and in the tangible world today, how does The City for Incurable Women differ from other criticisms of the trope?
Christina: We started by trying to dissect how this image came into being. A lot of the visuals (hair down, back arched, white nighty) can be traced to the lecture-performances at the Salpetriere – the story we are telling. For us it was an immense challenge to understand how we can criticise these tropes without simply reproducing and thus reinforcing them.
Charlie: We use humour and campery to get the audience to laugh at the ridiculous stereotypes and theories surrounding “mad women”. As queer people, we are also looking at why our society has tried to gender the concept of madness.
- Who would your surprise dream audience member be?
Christina: For me that would probably be friends from Germany and Austria – as travel is very far I do not expect people to come – as much as I would LOVE them to see what we made. But hey! As that makes it both a dream and would be very surprising, I guess that counts.
Helena: Asti Hustvedt, the author of a book called, ‘Medical Muses,’ that really inspired us. Of course, it would also be terrifying to have someone who knew the history so well, but I hope she would be happy with how we tell the story!
Charlie: Hildegard of Bingen. Considering she died 846 years ago, that would be pretty surprising. Plus she’d have to travel from Germany… it seems unlikely
If Hildegard can’t make it: Travis Alabanza. The work they make is utterly extraordinary; as a performer, writer and theatre maker.