Ladies and Gentlethem – feeling a little upset? Have you tried hypnosis, psychoanalysis, smelling salts and it just doesn’t work? Try The City for Incurable Women! Set in 1880s Paris, this bold new production from international theatre collective fish in a dress transports audiences to the Salpêtrière Hospital, where Dr Jean-Martin Charcot studies hysteria and subjects female patients to public performances of madness.
This provocative piece explores the outrageous history of medical misogyny, inviting the audience to become complicit in a tale that is both disturbingly dark and absurdly hilarious. But hysteria is far from a relic of the past—its social consequences still echo today. Drawing on stereotypes of the ‘madwoman’, the company offers a queer and feminist lens on a history that continues to shape perceptions of gender and mental health.
Director Christina Deinsberger explains, “This is not a new story. It actually is a very old story. We can trace the idea of hysteria back to the ancient Greeks… Yet right now we feel a strong conservative pushback. Misogynistic narratives gain strength and the credibility, reliability, competence of female identifying people is under attack.”
fish in a dress is a British-German collective committed to international collaboration and resisting political polarisation. With The City for Incurable Women, they blend languages, histories, and identities to challenge and captivate.
