A voice for A: Helen Morse, Brian Lipson and Daniel Keene. Photo: Michael Clayton-Jones
She was one of the biggest celebrities of the late 19th century, with devoted followers from around the world – yet few heard her speak, and even fewer knew her real name. Louise Augustine Gleizes, known only as Augustine or A, was a French teenager diagnosed with hysteria and incarcerated as a lunatic at the Salpetriere Hospital in Paris, where she was treated by renowned neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot. It was Charcot’s research, which included public ‘‘demonstrations’’ of her ‘‘attacks’’ and seizures, that catapulted A to fame.
Now Photographs of A, a provocative collaboration for MTC’s NEON Festival between playwright Daniel Keene and Brian Lipson’s Antechamber Productions, will give voice to the famous medical muse, silent for so long.
Keene has long been intrigued by the story of A, a former kitchen maid whose real condition we may never know. Diagnoses of hysteria were fashionable in the 19th century, and, in A’s case, likely to have been some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder arising from childhood sexual abuse.
‘‘Given we don’t really know much about A the person, we only know her through the old photos, experiments and that sort of stuff, there’s very little we know about her, or her feelings about her situation,’’ says Keene, who began writing the work seven years ago. ‘‘All there is is what Charcot was doing with her in the hospital. I thought it would be interesting to try and imagine her telling her own version of events.’’
After a few years of notoriety, A escaped from Salpetriere dressed as a man and was never seen again.
Charcot was already a leading figure in psychology when he began his research with Augustine, but his Tuesday afternoon ‘‘matinees’’ – in which he would hypnotise her and demonstrate her condition – saw his fame spread. Photography, a new innovation at the time, also added to the circus, and these famous photographs have intrigued artists and scientists ever since.
‘‘When Charcot had his salons … all of society would come – Degas, the painter, was often there and all sorts of people came to watch this strange event. ‘A’ would be brought and hypnotised and Charcot would strike a tuning fork and she would go into catatonic state or she’d scream or faint – all sorts of bizarre actions and reactions,’’ says Keene.
‘‘Hysteria was very popular at that time – half of the women in the world, apparently, were hysterical! Charcot was trying to identify the signature, or the signs and symptoms that were common among people who were ‘hysterics’. When ‘A’ went into her trance-like states, where she adopted her poses – she’d be saintly and then evil and then frightened and then sexually aroused, then angry – she’d pull all these faces … and Charcot would take the photographs that became quite famous. These were the outward signs, or physical manifestations of the ‘hysteric’ … At that time, the photographs were treated as seriously as we would now treat a blood sample.’’
Keene’s play stars Helen Morse, in what is almost a solo performance – ‘‘there’s also Ben Grant, who has only a few lines and is really a presence representing Charcot, and a young girl who doesn’t speak, but is a symbol of the young A’’.
‘‘It’s been interesting to watch Helen creating this character – our Augustine is a much older person, looking back on that experience, and … re-experiencing it as a young girl again,’’ says Keene. ‘‘It’s an extreme performance because it goes from the very gentle to extreme states; it’s a very broad range in her performance but it’s great watching someone as skilled as Helen dealing with that language. And even though it sounds all dark and bleak there’s actually a kind of lightness in it too – we like to look at that part of her experience as well.’’
Charcot was no charlatan – he was the first to identify and describe multiple sclerosis, and his name is associated with at least 15 medical eponyms – but it is for his work with A that he is best remembered. He taught Sigmund Freud, one of many doctors who came to witness his matinees – and while his treatment and seemingly exploitative demonstrations with A seem tortuous from this distance, Keene believes he was genuinely trying to treat her.
He is also convinced there was some conscious performative element to A’s episodes.
‘‘She’s been the subject of a couple of films and a number of plays because theatre people have been drawn to her because it’s really about the nature of performance in a way: when she was having her fits and strange states in front of people, were they real? Was she really going through that or was she performing those things because that was what was required from her? So the piece is very much about the nature of performance.’’
For director Lipson, who is also an actor, it’s this intersection of science and performance that intrigues; he admits to a certain ‘‘obsession’’ with the mysteries of science and theatre.
‘‘I’ve done several projects which exist in the little gap between science and theatre and … I find it really exciting to live in that gap,’’ he says. ‘‘For one thing, you get to talk to a lot of scientists – they’re interested because science is an intuitive thing and a creative thing and it’s very rare for scientists to have that appreciated … when they’re talking about a work of art about science, they get excited because the art is kind of bringing out that creative side of what they do.’’
Keene, Lipson says, has insinuated himself in the mind of A in a ‘‘poetic way’’.
‘‘Which makes you realise that actually, Charcot had tried to do that too – he was seeing people and things in a very poetical way, in a way an artist does.’’
Keene’s writing not only gives Augustine a voice, but illuminates Charcot as well, he says.
‘‘It tells you a lot about him and his psychology and thus science’s general approach to illness and to what it is to be human,’’ he says. ‘‘He’s written 22 little episodes, almost like poems, and I’ve tried to make each one as different as possible from the other, so what you get is kind of a collage of her life. Each one is a different aspect of A … or different aspect of her as a phenomenon.’’
It is, he says, an amazing story on many levels.
‘‘It’s a human story and … you think about what kind of girl she was who went through what she did, but it’s also an extraordinary story in terms of scientific history and as a way of focusing on the way we think about illness and women.’’
Photographs of A is at The Lawler, MTC, June 26-July 6. mtc.com.au