Augustine’s Dream: a work in development
Augustine’s Dream was presented in July 2019 at the Providence Fringe by AnomalousCo, an interdisciplinary theatre collective that develops new productions working with their director. The group focusses on movement which is extended vertically through the use of silks, trapezes, and harnesses. Where many aerial companies work with dancers, this group works with professional actors as well as actors in training, all of whom have an interest in physical theatre.
Most of the actors in this play make sounds as needed, but do not speak. The lines are left to actor/director Kathryn Syssoyeva. In some of the circus inspired productions she has directed Kathryn has had to teach the performers how to speak the text.
Augustine’s Dream is a devised piece inspired in part by a book called The Invention of Hysteria that describes Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot’s study of hysterical female patients at the Paris Salpêtrière Hospital in the late nineteenth century. Since Charcot used the latest technology to document his teachings and techniques we have photographs of his patients’ seizures which were helpful to the actors and director in the development of characters. He presented weekly public lectures of the characteristics of hysteria using the wrought up patients to demonstrate his views to an audience composed largely of men.
The play begins with the traditional knocks the French employ to mark the onset of the performance. In Augustine’s Dream the characters are women who perform their illnesses to an audience, much as the Charcot’s patients must have done. The patients are sometimes resistant and have to be removed, a walk-on role played by actor/teacher Alexei Syssoyev. Gongs are used to mark the end of hypnosis sessions.
“Games in the Woods,” the title of the next scene, takes place in Salem, Massachusetts in the seventeenth century during the period of the witch trials. The three girls run, spin, and crawl on the ground. One has a convulsion, another prays uncontrollably.
The trial of Susannah Martin, who pleaded not guilty, follows. By the end of her trial she accepts her guilt and her punishment of death by hanging. Her behavior and reactions are reminiscent of the characters in the opening.
Augustine’s Dream ends with “The Passion of Elizabeth.” Elizabeth of Spalbeek was a 13th century mystic from the diocese of Liège who was also catatonic. She was awakened from her catatonia several times a day and brought to the chapel where she was exhibited to the religious pilgrims who came to pray to her much like the scholars and doctors who observed the catatonic patients at the Salpêtrière Hospital and found it a learning experience.
Apart from Kathryn Syssoyeva and Alexei Syssoyev the actors were Kat Hunsaker and Cassandra Smith, both students in the Theatre Department at Dixie State University in Saint George, Utah (where Kathryn teaches Directing, Interdisciplinary Devising, History of Theatre and Dramatic Literature, Script Analysis, Theatre and Society, and Dramaturgy) and the Russian Diana Zhdanova who is in her last year at the Saint-Petersburg Academy of Theatre. Kathryn Syssoyeva and Alexei Syssoyev met Diana in the summer of 2018 when they choreographed a performance piece, The Biomechanics of Security, under the direction of conceptual artist Farrah Karapetian in Saint-Petersburg.
Directors, actors, and acting companies have grown more interested in aerial theatre and the ways in which it can heighten the theatricality of a play. It can be and has been used successfully in musical theatre and text-based plays.
Although Kathryn’s interest in aerial theatre is strong, other forms of theatre appeal to her as well. In 2016, she developed “Classrooms without Borders,” a series of classes, research trips, and theatre projects that focussed on social justice. It too was a devised piece. Currently she is directing her students in Caryl Churchill’s Love and Information