Hysteria stage at Weirdofest

At Bandgurl666, we want all weirdos to bloom and blossom. We’re currently preparing for Weirdo Fest, and figured our Hysteria Stage needs a specific introduction. Based on my paper ‘Performing Hysteria’, I wanted to celebrate a more volatile, expressive and uncontrollable side of weirdness. But what does it mean to be hysterical? And why are we celebrating it?

Hysteria derives from ‘hystera’, the ancient Greek word for the womb. Hippocrates and Plato were one of the first to introduce the idea of the uterus as “a wandering womb”, an entity that would travel around the body of women who were not sexually satisfied or pregnant. 

Historically, hysteria was the first mental disorder that was exclusively tied to women. Though its definition changes throughout history, feminist scholars have long studied hysteria, some describing it as a tool that has been used to control women’s health, behaviour and expression. Feminists such as Catherine Clément and Hélène Cixous also interpreted it as a reaction to the oppressive, patriarchal environment in the 20th century. In this context, the intensity of hysteria clashes with what was expected of women.

Historically, hysteria was the first mental disorder that was exclusively tied to women.

In my paper ‘Performing Hysteria: Psychiatric portraits of hysteric patients and their impact on female representation’, I focus on Hospital Salpêtrière in Paris between 1876 and 1880. It was a time when the then-neurological disorder was heavily medicalized. A list of symptoms at the time was: excessive emotionality, fainting, hallucinations, a liking for drama, sexual disturbance (or excessive use of sexual organs), seizures, irregular or spontaneous bleeding, paralyses of limbs, wilful starvation (anorexia/bulimia), spinal irritation, nervous exhaustion. The body language of a hysterical attack was  described as excessive: swinging arms and legs, cramped wrists, and contorted facial expressions.

Physicians used hypnotization to isolate and study symptoms; it could be thoroughly structured. It was also used for portraits and during medical lectures, where women were presented on a stage to an audience (including medical professionals like Charcot’s student Sigmund Freud) at the amphitheatre. The balance between education and entertainment during these lectures is questionable because patients were demonstrated while hypnotized. The patients’ role becomes doubled into experimental subjects and on-stage demonstrators: what can a hysteric woman do, and how can she be transformed? This created a fragmented life of repetition for patients. Hypnotization was not just used as a tool to isolate and demonstrate symptoms to an audience; it was a forceful way to make the patient collaborate. The illness becomes a role, acted out through a medical gaze: always appearing instead of moving, acting instead of being. 

If hysteria was built on the need to control women’s health, behaviour and expression, we are still trying to resist that. Think of outspoken women such as Courtney Love, or Britney Spears in 2007. How were their expressions viewed?
While fascism is rising, reproductive rights are increasingly threatened, and queer acceptance is declining, my anger is still marked as hysterical. With a gender gap in healthcare and a payment gap that still exists, my protest against it is still marked as hysterical. I believe that the stage is an embodiment of this oppressive history: it’s in the shapes, sounds, vibrations and structures. 

So, what’s to celebrate then?
Agency is one vital difference between Charcot’s hysteria and now. Especially when we connect it to the historical significance of the medical lectures. The stage can now be transformed from an oppressive site to a place of protest. Performers now have the choice to display anger to voice political messages, or to just be as expressive as one can be. The acts programmed on the Hysteria Stage: Brigadera, Dear Omen, and My Girl Loves Heroine, all show how ‘hysteria’ can be subverted. Whether it’s through Brigadera’s high-pitched, mastered screaming, Dear Omen’s demanding energy and theatrical shows, or the way Paloma from My Girl Loves Heroine crawls on stage while grinding her teeth. Through their performance, they capture something that is inherently close to themselves but confront a history where the same expressions were once viewed as unruly. Think of rage, but also desire and horniness, hopelessness, etc. The Hysteria Stage is the transformation of being looked at, portrayed, performing, and possessing agency over all those actions. Subsequently, these acts allow us to feel a shared release with them that’s rarely found outside the walls of a venue.

Feeling seen often happens at a punk show when a woman is screaming in my face. There’s a shared rage. It reassures me because I see something similar on stage. It’s in contrast to what I have been told I should be; there’s a power in the anger I feel. It's useful, transformative, and political. Both personal and collective. Still, a metamorphosis takes place: Hysteria shifts from a diagnosis of deviance to a tool that reclaims anger and agency.

So, if your desire has been burning and your anger remains relentless, November 21, Skatecafé Amsterdam, 21.00 is the place to be. We want your overbearing excessiveness!

Sources:

-mKing, Helen. “hysteria.” Oxford Classical Dictionary. July 06, 2015. Oxford University Press.

-MD McCullogh, Thomas A. H, Theories of Hysteria, Historical Note, December 1969

Vrouwelijk Daderschap, Annelies van der Meij, De Groene Amsterdammer, 26 september 2026

-Beard, George M, Cases of hysteria, neurasthenia, spinal irritation, and allied affections: with remarks, Medicine in the Americas, 1610-1920, page 5, The National Library of Medicine, Chicago: J.J.Spalding & Co., printers, 1874

-Hustvedt, Asti, Medical Muses: Hysteria in 19th Century Paris, page 24, Bloomsbury, 2011