“#aspellforfainting” is a cross-media spectacle of a woman as a symptomatic map of the hysterical body fragmented by juxtapositions, interruptions and tweets.

Using Charcot’s Tuesday night lectures at the Salpêtrière and his instigation of hysterical performance as a leaping-off point, WaxFactory traces the lines of fainting, hallucination, delusion and love letters that run through the source material. “#aspellforfainting” vividly celebrates the live, raw neuroses that a performer experiences: the tempest that occurs between the initial brilliance of an idea and the dread one encounters when they can’t figure out what they were thinking just a moment before; artistic blocks, unforeseen circumstances, nightmares; getting out of one’s own way, and what happens when one confronts the reality of what was created, exposed, capsized, deconstructed, demolished and uprooted.

A brand new ensemble work for a solo performer (Gillian Chadsey), a sound artist/DJ (Ivan Talijancic) and a video artist/VJ (Shige Moriya), “#aspellforfainting” is an improvisational piece, created anew for each performance by using disparate textual sources (“The Seagull,” “Macbeth,” “Hamlet,” “Streetcar Named Desire,” American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, YouTube instructional videos, etc.), a multitude of musical selections and sounds and over 50 objects as an investigation into the chaos of creation. The performer is given a series of tasks to complete while the DJ/VJ team shifts through a constantly rotating series of textual sources, sound cues, light changes and props placed in the performer’s path, while audience members are encouraged to use their smart phones during the performance to take photos/video and tweet them to #aspellforfainting.