Playing Antoinne in Taffety Punk Theatre Company’s staged reading of the new play

La Salpêtrière Developmental Reading

By Kelsey Mesa

Directed by Danielle Drakes

A 19th century hospital, La Salpêtrière, became famous as a center for the treatment of hysteria. Women were sometimes treated in demonstrations that were open to the public. Noted “treatments” included hypnosis and punching women in the uterus. Kelsey Mesa's play follows a new inmate patient from her mysterious arrival in the hospital through the many absurd practices by its doctors, to her ultimate fight to reclaim her life.