About the show.
Everybody Thrashing is a new play written and directed by Jeremy Ohringer and Amelia Hefferon. The production dives into the Dancing Plague of 1518, and the corresponding idea of mass hysteria. At a time consumed with religious control and unstable communities, what does one do when words cannot answer their questions? Do they dance?
Mass Hysteria
In 1518, the residents of Strasbourg, France, began dancing and could not stop. Mass Hysteria or mass psychogenic illness is a collective phenomenon in which people all begin experiencing similar cognitive or physical symptoms with no immediate cause. Through my research, I have developed four mechanisms that are essential building blocks to mass hysteria: desire for recognition, social contagion, response to authority, and communal stress.
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