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HYSTERICAL:  A SHORT HISTORY OF THE VIBRATOR by Hilary Hadley Wright Late Night-Hawaii

Playwright Hilary Wright received her initial inspiration for the play after reading a book about the development of the vibrator, Rachel P. Maines's THE TECHNOLOGY OF ORGASM IN 2000. "I found the story almost unbelievable and totally irresistible, then and now." Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. The vibrator was invented in the 1880s by a British physician in order to avoid the drudgery of manually stimulating his female patients to orgasm - sorry, the hysterical paroxysm - to temporarily alleviate their alleged disease, hysteria. Wright explains: "My starting-point was to imagine who that unnamed doctor might be, and what his wife might think if she crept down to his clinic one night and made unauthorized use of his newly-minted apparatus. I'm British, so it was easy to understand their repression!" The wife's experiments in his office awaken new sexual and personal aspirations, and the major conflict in the play contrasts the wife's desire for self-fulfillment with her husband's material ambitions.

Audiences at its Honolulu premiere found it funny, intelligent and thought-provoking. Now you can see the show's U.S. Mainland premiere here at FringeNYC. Director Jennifer Goodlander comments "The company is excited about traveling 2,500 miles to prove that there's more to the islands than beaches and surf, that we care about theatre and producing quality work." Is it true that hysteria is caused by drinking too much coffee, or reading French novels? Does riding bicycles cause lesbianism? This show provides the answers along with plenty of double entendres, ample cross-dressing, and a good time for all. - Jennifer Goodlander, director & Hilary Hadley Wright, playwright

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