Between Freud and a Naked Woman: Notes on Sabina Berman’s Dora

Abstract

In January of 2001, theater-goers in Mexico City were treated to a "scene" worthy of Charcot's notorious séances with hysterics at the Salpêtrière in Paris : on the stage, a young woman called "Dora" is lying naked on an operating table, flanked by two characters called Sigmund Freud and Lou Andreas-Salomé, both of them fully dressed. Mere seconds after the latter announces in an aside to the audience that the doctor has decided to perform a "major surgery" and is preparing his symbolical scalpel to "castrate" his patient: "Si la enfermedad de la mujer independiente es un falo imaginario, hay que cortar el falo." The scene, in which Freud struggles with a woman still boldly talking back at him even though she now finds herself exposed in the utmost vulnerability of her naked body, comes toward the end of Feliz nuevo siglo Doktor Freud, itself a dramatic rewriting of the famous case of Freud's Dora by the Mexican playwright, journalist, producer and psychologist by training, Sabina Berman. Directed by Sandra Félix with a superb stage design by Philippe Amand, the play at the time of its opening featured Ricardo Blume in the role of Sigmund Freud, Marina de Tavira as Dora (also Anna Freud as well as Gloria, described in the stage directions as a 1960s-type feminist, dressed in black and with short hair - I will come back later on to this combination of roles in a single actor, which is the exact opposite of the reduplication of actors for one character that happens in the case of Freud), Juan Carlos Beyer as Freud 2 (also Herr K. and Otto Rank), Enrique Singer as Freud 3 (also Herr F., a railway worker, and Carl Gustav Jung), and Lisa Owen as Lou Andreas Salomé (also Frau K., Martha Freud, Frau F., Dora as adult, and Ernest Jones).