Theatre: Giving Sabina’s Splendid Brain its due
She may be one of the most important female thinkers of the 20th century, but for decades she was known for having severe hysteria.
For being a patient and then lover of Carl Jung. For being killed by Nazis during the final months of the Second World War.
But the latest play by Stolen Theatre Collective aims to bring Russian-Jewish psychoanalyst Sabina Spielrein to her proper place in history.
Opening Sept. 14 at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts, “Sabina’s Splendid Brain” by Carol Sinclair is a dramatic and musical look at a woman whose troubled life came into focus with the recent discovery of her diaries. Her rightful place as an original thinker was argued in a 2003 collection of essays titled “Sabina Spielrein, Forgotten Pioneer of Psychoanalysis.”
“She’s now acknowledged as having founded relational psychology, having started scientific analysis of childhood development, being the first person to analyze the speech of schizophrenics,” says director Gyllian Raby.
When Spielrein returned to Russia with her daughters to bring forth her new ideas, she was killed during the Nazi occupation of Rostov-on-Don in 1945 (it was originally thought Spielrein died during the Russian purges in 1942).
It robbed the world of many more years of her intellect, says Raby.
“I think if this starts sounding like a holocaust play, then people will stay away. It’s a very small part of the play. Yes, she dies at the end, but what we’re really focusing on are her accomplishments. The extraordinary nobility and strength that she had to embody in order to overcome not just her own circumstances, but the ‘old boys club.’”
The play will feature two women on stage — Stolen Theatre Collective co-founder Danielle Wilson as Spielrein, and cellist Grace Snippe, who provides more than just music, she’s part of the narrative.
“I had never heard of her either,” says Snippe. “What a journey.”
Raby says it’s the story’s “human heart” that makes it theatre — it’s not so much Spielrein’s ideas that form the drama as the environment she tried sharing them in.
“In this case, it’s such a big heart,” she says. “She’s never sentimental and never indulgent. She’s able to examine herself and enable herself to grow, because she really didn’t have anyone helping her.”
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