AUDIENCE IS HYPNOTIZED BY DRAMA’S BIRTH PAINS

In the midst of a hysterical outburst, actress Madeleine Potter, playing an 18th-Century blind girl, called for a line. The audience didn’t mind at all.

It was the capstone event in the Old Globe Theatre’s 11-day “workshopping” of Joel Gross’ new historical drama, “Mesmer.”

The delicate, porcelain-skinned actress was one of a highly talented cast of four moving about the intimate Cassius Carter Centre Stage with script in hand last weekend. Like her colleagues, she was giving a full-out emotional performance without the benefit of a director’s blocking or the usual four-plus weeks spent in character development.

The script she was following, in fact, had changed almost daily from the one she had held less than two weeks before at a public reading.

Potter’s long, lace-covered skirt and low-cut neckline were borrowed from the Globe’s wardrobe collection. Actor Bruce Davison, in the title role, wore blue jeans with his frock coat. The lighting and music were minimal, the set sketched in with a few chairs, a Persian carpet, some props.

It was more than enough to demonstrate that Gross’ play has terrific potential.

In a two-week process that Gross likened to “two months in Hell” after Saturday’s performance, the playwright worked feverishly to take advantage of input from director Robert Berlinger, Globe artistic director Jack O’Brien and the audience that had attended the first night’s reading.

That first night the audience had agreed that the play was very compelling but that the second half was repetitious. The story got lost in confusion among the criss-crossing love relationships.

The final, semi-staged performances revealed major improvements, a dramatic shift in the personality of one of the characters, and the real power of Gross’ ability to open up a controversial subject without taking sides.

The play takes place at the time of Austrian Empress Maria Theresa, in the opulent 18th-Century Vienna clinic of the charismatic Dr. Anton Mesmer, whose experiments in “animal magnetism” and legendary affairs of the heart made him suspect among the conservative members of the local medical hierarchy.

A beautiful blind pianist, Maria Theresa Von Paradis (Potter), a favorite of the empress, has been brought to Mesmer’s clinic for his unusual treatment. As Mesmer demonstrates his remarkable healings, through the transfer of magnetic energy from himself to his patients, the drama heats up with a passionate love triangle among the pianist, Mesmer and his assistant, a former patient named Franzl (read by Lisa Pelikan).

As the infatuations swell, the playwright explores the pain of change that Maria Theresa experiences, going suddenly from pampered favorite capable of amazing feats “for a blind girl” to an ordinary woman whose new sight reveals much more than she is ready to experience.

Gross’ poetic sensitivity is strongest here, but his real power is revealed in the scenes between Mesmer and Dr. Otto Von Stoerk (William Anton), who represents the stubborn resistance to change that haunts every century.

Von Stoerk rejects outright the evidence before him in Maria Theresa’s restored sight. He defends accepted scientific principles, which, in the medical practice of the time, included “bleeding, blisters, plasters and electric shocks.”

Mesmer believed he had discovered a law of nature that could heal the world. In Gross’ play, the main thrust of his work is rejected, although it did lay a foundation for later practitioners’ use of therapeutic hypnotism.

With no sides taken by the playwright, “Mesmer” nevertheless inspires fascinating speculation. Mesmer was demonstrating a technique so ancient (the “laying on of hands”), and proved its effectiveness so efficiently, one wonders if it frightened the Von Stoerks into suppressing it, just as Maria Theresa’s fear causes her to retreat to the “safety” of her blindness. The metaphorical connection Gross draws between Maria Theresa’s blindness and Von Stoerk’s is strong, subtle and disturbing.

On another level, there is no doubt that the excitement that permeated the Cassius Carter at Saturday’s performance was transferred from a playwright to a director and four brave actors, to an audience thrilled to be let in on the process of play development. Many during the post-performance discussion expressed their gratitude to the cast and author for letting them in on such a tender moment in the play-performance gestation.

Two more plays are undergoing this process at the Carter. The inside look is a unique and highly recommended experience. It is a particularly wonderful opportunity for would-be writers, young people and anyone who loves the theater.

PLAY DISCOVERY FESTIVAL Sponsored by the Old Globe Theatre, directed by Robert Berlinger. Continues with Reuben Gonzalez’s “The Boiler Room,” directed by Craig Noel, which will have final performances at 8 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday. “The Gentlemen of Fifth Avenue” by James Penzi will be read Oct. today at 8 p.m., and final performances will be Nov. 7-9, under the direction of David McClendon. All Play Discovery activities take place at the Cassius Carter Centre Stage, Balboa Park, San Diego.