The Ayahuasca plant, when brewed with several other plants of the psychotria genus, produces a psychedelic trip that rivals the synthetic death’s-door effects of DMT. It’s known as the “vine of death.” In Peruvian ceremonies the act of ingesting it is known as “la purga” because of the all-sluices open purgatorial nature of the experience, sometimes even curing diseases. And for one woman, it has been all these things — it has cured her and expanded her consciousness in equal parts. She brings her tale to Center Stage Theater tonight and Saturday.
In the one-woman show “Wind in a Mirror: Ayahuasca Visions,” Josie Hyde uses storytelling, poetry, music and bizarre, Peter Max-ish animations to bring this story to life. A child of the ’60s and no stranger to LSD and expanding her mind, Ms. Hyde claims the late monologist Spalding Gray as a friend and muse. (“He gave me a lot of encouragement … he called me his female opposite,” she says. “We argued.”)