How do you write anxiety? How do you act it? Two questions that present wildly unsatisfactory answers. There are the obvious ways, the tics, the coiled up physical tensions, the wild, unkempt hair, the wildly roving eyes. There’s the breathy, machine guy delivery of dialogue, or the visible signs of ‘nervous breakdown’.
Tell Me Anything delivers a refreshing and profound take on the enduring discourse surrounding mental illness. The narrative focuses on performer David Ralfe and flashes back to his relationship with Kate, his girlfriend at 15 years old. Diagnosed as atypically anorexic, Kate is physically absent from the story, as we are led to believe she, and many like her, try to become physically absent from reality, by starving themselves. As 'Thinspiration' becomes a pre-pubescent lifestyle choice it’s impossible to avoid this epidemic of female self-harm. Watching the recent Netflix phenomena Stranger Things, it seemed terrifyingly unsurprising there is a Proana discussion devoted to the unnaturally thin Natalia Dyer.
David is tormented by Kate’s illness and its profound effect on their relationship. With a Dolphin strapped to his back he recites the mantra Warmth, Guidance, Gentle Nudging as a coping strategy to help him thought the lies and vomit scented snogging. Young love beset by constant struggle ultimately takes its toll on David and our honest and reliable narrator reveals his present mental health struggles.
Kate's parents are uninterested and like Joan Bakewell’s recent controversial and unhelpful statement, infer that anorexia is fundamentally narcissism. This leaves the burden of support on an increasingly unstable David: we feel his instability as he physically stumbles through a small collection of cardboard tubes. He grasps at them as they fall over and he tries to fix them, just like he is trying to fix Kate, to save her from herself.
NHS Mental Health funding is bound to suffer no matter what was written on the Brexit battle bus, there are no quick solutions to the rise of the mental health crisis brought on by years of austerity but Tell Me Anything manages to engage the audience with determination and commitment.
- Lucy Orr
Tell Me Anything is on at 17.45 at Summerhall (Venue 26) until August 28th. See venue for Accessibility information, Suitability: 14+ (Guideline). https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/tell-me-anything
NHS mental health funding is still lagging behind, says report: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/09/nhs-mental-health-funding-is-still-lagging-behind-says-report
My Battle With Anorexia | Dave Chawner | TEDxClapham: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqbL-UhhyPk
Eating Disorders from the Inside Out: Laura Hill at TEDxColumbus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEysOExcwrE
Ruby Wax:What's so funny about mental illness?: https://www.ted.com/talks/ruby_wax_what_s_so_funny_about_mental_illness
There's some crunk dance moves happening in Maria Ferguson’s first one woman show, Fat Girls Don’t Dance, it’s an autobiographical account of her struggles with food and body image and how this has affected her dreams of becoming a professional dancer.
Stuck in a job cold calling for Which magazine Maria is day dreaming of supplying the dance floor with some sick moves. She sings "Part of Your World" from The Little Mermaid as if a plea for inclusion to the world of performance.
There’s more sick moves when Maria gets home but these involve vomit, as the audience witnesses her battling with her eating disorder, obsessive exercise and calorie counting. Like every thinspiration instagram post she contorts till her collar bones protrude and runs desperately as if searching for that ever elusive thigh gap, her brows knit with determination or maybe confusion as the Meghan Trainor song "All About the Bass" resounds across the stage, a positive body image and self-acceptance anthem which entreats her to embrace herself at any size.
A beloved but expensive dance class involves tap, ballet and modern but also French Fancies, Custard Creams and wotsits. Through repetition and Tourettes-like physical tics, Maria describes her auditions, which are always met with a mantra of “too fat to play pretty, too pretty to play fat.” Maria is caught in a mental and physical loop of auditions for the indistinguishable female performer’s holy trinity of Holby City, Casualty, Eastenders.
Culture Club's "Karma Chameleon" is Maria’s Bulimia musical touchstone, a song to be sung so she recognises dangerous behaviors, but also to comfort shattered dreams and the painful daily realities and challenges of bingeing and purging.
When even record breaking Olympian Simone Biles suffers body shaming, the challenges of maintaining a positive body image seem insurmountable to most women. Fat Girls Don’t Dance is a touching, brave and at times uncomfortably honest performance that entreats the audience to challenges the impossible aesthetic of professional dancers.
- Lucy Orr
Fat Girls Don’t Dance is on at 14.50 at Underbelly, Cowgate (Venue 61) Hearing Loop. https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/fat-girls-don-t-dance
Stripping away negative body image | Lillian Bustle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ME-c0l8oTkY
Proof That You Can Be A Wildly Talented Dancer At Any Size http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/05/fat-girl-dancing-video-talk-dirty-to-me_n_4730408.html
Girls with anorexia turned away by NHS because they are 'not thin enough' http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/03/girls-with-anorexia-turned-away-by-nhs-because-not-thin-enough/
A resource for professionals and carers of people with eating disorders http://www.thenewmaudsleyapproach.co.uk/
