by Wendy Harmer
Can you get a close up of that camera three?
Now we come to the most enjoyable part of the binge… eating in peace and quiet.
Take your ingredients into the kitchen and breathing steadily, feeling a little light headed, begin picking at a pastry until you pick up speed… [Putting the items into the blender.] Cheezels, Tim Tams, ice cream… swallow the lot, then to the toilet again.
She pours the contents into the toilet.
This should come up easily… and produce a severe headache and throbbing in the temples.
In the kitchen again, with a sausage roll in one hand while preparing a huge bowl of cornflakes, milk and sugar… [Into the blender.] Down it goes and then off to the toilet. [She pours the contents into the toilet.]
Up it comes again… your eyes should really be aching now.
You should be feeling extremely tired and dizzy now as you finish the ice cream covered in Milo, followed by the Tim Tams and Mint slices, then off to the toilet to vomit once more.
Our head is aching, our eyes are swollen and sore, the throat and mouth feeling red raw, we can’t stop now… stuffing in the rest of the chicken and drinking a bottle of chocolate topping until we are off to the toilet to throw up again.
The chocolate is dangerous, it hasn’t come up, so if this happens drink water until you throw up and throw up until you can only see bile in the toilet bowl.
Now just sit on the toilet and breathe deeply, aware of the sore muscles in your stomach, the burping acidic taste, scratchy, furry teeth, dry face and staring eyes. Just take a drink of water, sit and recover.
Feel your swollen tongue and eyes protruding.
Now get the food out again and repeat the process. You’re exhausted, push the food down.
Finish the chicken carcass, throw up.
Toast, jam and ice cream, throw up again.
Throw up Cornflakes, custard and sugar,
Throw up Cheezels and chocolate,
Throw up water.
She goes back to toilet.
And throw and throw and throw and throw and throw…
Throw, throw, throw, throw until you are sweating, your gut is aching, your mouth bloated, ears and eyes sore, your back muscles strained and ripped, until you are on the point of passing out.
Lie on the bathroom floor until the dizziness passes.
Close your eyes, breathe deeply and evenly and repeat: ‘I am a fat, selfish pig. I am a loser, coward, I am ugly, a waste of space.’
That’s all for ‘Binging With Sancia’… See you same time tomorrow… and the next day… and the next day after that!
* Note for performance: Just use the foods you can afford! This is expensive, so you can use empty packets and ‘throw up’ bread and sugar and Cornflakes.
**Note for performance: Instead of chicken, use bread—no-one will know!
AFTER THE BINGE
Well… this is a fine mess you’ve gotten us both into.
You’d better clean this up, you ugly, disgusting pig. Have a good look at yourself… your skin’s wrecked, your face is bloated! You’ve put on weight.
Everybody hates you because you’re so sly. You’re repulsive. You make people sick.
I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes.
I know, I know… but what am I going to do?
You could do some exercise… go to the gym.
No… I can’t… I can’t do this any more…
Oh, so you want to be 500 kilos…
No… no… I don’t, but I just want this to end.
There is knocking at the door. SANCIA scrambles to put things away, terrified someone will see her.
Mum?
Mum is that you?
I’m not doing anything.
No… don’t come in.
No… I don’t want you to come in.
I’m not here.
There’s nobody here.
There’s nobody here.
SANCIA dives under the table, unable to show her face, sobbing. Slowly she recovers and stands to face the audience.
So. It was about that time that I realised I had a bit of a problem. After being bulimic on and off for ten years… one day I almost choked on some half regurgitated food…
Not a very glamorous end for Princess Sancia… no crystal casket, no woodland clearing strewn with rose petals… just dead on the toilet floor in a pool of her own vomit.
She coughs.
Up came a piece of poisoned apple.
And after twelve years of silence… locked in a dark tower… I finally opened my mouth.
Of course I had opened my mouth to throw up food.
And as an actress I had opened my mouth to speak words others had written… thousands of them, torrents of words.
And I had opened my mouth to whisper words of hate to myself.
And I had opened my mouth to lie to others.
But I had never opened my mouth to tell the truth.
And the first word that came out of my mouth? HELP.
The ‘fairy story’ ends.
So I looked for help and after a couple of false starts, near-rescues and blind alleys I finally found my way to a whole army of people who specialise in this area—people who seemed to know me, or at least my disease, better than I knew myself—people I wish I wish I’d have seen when I was sixteen.
‘Oh my God Sancia… you are so thin… you must be like size zero. You are like skinnier than even the scariest skinnies in the Gone Too Far bit in the magazines—you need to see a professional mate—do you want me to get you some phone numbers? Or come with you to visit the counsellor?’
SANCIA smiles knowingly.
Yeah—this is the bit where the message comes through, but seriously, if ONLY someone had known to say that to me… Anyway—so finally I stopped talking about food and my weight and started to talk about my mind and my soul. I came out of my dark tower, took off my tiara and began to deal with life on life’s terms as a common garden variety human that was going to have to learn that being perfect wasn’t why she was alive.
So why Anorexia, why Bulimia Nervosa? Why didn’t I choose drugs or alcohol? I would still have hated myself but at least I could have danced. An addiction with a great soundtrack. Or why didn’t I become an obsessive compulsive, kleptomaniac, pyromaniac, necrophiliac self-mutilator? I was good at spelling.
I wish I could say it was because of my mother’s unreasonable hopes that I would become a beautiful, accomplished woman.
I wish I could say it was because my father called me ‘Butch’.
Or that my brother called me ‘Moon Face’.
I wish I could say it was because of this or because Josh Mason called me ‘whale arse’ on Facebook. Or Nicole Trewicke… a model in Dolly magazine whose thighs never met in the middle.
And of course I’d love to say it was all my fault.
But you might as well ask my why my voice sounds the way it does. Why I walk the way I do. Or why I dream what I dream. Because Anorexia Nervosa is a psychiatric illness… a small, quiet, submissive madness… and what is it in this life which sends us quietly mad?
Right now, for me it feels so hard to imagine a life without Anorexia… the only thing I’m certain of is that I have no life with Anorexia.
And so my life continues… one meal at a time.
IN THE MIRROR
SANCIA looks in the mirror and finds some acceptance there.
She walks off stage.
Links to the Australian Curriculum
The Australian Curriculum: English Year 9
Understand that authors innovate with text structures and language for specific purposes and effects (ACELA1553)
Compare and contrast the use of cohesive devices in texts, focusing on how they serve to signpost ideas, to make connections and to build semantic associations between ideas (ACELA1770)
Identify how vocabulary choices contribute to specificity, abstraction and stylistic effectiveness (ACELA1561)
Present an argumen
t about a literary text based on initial impressions and subsequent analysis of the whole text (ACELT1771)
Explore and reflect on personal understanding of the world and significant human experience gained from interpreting various representations of life matters in texts (ACELT1635)
Analyse text structures and language features of literary texts, and make relevant comparisons with other texts (ACELT1772)
Listen to spoken texts constructed for different purposes, for example to entertain and to persuade, and analyse how language features of these texts position listeners to respond in particular ways (ACELY1740)
Interpret, analyse and evaluate how different perspectives of issue, event, situation, individuals or groups are constructed to serve specific purposes in texts (ACELY1742)
Create imaginative, informative and persuasive texts that present a point of view and advance or illustrate arguments, including texts that integrate visual, print and/or audio features (ACELY1746)
Review and edit students’ own and others’ texts to improve clarity and control over content, organisation, paragraphing, sentence structure, vocabulary and audio/visual features (ACELY1747)
Use a range of software, including word processing programs, flexibly and imaginatively to publish texts (ACELY1748)
The Australian Curriculum: English Year 10
Understand how language use can have inclusive and exclusive social effects, and can empower or disempower people (ACELA1564)
Understand that people’s evaluations of texts are influenced by their value systems, the context and the purpose and mode of communication (ACELA1565)
Compare the purposes, text structures and language features of traditional and contemporary texts in different media (ACELA1566)
Analyse and explain how text structures, language features and visual features of texts and the context in which texts are experienced may influence audience response (ACELT1641)
Identify, explain and discuss how narrative viewpoint, structure, characterisation and devices including analogy and satire shape different interpretations and responses to a text (ACELT1642)
Compare and evaluate how ‘voice’ as a literary device can be used in a range of different types of texts such as poetry to evoke particular emotional responses (ACELT1643)
Analyse and evaluate text structures and language features of literary texts and make relevant thematic and intertextual connections with other texts (ACELT1774)
Identify and explore the purposes and effects of different text structures and language features of spoken texts, and use this knowledge to create purposeful texts that inform, persuade and engage (ACELY1750)
Use comprehension strategies to compare and contrast information within and between texts, identifying and analysing embedded perspectives, and evaluating supporting evidence (ACELY1754)
Create sustained texts, including texts that combine specific digital or media content, for imaginative, informative, or persuasive purposes that reflect upon challenging and complex issues (ACELY1756)
Review, edit and refine students’ own and others’ texts for control of content, organisation, sentence structure, vocabulary, and/or visual features to achieve particular purposes and effects (ACELY1757)
Use a range of software, including word processing programs, confidently, flexibly and imaginatively to create, edit and publish texts, considering the identified purpose and the characteristics of the user (ACELY1776)
The Australian Curriculum: The Arts Years 9 & 10
Manipulate combinations of the elements of drama to develop and convey the physical and psychological aspects of roles and characters consistent with intentions in dramatic forms and performance styles (ACADRM048)
Structure drama to engage an audience through manipulation of dramatic action, forms and performance styles and by using design elements (ACADRM050)
Perform devised and scripted drama making deliberate artistic choices and shaping design elements to unify dramatic meaning for an audience (ACADRM051)
Evaluate how the elements of drama, forms and performance styles in devised and scripted drama convey meaning and aesthetic effect (ACADRR052)
Analyse a range of drama from contemporary and past times to explore differing viewpoints and enrich their drama making, starting with drama from Australia and including drama of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, and consider drama in international contexts (ACADRR053)
Activities for English: General
Narrative point of view
What is the Matter with Mary Jane? is a monologue told in the first person narrative. A monologue performed by one actor can also be called a monodrama. In the first person narrative, one character at a time narrates the story, telling the main narrative and any associated stories, from their point of view.
The first person point of view can be considered a limited point of view. Limited, because the narrator is part of the story and therefore may not be privy to information about other characters and events. This approach can make it difficult for an author/playwright to keep a narrative moving. However, this approach can also create intimacy and a stronger connection between narrator and audience as the audience is privy to the narrator’s thoughts and feelings.
First person narrative enables a writer to use stream of consciousness (also known as internal monologue) as a narrative device. Stream of consciousness allows the reader to develop a more intimate knowledge of a character as they read the thoughts of the character as they are having them. Traditionally, stream of consciousness and the dramatic device of a soliloquy, while serving similar purposes, have been thought of as two different devices. Over time, as more playwrights create monodramas and the lines between monodrama and soliloquy have become blurred, the distinction between stream of consciousness and soliloquy has also blurred.
Activities:
1. As the students read the script, record the following:
a. all of the characters that Sancia plays,
b. all of the characters that Sancia speaks to in the play,
c. any other characters that are mentioned in the play.
2. Identify the ways Wendy Harmer and Sancia Robinson break from the first person narrative to:
a. keep the narrative moving,
b. provide additional information to the audience.
(Hint, the list of characters compiled in question one will help the students to complete this task.)
3. Choose one scene in the play and write it so it is either a duologue (two characters) or a multi character scene. Compare the newly created scene with the original scene using a compare and contrast chart or similar. The comparison should focus on:
a. the effect on the audience (reader),
b. the different ways the audience (reader) receives information in the two version,
c. the relationship between the audience (reader) and the character,
d. any other important information.
Story Arc
The development of What is the Matter with Mary Jane? follows a traditional (sometimes referred to as Freytag’s Pyramid) dramatic arc featuring: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and dénouement.
Sketch the story arc of What is the Matter with Mary Jane? annotating the sketch with key lines, actions or any other information from the play. The exposition refers to the set up of the story and imparting important information to the audience. The rising action is a series of events that builds towards the climax or crisis. In a traditional dramatic arc, the rising action occurs immediately after the exposition. The climax or crisis point is sometimes referred to as the ‘turning point’ because it is the point of the play where fate of the character begins to change. Following the crisis point or climax is the falling action, at which point the protagonist will win or lose their battle. The dénouement is also known as the resolution, revelation or catastrophe.
Activities:
Divide the class into five groups. Allocate each group one element of the dramatic arc (exp
osition, rising action, climax or crisis, falling action and dénouement). Each group analyses the scenes that relate to their allocated area of the dramatic arc in relation to:
• language,
• character development,
• story development.
After analysing the scenes, each group should prepare a summary sheet and presentation for the rest of the class.
Themes and issues
Young adult fiction, or youth theatre, is often defined as being written and developed for young people from the ages of fifteen to twenty-five. The protagonist in young adult fiction or youth theatre is predominantly a young person overcoming a social, emotional and occasionally a political challenge. Another defining element of young adult fiction is that it generally explores themes and issues the reader is experiencing or familiar with. For example: body image, peer pressure, social acceptance, self-acceptance etc.
Activities:
1. As the students read the script, record the following:
a. the themes and issues that Sancia faces,
b. how these are revealed to the audience,
c. the language used to reveal the themes and issues,
d. any other important information.
Activities for English: Scene by Scene
Introduction
Read the beginning of the play stanza by stanza. After reading each stanza students should create a visual image for each. The image can be created either digital or by hand. After creating the images, divide the students into small groups to share their images. While discussing their images, the students should discuss what words, phrases and emotions inspired each image. After discussing all of the images, the group creates a multi-modal text that tells the introductory story. The students should use a storyboard, or similar graphics organiser, to plan the multi-modal text. Students present their work to the class.
Working in pairs, or small groups, students read sections one and two of the introduction for both the younger and the older Sancia. After reading the sections, the students use a compare and contrast chart, or a similar graphics organiser, to identify the similarities and differences in each scene in relation to: themes and issues, characters and language. After comparing the younger and the older Sancia, the students write a short statement about what they have learnt about the character and what they think will happen during the play.
