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So, How Should I Be? speaks to all ages

Linda A. Carson play looks into the underlying triggers that could lead to an eating disorder
PHT
Joel Grinke, Manami Hara and Ilana Zackon are featured performers in Linda A. Carson’s So, How Should I Be? at Presentation House Theatre.

A play about eating disorder awareness for 10-14 year olds – So, How Should I Be? – at Presentation House Theatre, 333 Chesterfield Ave., North Vancouver, until Oct. 28. Tickets: phtheatre.org or 604.990.3474.

Playwright Linda A. Carson is switching gears – and perspectives – while biking from Caulfeild Village to Horseshoe Bay on an unexpectedly pleasant October afternoon.

Carson’s mind is clear – she’s ready to face whatever life throws at her next. Forty years ago, however, a teenage Carson wasn’t so steady. But she made it through to the other side and she knows there’s no going backwards.

In the 1970s, eating disorders weren’t discussed. There were almost no resources to pull Carson out from the abyss.

“The message when I was growing up was: If you look like (the models in) those Coke commercials … it will solve all your problems,” she says.

During her second year of university was when Carson hit rock bottom.

“I was in dire straits,” she recalls.

But it was persistence that saved the young woman. If you don’t get the help you need from the first, second or even third health professional, keep searching – that’s Carson’s hard-learned advice.

She had a serendipitous moment that changed the trajectory of her life. Carson was in a bookstore, searching for yet another dieting guide, when a different book, The Deadly Diet, fell off the shelf at her.

Carson nourished her mind with the behaviour modification manual, which slowly walks readers through the process of overcoming eating disorders, step-by-step.

“And that took me out the other side – the book The Deadly Diet,” she says.

Penning a play about her experience with an eating disorder was cathartic for Carson. In 1992, she wrote Dying to Be Thin as her final project for Langara College’s Studio 58 theatre program.

“Write what you know,” Carson recalls her instructor’s advice. “And I said: ‘There’s this one thing I know a lot about.’”

Carson channelled her wit to break through locked doors and into the secret life of a young teenager battling with the eating disorder bulimia. During the first 20 minutes of Dying to Be Thin’s debut, Carson knew the play’s subject matter was relatable.

“I had my audience,” she says. 

Dying to be Thin was picked up by Carousel Theatre, earned Carson a Jessie Award, and travelled across Canada. A quarter of a century has passed since then, and the playwright is disappointed.

“It’s kind of sad that it hasn’t gone away,” says Carson, of eating disorders. “In that time so much has changed, and yet so little. The messages to look and be a certain way are more ubiquitous than ever and the kids who take them in are getting younger and younger.”

One theatre company was inundated with calls from elementary school teachers who were interested in Dying to be Thin because unhealthy obsessions were taking hold of young students.

It got Carson thinking a lot about her predicament.

“And I said, ‘No, you definitely can’t sell this to that age group – Dying to be Thin – it’s not written for them,” she says, of the play geared towards late teens and young university students.

Carson then got to work penning a play, about eating disorders, aimed at 10-14 year olds. So, How Should I Be? made its premiere this week at Presentation House Theatre.

This play is a powerful vehicle to drive a conversation about body image – and to start early – in an era of unattainable perfection. The production touches on eating disorders, anxiety, and mental health issues with the goal of opening up dialogue and promoting resilience.

For three years, Carson and her co-collaborators searched for the right metaphor that would reach the impressionable audience, without lecturing them.

“Ten years ago you weren’t even allowed to mention the word eating disorder to children of that age group,” says Carson. “They found that if they tell children about the specific nature of eating disorders, what exactly it is, the kids would go away and kind of use it as a recipe and actually get eating disorders from that information.”

Carson picked up her metaphorical prop in Seattle last weekend. It’s a life-size balloon that the play’s characters can use to escape from the outside world, while on a set surrounded by five cellphone towers.

Carson’s husband, Kim Selody, is at the helm, as director of So, How Should I Be? The play infuses perspective from three generations, courtesy of actors Joel Grinke, Manami Hara and Ilana Zackon.

“It’s three characters that come together each with their own story from their own generation,” explains Carson. “Because eating disorders are so different for every single person who gets one – I wanted to have three completely different situations.”

Through personal and true stories, the actors look for clues that might help someone steer clear of the trap. Hara takes the audience back 30 years ago, when she had a friend who died of an eating disorder, while Zackon portrays a 20-something with an eating disorder in the present day. Meanwhile, Joel Grinke, a.k.a. “Orange Boy,” has a disorder that makes him want to escape.

Carson started the writing process with the premise that kids are already getting unhealthy thoughts planted in their heads.

“And at what time does that thought get stuck in your head – sort of like an earworm?” says Carson.

That’s when “the monster” will chant untruths like: “You’re really dumb. You really aren’t very pretty. You really aren’t this.”

And the monster’s victims look for an “escape,” which is the metaphor used in the play for eating disorders.

At first, Carson wanted to blame the whole eating disorder epidemic on social media and airbrushed advertising, but then realized humans can’t help but compare themselves to each other; it’s an innate behaviour.

“So you can’t tell children: ‘Just don’t compare,’” she says.

But the feeling of not measuring up is compounded, says Carson, when impressible minds pore over social media and magazine pages featuring carbon copy body shapes. 

“You might begin to think that you’re the only one who doesn’t look that way,” she explains.

Instead of looking at images, the young audience will use their imagination at Presentation House to see their own ideal of beauty.

Talk-back sessions, moderated by members of the Looking Glass Foundation, are offered after each performance to encourage discussion and reflection.

“The whole impetus of this is to destigmatize mental disorders and get kids to not be afraid to ask for help if they feel something is taking control of them,” says Carson.

As Carson catches the ferry home to Bowen Island, she is also reflecting.

“I think because I had to go through the steps of building my own building blocks again, sometimes I think I’m freer in life than some people who didn’t have a disorder, and are still overworried about what they look like,” she says.

“If you do the work, you can feel free.”