Fat Matters: Toward the Development of a Pro-Fat Theater Restricted; Files Only

Abstract

Although 74% of adult Americans are overweight or obese, the representations of fat people that find success in popular culture are reductive, stereotypical, and harmful. The majority of Americans are robbed of seeing truthful representations of their embodied experiences, even in what is regarded to be a relatively experimental medium: theater. In many plays that theater-going audiences consider as providing sympathetic representations of fatness, such as Samuel D. Hunter’s The Whale, the fat character—and, therefore, the fat performer and audience member—is still non-human, and, instead, a collection of negative traits. At all times, through the media and the health/diet industry, Americans—especially women—are taught that being fat is the worst state of being that a person can ‘make the conscious choice’ to become. This is sometimes said explicitly, such as through the diet industry and in doctor’s offices, but it is also often implied, through negative, harmful, Othered representations of fat people. The policing of bodies necessary to uphold America’s hegemony of thinness is supported in the popular American theater, but locally and independently produced theatrical creations do the work that highly popular compositions cannot—of creating a pro-fat theater. This thesis, in conversation with Da’Shaun Harrison, Jennifer-Scott Mobley, and Sabrina Strings, will analyze and compare Suzan-Lori Parks’s Venus, Samuel D. Hunter’s The Whale, James Ijames’s Fat Ham, and Kimberly Dark’s Things I Learned From Fat People on the Plane. Through a close reading of each of these texts under the lens of fat studies, as well as brief analyses of critical and audience receptions, this paper will identify and discuss the societal processes that both created and continue to uphold anti-fatness, discern what has allowed these fat-character-featuring plays to achieve mainstream success in this current anti-fat world, and look toward a future that accepts and uplifts fat people.

Table of Contents

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………........................................................................................................ 1

Chapter One: Suzan-Lori Parks’s Venus: Fat feels good……………………………………................................................................................................…. 24

Chapter Two: Samuel D. Hunter’s The Whale and the Failure of Catharsis………………………………………............................................................……… 43

Chapter Three: James Ijames’s Fat Ham and “big, fat tears”………………………………………………...............................................................…………….. 60

Chapter Four: Kimberly Dark’s Things I Learned From Fat People on the Plane and the Creation of a Pro-Fat Theater………………..…………………………... 75

Conclusion…………………………………..........................................................................……………………………………………………………………………… 91

Bibliography………………………………………………………………..........................................................................……………………………………………... 100

About this Honors Thesis

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School	Emory College
Department	Theater Studies
Degree	B.A.
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Performing Arts Theater
Palavra-chave	Fat Positivity Fat Activism Plus-Sized Fat Theater Fat Studies Fat Dramaturgy Diet Culture
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Nicholas Fesette, Emory University
Committee Members	Noe Montez, Emory University Debra Vidali, Emory University

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