September 2011: "Fat Pig"

Kyle Ryan as Tom, Brandon McDaniel as Carter and Colleen Lacy as Helen. 

Are appearances deceiving, or are they everything? Can the look of love overcome the love of looks? What’s more important: how you feel, or how you fit in?

There are no easy answers in Fat Pig, the challenging and provocative play by Neil LaBute, coming to Gist Hall Theatre beginning its final weekend on  September 22.

It’s a play about four people out in the world in their 20s, whose decisions have consequences for their lives. It’s a story that has led audiences to laugh, squirm, get angry and even shed a tear.

Because of the issues involved, the bold and uncompromising dialogue, the characters and situations that many can identify with even when they don’t want to, it’s the kind of play that people will be talking about.

One of the most prominent and controversial young American playwrights, Neil LaBute is also a movie director and screenwriter (Nurse Betty, The Wicker Man, In the Company of Men.)

Fat Pig at Gist Hall Theatre at HSU: Thursdays through Saturdays September 15-17, 22-24 at 7:30 p.m., with a 2 p.m. matinee on Sept. 25. $10/$8, with limited number of free seats to HSU students at each performance, from the HSU Box Office (826-3928) or at the door. Directed by Michael Thomas. Produced by HSU Dept. of Theatre, Film & Dance.

Media Previews: HSU Now, Tri-City Weekly, Arcata Eye, North Coast Journal

"Fat Pig is a must-see."
--Sarah Geiler, the Lumberjack

" bravos to a remarkable ensemble of actors whose individual portrayals never took the easy way out, and made each person believably real. Thank you for being secure, bold and open enough to both share, and make us care, about this bottom-line, beautiful “Fat Pig” at HSU. If you missed it, you missed a powerful, eye-opening experience."

--Beti Trauth, Humboldt Beacon

FAT PIG: The Story

Tom meets Helen in a crowded restaurant. He is a “handsome guy” in his twenties, doing well in a dull office job. Helen is sweet and funny, a young woman who works in a library, with a great laugh and a taste for war movies. She is also “a plus size. Very.”

Danielle Cichon as Jeannie, Kyle Ryan as Tom, Brandon McDaniel as Carter

Tom is charmed enough to ask her out. And worried enough to try hard to keep Helen a secret from his peers in the office. But his obnoxious friend Carter is relentless. And Jeannie, his ex-maybe-girlfriend from Accounting, is more than curious.

So when Tom and Helen fall in love, it leads to revelations about all the characters-- their needs and lives, their beliefs and compulsions, their strengths and weaknesses.

And it confronts them with questions. What do you feel? Why do you feel it? What do you believe in? What are you willing to do because of what you believe in? By the end of the play, the questions demand real answers.

Helen: “Just don’t be afraid, Tom. Please do not let yourself be afraid of me or of taking some kind of blind chance, or what people think...because this could be so great.”

(Quotes from Fat Pig, copyright 2004, 2005 by Neil LaBute)

Carter:  “Come on, be honest! The thing they represent that’s so scary is what we could be, how vulnerable we all are...We’re all just one step away from being what frightens us. What we despise. So we despise it when we see it in anybody else.”

“The playwright doesn’t mince words,” said director Michael Thomas. “The characters say what they mean, even when it isn’t nice. The honesty of the characters really attracted me to this play.”

“The playwright gives us the viewpoints of each of the characters quickly and cleanly,” Thomas explained. "So in the audience we can begin to think about our own attitudes—am I like Tom? Am I like Carter or Jeannie or Helen? If the audience goes through this process of thinking about all the issues the play raises, then that’s a successful evening in the theatre.”

Tom: “I don’t know how to do this. To say exactly how I’m feeling because, you know, I’m a guy, and we’re taught how to kick stuff and tear the wings off shit.”

Jeannie: “I’m 28 years old and I just keep hitting the booby prize...I thought maybe you were different but you ended up being the same kind of lame guy I perpetually date, and it just freaks me out a little. That maybe you’re the only type out there. These baby boys who run around in nice clothes but all they really wanna do is breast-feed for the rest of their days.”

FAT PIG: The Playwright

Neil LaBute grew up in Spokane, Washington. He studied theatre at Brigham Young University, where he became a Mormon, but later left the Church of Latter Day Saints.

In addition to writing plays, LaBute is a movie director (Nurse Betty) and screenwriter-director (The Wicker Man.) He wrote and directed film versions of several of his plays (In the Company of Men, Bash: Latter Day Plays) including the first play of this trilogy, The Shape of Things (2003) with Gretchen Mol, Paul Rudd, Rachel Weisz and Frederick Weller. Fat Pig is the second play in this triology. The third, Reasons To Be Pretty, ran on Broadway in 2009.

Asked to sum up his writing style in a sentence he replied, “Strong construction, a way with dialogue, endless curiosity and a willingness to go wherever the material takes me.”

Another interview concluded: “As an author, LaBute is in no doubt about his relation to the characters in Fat Pig: ‘I love them all.’"

FAT PIG: Our Cast

Helen: Colleen Lacy

Tom: Kyle Ryan

Carter: Brandon McDaniel

Jeannie: Danielle Cichon

FAT PIG: Our Production

Director: Michael Thomas
Scenic Designer: Liz Uhazy
Costume Designer: Kitty Grenot
Lighting Designer: Kevin Landesman
Technical Director: Jayson Mohatt
Sound Designer: Glen Nagy
Producer: Margaret Thomas Kelso
Stage Manager: Emily Hopfauf
Asst.Stage Manager: Chelsea Rothchild
Asst.Scenic Designer: Katie Dawson
Asst. Lighting Designer: Chelsea Tran
Lighting Advisor: Jim McHugh
Costume Advisor: Rae Robison
Shop Supervisor: Catherine Brown
Scenic Advisor: Jody Sekas
Photography: Kellie J. Brown
Publicity/site copy & design: Bill Kowinski

FAT PIG: Some of the Issues

Fat Pig is the second of a trilogy of LaBute plays that deals with sexual attraction and appearances. There are many issues that this play raises directly—some more strongly than others.

The relationship between body type and beauty alone raises complex questions, particularly in a very visual, very appearance-conscious age. While standards of female beauty have changed over time, and have been different according to cultures, the prevailing fashion favors slimness—to unrealistic and unhealthy extremes, some say.

The questions about appearance are especially consequential these days because of widely available surgeries that can radically change appearance. Some advocate different standards of beauty. In addition to acting, Leonard Nimoy (known to millions as Mr. Spock) is a photographer who published several books with the theme of female beauty. When he was challenged to see beauty in larger women, he responded with another set of photographs that inspired discussion.

For some, the prejudice against “plus size” people is akin to prejudice based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual preference. Widening the field to these categories raises still more questions about the practice as well as theory of personal and sexual preferences.  There are college courses in "Fat Studies" that may discuss all of these issues, sometimes in an advocacy context.

Then there are the health issues. Obesity is epidemic in America, with human and economic consequences including much higher incidences of diabetes and other diseases, and increased heart problems even in children.

Social pressure and the opinions of peers are major issues in this play.  Again, they may be relevant to different but at least somewhat analogous situations.

Fat Pig is about four characters and how they deal with a situation that raises these issues. Because the play presents us with their specific responses, we can approach these issues in human terms.