The 'Hollowing' power of anorexia

Noa, a contemporary Jewish woman 23 years old, sits compulsively picking out the doughy inside of her bagel until she feels that she has it sufficiently hollowed out. She then fills it with the right proportions of ketchup, pepper and the meticulously counted number of jellybeans before devouring it in less time than it took to prepare.

This is only an isolated scene in "The Hollowing of Us," a harrowing dramatic journey through the colliding worlds of religious sanctity and anorexia written by Jennie Snyder '99 and created with the assistance of friend and collaborator Sarah Court '96 and renowned director and Program in Theater and Dance lecturer Beth Schachter.

This image of hollowing is one that surfaces throughout the play. Like Noa and her bagel, anorexia hollows out life and body until the victim must find something else to feed on — some way to fill that void. Yet ultimately, the unchecked disease will ravenously consume the body.

Despite being an issue-based drama, there is not one hint of after-school-special sappiness in "The Hollowing of Us." This is no melodrama, no far-removed look at the ways in which society dictates life's pressures. Instead, it is a story with a personal edge that will grip the heart of every audience member and leave his or her jaws gaping with shock at its intense realism. This is a story told by those who can tell it best — women who have stared the disease straight in the face and emerged victorious, living to tell about it.

"I was anorexic for two years approximately six years ago. It's really an indescribable thing, the way it takes over your life, cuts you off from everybody and everything," Snyder explained. "Anorectics think about food 110% of the day, which means they dream about it. Because the recovery rate is so low and because it was so difficult, getting well is, and will always be, my great accomplishment. It's where I draw all my strength."

After her recovery, Snyder said she became interested in exploring anorexia as a cultural phenomenon. Upon graduation, she began conducting interviews of women in clinics from ages seven to 72 who were making their own recoveries, as well as women she would survey at random, asking them to tell about their own relationships with food. The results were fascinating and led Snyder to write a play that would engage an audience with these complex inner struggles.

"A very thin, nearly imperceptible, but very important line separates the sick from the well," Snyder said. "It was this line that I hoped to explore."

Noa, the central figure in "The Hollowing of Us," is a young college graduate working on a book devoted to the fabled "Fasting Woman of Tutbury," a woman named Ann Moore who reportedly lived for an entire year without eating or drinking. During the course of the play, Noa, who is clearly plagued with eating-disorder and body-image obsessions, conjures up the characters of Ann and her concerned and troubled daughter Mary along with the doctors who studied Ann's condition.

The result is an intricately woven narrative that intertwines the life of a contemporary anorectic with that of a historic figure who serves as her counterpart. As Noa digs deeper into Ann Moore's life, the mystery begins to unfold before the audience, but not before Ann's self-starvation "miracle" is exalted as saintly by the throngs of people who beat down her door, wanting to see the "miracle" at work. By the end, we learn that Ann's daughter Mary has kept her alive by sneaking bits of food and water to her through life-sustaining kisses, and she is dismissed by a notable reverend as a fraud — just another woman tossed aside by society on her path to self-destruction.

"I started to think about the connections between two seemingly disparate worlds," Snyder explained. "How did the austere piety that Ann Moore's body communicated link up with the psychological and sociological implications of the contemporary anorectic's willful refusal of food? [This play] explores the anorectic's trajectory from sainthood to patienthood."

Court, Snyder's collaborator in the project and co-creator of the play, also has a very personal stake in the process, being another success story in the battle against eating disorders. Together, and with the help of Beth Schachter, the two funneled their own personal struggles into a story that is as gritty and real as it is touching.

"This portrayal of an anorectic girl and her path towards recovery is the most accurate I've ever read, largely because Jennie and I were able to draw on our personal experiences and familial relationships," Court said. "Contemporary portrayals [of eating disorders] so often focus solely on the societal pressures that require girls and women to be thin, and miss the influence of the home and family, particularly the mother-daughter relationship. It's about filling up a hollow place, as much as an alcoholic or drug user does."

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While still a work in progress, "The Hollowing of Us" was presented to the Princeton community last Friday in a special reading at the Matthews Acting Studio at 185 Nassau St., under the direction of Schachter and with a cast of student actors playing the accessory roles. The character of Noa, however, was played by Court, and she will continue to play the role in future productions.

"I am grateful for and blessed by every day that I am recovered from this sickness," Court said. "The portrayal of Noa is, in its journey from sickness to recovery, rehabilitative for me."

Snyder is hopeful that the project will be able to touch even larger audiences in the future.

"Beth will eventually direct the play in New York. I have had a few small scale production offers, but I'd like to hold out, make the play the best it can be, and then submit it to more prestigious houses," Snyder said. "That's what the reading at Princeton was about. The opportunity to hear the play in Princeton first, in a relatively safe environment away from all the pressures of New York, was appealing to Sarah, Beth and me."