To EAT, or not to EAT

Photo Credit: Steven Buri

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Written by Renee Denlar, Staff Writer

The new play in theatre, EAT, isn’t about food. It deals with the issues of teens and eating disorders in high school.  The actors reveal the disguised problem with people of all ages in one performance.

“In subject matter, this play is surrounded by eating disorders, but its not really what its about,” senior Mark Cioffi said. “It’s more about struggles people face as being a teenager. I know people are going to think ‘Oh, a play about eating disorders. I don’t want to sit through that. It’s going to be boring and depressing.’ But it’s not like that. It’s more real, but there’s definitely comic relief.”

In the spring of 2008, the theatre program attended the play, EAT, at the Dallas theatre, where director Lisa Hale found inspiration for choosing the play.

“When I saw this play last year, I felt sad, but hopeful and enlightened because I didn’t realize how vast the problem is, and how it affected boys as well as girls,” Hale said. “The playwright also told us that bulimia, especially, used to be the ‘rich, white girl disease.’ But it’s sort of grown over the years to where it’s affecting all kinds of social-economic classes.”

Although more than 10 million females struggle with eating disorders, one million males do as well. Alcohol and drugs may be a problem in high school, but hidden eating disorders are just as deadly.

“In some ways, eating disorders can be much more dangerous than alcohol abuse because alcohol for the most part is generally isolated to high school and college,” junior Matthew Eitzen said. “Eating disorders can start as young as third grade.”

Studies show that people with eating disorders cannot fight it alone. A person needs family and professional help to survive. Sometimes, even that’s not enough. One third of people with eating disorders will survive and overcome it. Another third will still struggle. The last third will die.

“For me, these issues are very difficult to understand,” senior Sarah Schultz said. “But they are very real topics. I think people should definitely be aware of what’s going on. Both patterns and effects.”