About

About the Project: A note from Laura

After years of working with clients with eating disorders, I am keenly aware of the challenges at each stage of the process of the recovery journey. One piece of feedback that I continually hear from people is that post-intensive treatment is how challenging it is to integrate back into the community. The eating disorder, although a protective function, comes at a high cost: loss of connection to the body, loss of identity of ones authentic self, struggle for connection to ones feelings and connection to others, as well as the obvious medical issues that make eating disorders the psychiatric condition with the highest mortality rate.

The journey to recovery is a long one, and persons in recovery deserve support in every stage of the process. Thus born: Recovery Through Performance. Recovery Through Performance utilizes therapeutic theater, which is a modality within drama therapy in which clients construct and develop their own theatrical performance around a therapeutic issue. The idea is that the process of putting on a play also parallels the journey of recovery, and within the process, persons working on recovery could gain insight and practice that they could apply to their life at large.

In regards to this work, we chose to focus on the journey to recovery. And, different from intensive treatment work that focuses on ones own personal story, we instead worked to get distance at this stage in the process and use metaphor to explore our theme.

For many, this is their first time working to create material to generate a play and perform.  We hope you will join us for Twin Falls, an original play that tells the story of Twin Falls, an original play that tells the story of goddess sisters falling from their natural home into the real world and trying to make their journey to find themselves.  They meet many characters along the way who also have stories of their own to tell.  Written fairy tale style, come laugh, ponder, and witness our heroines on their journey.

Performance is August 7^th 2015 at The Gaslight Theater in St. Louis. The show is by donation only. Proceeds will go to cover production costs and any left over will be used towards the cost of furthering this concept and project.