Hard to Swallow. Mark Wheeller

      The play Hard to Swallow has added in no small measure to all that is good and constructive as a result of my dear Catherine’s death. My trust in Mark has been richly rewarded.

      Maureen Dunbar

      2000

      Introduction for the original 1990 CUP publication

      I hadn’t heard of anorexia until I was twenty years old. My secondary school education had provided lessons about drugs, sexually transmitted diseases, how to write a curriculum vitae and fill in a tax form, but no one mentioned anorexia… in spite of the fact that one of my best friends began to stop eating in the sixth form. It went by unnoticed, or unchallenged. Teachers ignored it… no one knew anything was wrong. All we knew was Ann was becoming a lot thinner.

      Some months after we’d left school and gone our separate ways, I heard from a friend that Ann had fainted on her doorstep and rushed to hospital apparently weighing about four stone. When I contacted her she was well on the road to recovery and told me her story. This was the first time I’d heard the word ‘anorexia’. It meant little more to me than scurvy, i.e, a very rare illness. I never expected to hear it again.

      In 1986 I was faced with the problem of a girl (Jo – we nicknamed her Jo the Unicorn as she had played a unicorn in my King of Elfland’s Daughter musical production, so you can see where Jo the Goat comes from) seeking help from me, her teacher, as she believed she had symptoms of anorexia. Like the school I had attended as a pupil, and the school I then taught at (unlike Oaklands!), there was no literature on anorexia, though I do believe that those who opted for cookery in the upper school were given a brief warning about the dangers of dieting. Eventually we convinced this girl to visit her doctor. She was sent home with a terse:

      ‘Well, come back in three weeks and we’ll see how much you weigh.’

      This was a girl who had broken her scales at home and was admitting to hiding food. It was one thing for teachers not to know about anorexia… but doctors? I was astonished.

      In the course of researching for this play, I visited the local Health Education Department. They had no books on anorexia, only five or six newspaper articles and were embarrassed to admit that little was being done to promote recognition of this syndrome, despite the fact it was beginning to receive media attention.

      Maureen Dunbar’s book (and later the film) Catherine has done much to heighten public awareness of this potentially fatal syndrome. This play has continued her good work and offered increased understanding so that early preventative action can be taken. Through Patricia (and Jo the Goat!) we can see that there is hope and people can recover.

      I am pleased to say that the two women who inspired my involvement in this issue are building new lives for themselves. Although they too carry a message of hope, I do believe that some of their pain could have been alleviated by a greater awareness of anorexia.

      Mark Wheeller

      Support and advice for anorexics and their families can be sought from:

       www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk

       www.eating-disorders.org.uk

      Details of local contacts in your area are freely available to callers ringing the national helpline.

      Introduction for the revised 2000 dbda edition

      The 12 July 1989 will remain in my mind for ever. I spent the whole of the day at London’s National Theatre preparing for our (Oaklands Youth Theatre) performance of Hard to Swallow that night, on the world-famous Olivier stage. Many of our friends and relations were there to support us. Not only that, but friends and relations of Catherine Dunbar. I realised that the feelings of pride and excitement that we were experiencing would be tempered by the fact that the play was, for them, a very real personal tragedy…a courageous exposure of the events and circumstances that led to this girl’s untimely death. I reflected on Maureen’s willingness to trust us with the story, but she was always quite certain that Catherine would have been keen for the play to be presented by young people.

      Eighteen months previously we, at Oaklands Youth Theatre, had sat in the music room at our school discussing with Maureen the possibility of dramatising her daughter’s life story so as to heighten awareness of this potentially fatal syndrome. All of us had very high hopes for the play, but none of us in our wildest dreams could have predicted that we would have the opportunity to perform it at such a prestigious venue.

      There were times in the development of the play when we very nearly gave up. The more we researched, the more complex the issue seemed to become. We had to learn to trust the research material (generously given to us by Maureen) and allow it to speak for itself. Maureen, and those people whose words we have used in the play, know what they’re talking about as a result of their own experience. We wanted the play to reflect that personal experience.

      Our first stage of writing was literally to jigsaw puzzle the words from the research material without adding to them or altering them at all. This was done on two evenings a week by myself and a team of about ten Oaklands Youth Theatre members over a period of about three months. Our first draft, as a consequence, had very little dialogue. Most of that script was ‘reported speech’.

      I then took the script home and edited it. This process aimed to ensure that the play ran smoothly, wasn’t too long (the first draft would have lasted nearly four hours) and had as much dialogue as possible. The resultant second draft became our rehearsal script.

      I was determined that the play should be visually striking so that the style in which the play was performed became as compelling as the message the play carried. In fact, without the stylisation (which is evident from some of the scripting and in the stage directions of the Brussels sprout scene) I believe the message may have got lost in the sheer density of words. Thus, throughout rehearsals the play continued to undergo many more changes.

      This new version of the play includes the developments made whilst Oaklands Youth Theatre toured the play around Texas, USA (what an amazing three weeks that was). This was after the original Hard to Swallow manuscript had been delivered to Cambridge University Press. It also takes into account the main way in which the play has been used since its publication; that of exam presentation and play festivals, where often the requirement is for a small cast with more or less equal opportunities.

      The play has achieved repeated and considerable success in festivals.

      I hope that some groups will choose to enter this play for the prestigious National Student Drama Festival as well as the All England Festival. Feel free to cut sensitively to match the time constraints of such festivals.

      It must, at all times, be remembered when reading or performing this play that the events portrayed are as close to the truth as memory will allow. The performers should not impersonate the real-life characters, but breathe into them a life that is a reasonable interpretation of the words in the book. The actors should avoid overstatement and should veer towards underplaying. You can trust the material… you really can. It is after all as near as possible to the ‘real thing’.

      Good luck to all who choose to work with this play.

      Mark Wheeller

      Introduction for the 2020 Salamander Street Edition

      As I sat down to start writing this introduction, I had a notification on Twitter for a “message request”. The message transpired to be from Maureen’s granddaughter asking me to phone her mum, Anna. I had a pretty good idea what this could be about and, sadly, I was right.

      I was soon on the phone talking to Anna, who I’d briefly met at the National Theatre performance back in 1989. Maureen had passed away aged eighty-six, with her family around her. She had said what a good life she’d had. I can testify to that. Maureen’s was very much a “good life” and a generous