Dis-morph-ick
As mentioned in our application, Dis-Morph-Ick is being created to help combat the growing and under represented issue of eating disorders and muscle dysmorphia in men and boys.
The greatest hurdle in overcoming the issue is the fact that most men and boys do not see eating disorders as an issue that effects them and as a result do not seek the help needed until its reaches crisis point.
As a result, we are creating a series of 10 workshops as well as a short film as a vehicle to reach the desired audience as well as a starting point for discussion in the workshops themselves. Meeting young men at their level from someone with lived experience, without accusing, diagnosing or condemning behaviour that they may be exhibiting in their own lives.
In short, Dis-Morph-Ick the film will be a highly entertaining, fast paced, funny-in-parts and shocking-in-others, story that present the audience the life and fitness interests of the protagonist as he develops from someone with a mild interest in getting healthier to someone fixated on food restriction, body checking and exercise addiction. Delicately and subtly asking “Do you relate to this” in the process, before offering a hopeful alternative with the support of our charity partners.
Similarly, the workshops will be a creative endeavour that spring board from conversations that arise after watching the film. In partnership with our charity partners, we will curate a question-and-answer format so that participants feel heard, as well as practical exercises so they feel included, before bringing in the work of our online-coach partners to present their own stories and a viable alternative to the extreme restriction/over exercise hamster wheel that is perpetuated on social media.
Script Examples
what’s it about?
Dis-Morph-Ick is about George. George is just a normal guy who wants to get a bit fitter. We’ve all been George; we spend Christmas eating lovely food and drinking lovely drinks and January comes around and we insist that this year is the year we get in the best shape of our lives.
So George does everything you’re supposed to; he joins a gym and starts cooking more nutrient dense foods.
Quickly though, George feels out of his depth. His gym is full of incredibly lean, muscular people who (without to put too fine a point on it) terrify him. To George, he is an outsider in a zoo where the regular gym goers have lost touch with their humanity and (quite literally) become chimpanzees challenging either for dominance.
And so he starts seeking tips ‘n tricks from social media, determined not to give up on his goal of getting fitter. At first the advice is healthier; eat a balanced diet and move a bit more. Before long however, his algorithm feeds him more and more radical content, from restricting his diet to fulfil his potential as a man, to eating nothing but bleeding, red meat like our ancestors used to. Whilst the content he consumes varies in it’s advice, the central theme remains the same; you are not hard working or truly fulfilling your potential, if you’re not being “disciplined” and making “sacrifices” in the pursuit of a perfect body.
George’s behaviour becomes more obsessive as he fixates on his calorie intake and punishes himself physically at the gym, gaining him the approval of the animalistic gym goers that so terrified him at the start of his journey.
At the same time, George celebrates his birthday and it becomes clear that social media is not the only part of society responsible for fuelling his obsession. His mother makes regular comments on the calories in his birthday cake as well as innocent comments on people’s weight and physical appearance. She doesn’t mean to of course, but inadvertently she cements in George’s mind that to be anything other than the leanest, most muscular version of himself is to be a failure. And perhaps due to his mother, those attitudes were always lying dormant in George’s mind from childhood, waiting to be awoken by radical fitness content online.
We finish the piece with George, now fully part of the zoo of the gym, punishing his muscles into submission as he ignores a call from his best friend. Hope is not lost for George to develop a healthier relationship with food and his body, but the first step is to acknowledge that it has become a problem, and it’s a problem that effects men and boys too.
Dis-Morph-Ick will juxtapose the high-octane, gritty atmosphere of the gym to the quiet, peace of home to demonstrate that problematic attitudes towards food and exercise can manifest anywhere, without prejudice.
At the start of the piece, George should feel like an outsider to the world of the gym, a zoo of steel, sweat and aggression. We want to show the audience how George sees the gym goers, with flashes of them screaming and fighting like chimpanzees being intercut with them working out regularly. Similar the musical design of the gym scenes will be based around a heart-pounding drum beat that hits the audience directly in the chest. It feels hostile and anxiety inducing until George himself succumbs to a life of self-flagellation. This is equally mirrored by the colour palette, with the gym feeling grey and gritty compared to George’s vibrant colours. By the end of the piece, George’s vibrant colour palette is replaced with the tones of the gym, similarly he too displays animalistic behaviour. The final scene shows the climax of the musical score as George beats himself like a chimpanzee with the other gym goers doing the same, as he becomes fully part of the zoo of steel.
In contrast, the home scenes are comfortable and familiar. They feel almost documentary like as the dialogue overlaps naturally against the warmer, natural tones of the colour palette. George has a loving family and support system and yet we use the dialogue in this case to highlight that seemingly innocent comments about food, calories and people’s bodies can reinforce and implant a toxic attitude towards food and exercise. The musical score will also subtly highlight key moments during these scenes to foreshadow the path that George will ultimately take.
What about the workshops?
Building on the work of First Steps, the workshops will be consist of; open conversations with participants around how the film made them feel and if they related to anything depicted in it, practical exercises designed to analyse our attitudes towards food and fitness and culminating in presentations from leading fitness professionals.
The Conversation
The workshops will start by showing the film. Following on from this we will have an open conversation with participants about whether related to anything in particular shown in it. Key talking points will be George’s slow descent into over-exercising, his food anxiety and the subtle comments from his family and how they may influence his behaviour. Another key point for discussion will be the influence of social media on the central protagonist, from which we will ask the participants if their own attitudes towards fitness are influenced by their own algorithms on social media.
The Practical Exercises
Influenced by my work as Artistic Director of Incognito Theatre Company the practical elements of the workshop will be broken into three catagories; physical exercises, devising and showcasing. What is important to note is that this is not a theatre exercise, that said the skills I have developed with Incognito are transferable to this setting. It is vital that the workshop have physical, creative element, allowing our audience to feel like active participants and taking them out of their own head whilst finding a fresh way to interrogate their feelings on the topic.
We start the practical element with exercises designed to encourage participants to trust each other and to get used to working each other. In the past I have had great success including single props (ropes, soap crates etc) and having the group manifest images with nothing but their imaginations and the prop provided. They will be asked to form groups of varying sizes, with little more than 10-20 seconds to conjure images (in this setting they will be based around nutrition and exercise). The final development of these exercises will be a devising practical where, along with myself and members of my team, participants will be given three ambiguous words/phrases related to the subject such as “binge”, “deficit” or “can’t go to the gym” and asked to create a series of three moving pictures that transition from one into the next. We will finish this portion of the workshop by showcasing our work and discussing each piece.
Presentations From Fitness Professionals
In September 2024 and as a result of the connections I’d made with some of the leading, health-positive fitness coaches in the country, I was fortunate enough to be invited to talk at Fitness Fest in Leeds. What struck me was the supportive influence of the other speakers, de-mystifying and debunking the often toxic ideas that are perpetuated on social media. These are coaches that are undeniably fit, of varying body shapes and yet were all consistent in their messaging around the dangers of rogue-players and their influence on social media. As a result, I have invited these same coaches to speak at the Dis-Morph-Ick workshops, to which they have agreed.
Another reason that this is important is that these coaches are not creatives, but coaches that work in the fitness industry and fully equipped to answer questions posed by the participants on a practical level, empowering them to take safer practices outside of the Dis-Morph-Ick setting and potentially helping in early prevention of eating disorders and muscle dysmorphia in men.
Below are just some of the comments we received after I went public with my own story...
More and more, toxic masculine influences create a link between their physical appearance and financial success. Below are just a handful of examples.
Why dis-morph-ick and why now?
With the growing influence of social media on our lives, so too is a growing threat of toxic influences, misinformation and harmful attitudes towards food and our bodies.
When I went through my own eating disorder, social media was nowhere near as much of an influential force as it is now. Even still, I had formed such a strong link between my success as an actor and being a low body fat percentage that I sought out and consumed content that would confirm my opinion on gaining weight. It became an exercise in cognitive dissonance where I couldn’t accept that I had developed an issue as I had already sacrificed and lost so much.
Today, this threat is much greater due to the algorithms favouring of more radical content, and in conjunction with a trend towards traditionally toxic attitudes towards masculinity online, there is a pressing and immediate threat that young men and boys will develop unhealthy attitudes towards food and their bodies in the pursuit of fulfilling an ideal of masculinity that is becoming pressingly mainstream.
Dis-Morph-Ick is needed, a piece of art that can meet young men and boys on the very platforms that they consume toxic content is needed. A piece of work that will delicately and without judgement engage with a generation of young men and boys to try and open their eyes to the dangers of treating your body with criticism and judgement is needed. The link between male eating disorders and suicide is plainly obvious in the data presented in our application, and if we don’t try to challenge this as an issue we will lose more young men and boys.
Previous & Relevant work
The Net Kill is the most recent example of my work with my theatre company, Incognito. You can clearly see how styalised and dynamic the work is, using movement and musical design to tell a story far larger than is on the page. With both projects I managed multiple creatives to execute our creative vision and bring it to life, in this case on stage. The Net Kill enjoyed multiple sell out runs including a critically acclaimed run at Park Theatre in 2022.
In Dis-Morph-Ick we will build on my history as a story teller, translating the physical style of Incognito onto our camera work. Using Jono’s experience as a Director Of Photography to create a piece that, much like The Net Kill, juxtaposes a breathless pace to stillness when we want particular scenes to hit emotional notes in the audience.
To view the below video, please enter the password: park5319
Why are these pieces of work relevant?
Two’s A Crowd is the last piece of digital media that we released in 2023. It was our first and represents our first departure from theatre to digital. If nothing else it represents a success in taking on a mammoth project that included 20 creatives and translating an idea from script to camera. It also gives an early indication of the pace and dynamism we try to inject into our work, which will be developed further and more efficiently in Dis-Morph-Ick