Elizabeth Petruccione knows a thing or two about fad diets. After being placed on the Drinking Man’s Diet (an early precursor to Atkins) at age twelve, Petruccione went through the common cycle of losing a considerable amount of weight only to gain it back. It wasn't until she discovered the “Banking Method” of counting calories that she was able to lose and keep off 93 pounds. Petruccione went on to write a diet book, You Were Born Fat, and start "Losing Weight with Elizabeth."
Jacques Lamarre, the talented and prolific playwright who was last seen adapting Giulia Melucci’s bestselling memoir I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti into a hilarious one-woman show at TheaterWorks (New York Times review), is now trying to turn Elizabeth Petruccione’s life story of ups and downs and diet trauma into comedy gold. The first reading of Born Fat takes place Saturday, April 6th at 7:30 pm at the Unitarian Meeting House (50 Bloomfield Avenue, Hartford, CT). The play reading will star Elizabeth Petruccione as herself.
The title comes from a statement uttered by Petruccione’s mother to her as a child that has stuck with Elizabeth all throughout adulthood: "Elizabeth Anne, you were born fat!" The first time Elizabeth’s mother had to take her to the “husky” section for clothes shopping was the last time the two would shop together. After that moment Elizabeth was constantly partaking in questionable dieting practices such as chewing on Ayds candy and eating a substantial amount of cabbage (it’s low carb!).
I sat down with Jacques Lamarre recently at Mo’s Midtown to find out more about the process of turning Elizabeth Petruccione’s weight loss battles into a comedy. With a foot-high stack of home fries sitting on the griddle behind the counter, we discussed the role of food and weight in the average American life.
In many ways Lamarre sees Born Fat as a companion piece to I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti. “In both situations a person was showing their love through cooking.” According to Lamarre, this would cause Petruccione to get caught in a pattern where she would “lose weight to get the man, gain it to keep them.” Unfortunately for Petruccione, she was not always to keep the men in her life—something that is explored in the play. The work also touches upon the tragic loss of Petruccione’s son and how that led Elizabeth to self-medicate through eating.
Despite all of the pain in the past, Petruccione is an eternal optimist with an irrepressible can-do spirit. Lamarre’s play seeks to highlight the slivers of comedy found in her highly relatable ordeal of weight loss, while also serving up a plate of social commentary on consumerism and our love/hate relationship with food. While ‘Spaghetti’ had Lamarre doing a straight adaptation of a memoir, Born Fat came about through a combination of Petruccione’s book, personal interviews, and his relationship to her (they have known each other for years).
Like many of us, Lamarre has had his own complicated relationship with food; an experience that allows him to empathize with the main character and add layers of insight. Growing up as one of ten kids, it was extremely rare that his family would go out to restaurants. Skinny throughout his childhood, it wasn’t until he moved out of the home where the newfound sense of liberty led to putting on some extra pounds. Similar to Elizabeth, Jacques has also done various diets like Atkins.
According to Lamarre, the turning point for Elizabeth to lose weight AND keep it off was when she stopped dieting for other people and thought more about how it was impacting her. “I’ve seen her go through this whole process. She needed to do it for herself—that was the change.”
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BORN FAT
Details: Saturday, April 6th at 7:30 p.m. at the Unitarian Meeting House (50 Bloomfield Ave, Hartford, CT)
Advance tickets are $13; $26 for premium seating and can be purchased by calling the Unitarian Society of Hartford at 860-233-9897. Tickets at door are $15 standard seating, $30 premium seating, $10 for students with ID, and free for 14 and under.
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