When a Swiss theater invited people with eating disorders to be involved in a play about Joan of Arc this fall, it caused a furor. Some therapists and parents of girls with anorexia criticized the move as “ethnically reprehensible” and said it could jeopardize performers’ health.
So when Janine Rickenbach, who has had anorexia for decades, took the Theater Basel stage last week in the premiere, she knew that some audience members were judging her appearance as much as her performance.
Yet during the two-hour show, Rickenbach, 44, appeared unfazed. At one point, wearing a camisole top that revealed her arms and neck, she stared impassively at the audience while delivering a monologue that seemed to address the outcry.
“What are you thinking right now?” she said: “Are you thinking, ‘Oh my God…’” Was that “because I look the way I look?” she asked, “Or because I’m standing here on this stage? Because my struggle is visible?”
Theater makers have long depicted health struggles onstage, including the realities of living with H.I.V. and cancer, but the debate around this production, titled “Jeanne Dark” and running through May 22, has shown that ethical questions remain about how various conditions are portrayed theatrically — and who gets to shape those depictions.
Ulrike Schmidt, a specialist in eating disorders at King’s College, London, said in an email that anybody depicting mental health onstage needed to consider the potential for stigmatization, perpetuating stereotypes or “inappropriate glamorization”
However, she said, “if used well, the arts can often be extremely powerful in getting people to connect with and understand complex issues around mental health in novel ways.” She gave the example of “Mess,” a comedic play from 2012 about anorexia that won awards and rave reviews at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which she said “showed up the relentlessness and ridiculousness” of the condition.
Anorexia is not such an explicit theme in “Jeanne Dark,” although the characters sometimes mention food. Instead, the play focuses on Joan of Arc (played by a male actor, Sven Schelker), the 15th-century French teenager who, believing she was instructed by God, put on men’s clothing and led soldiers into battle, and was later tried for heresy and burned at the stake.
For much of the production, other actors — representing Joan’s parents and the French church and state — question her behavior.
Lies Pauwels, the show’s director, said that she had initially wanted to explore Joan of Arc’s psychology. “How is it possible that a teenage girl can just go ask a king, ‘Give me a horse and some soldiers and I’ll go and fight?” Pauwels recalled thinking.
Then, she said, she got an intuitive feeling that people with anorexia might be able to provide useful insight. Like Joan of Arc, she said, they behave in ways that can be unfathomable to many people and appear to be seeking control. “When I talk with people with anorexia, they understand,” Pauwels said.
This spring, Theater Basel contacted therapists and doctors in an effort to find people with the condition who might be willing to take part. The theater also said on its website that it was “seeking to collaborate with amateur actors affected by anorexia.”
Those efforts were jeopardized when Swiss newspapers published articles about the show in September, quoting concerned parents and therapists saying they feared that the production would romanticize the eating disorder.
An article in Tages-Anzeiger newspaper quoted Anna Weg, a therapist specializing in anorexia, as saying that the project could “jeopardize the healing process” of those involved. Anja Müller, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, told the newspaper that “no one would dream of looking for seriously ill cancer patients in an oncology ward for a play.” (Weg declined an interview request for this article.)
Müller said in an email this week that the production team had “certainly made an effort to deal with the subject matter sensitively.” Still, she said, “I do not understand why artistic expression is more important than health.” Doctors and therapists have “a duty to protect our patients from making potentially wrong decisions,” she added.
Pauwels said that she had found the uproar upsetting. She had long worked with vulnerable people, she said — including making plays with teenage girls, people experiencing chronic pain and an actor with multiple sclerosis.
But Rickenbach, an amateur actor, said that it was the media storm that made her want to take part in “Jeanne Dark.” “When I heard about it, the first thing I felt was anger — all the hype and negativity around anorexia,” she said, adding, “I wanted to show I’m not an illness, I have an illness.”
She said she felt liberated while performing as an unnamed character who occasionally interacts with Joan of Arc. “Onstage, I can be who I really am,” she said, whereas offstage she returned to her daily struggle “to have control, to be perfect.”
Alexandra Broeder, a Dutch theatermaker who also made a show about anorexia — “The Omen,” in which eight women discussed their experiences of the disorder — said she considered Pauwels “a very warm and ethical person,” but understood why people who didn’t know Pauwels’s work might be concerned.
Broeder, who once had anorexia herself, said she had also questioned the ethics of putting people with eating disorders onstage, although she hadn’t received any complaints about “The Omen.” In fact, she added, several parents of children with anorexia wrote to her to say that the play had given them a way to discuss the condition together.
Before the media uproar, Pauwels had hoped that a “big group of people” would come forward. In the end, only two took part — Rickenbacker and Nathalie Hartmann, 34, another amateur actor, who said she had recovered from anorexia.
After Thursday’s premiere, eight audience members said they had mixed feelings about the ethics of their casting. Lena Feigenwinter, 21, a student, said she that found it “a bit weird,” but that “it’s really hard to say if it’s right or wrong,” because the actors were adults with their own agency.
Leonhard Burckhardt, 72, a retired history professor, said he had barely considered anorexia while watching the play as it didn’t seem about that at all. It was more a “psychological piece” about Joan of Arc, he said.
If he had a problem with anything, he added, it was the play’s historical accuracy. “There wasn’t much history,” he said.
Where to find help
The National Eating Disorders Association is a good starting place. It supports individuals and families affected by eating disorders.
F.E.A.S.T. is an international nonprofit organization run by caregivers of those suffering from eating disorders, meant to help others.
Maudsley Parents was created by parents who helped their children recover with family-based treatment, to offer hope and help to other families confronting eating disorders.
The Academy for Eating Disorders offers many resources, as do the Eating Disorders Center for Treatment and Research at University of California, San Diego, and the Eating Disorders Program at Boston Children’s Hospital.
Alex Marshall is a Times reporter covering European culture. He is based in London.
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