FAT is about skinny bitches, skinny lattes and skinny jeans

FAT is about the leftover pizza you had for breakfast

FAT is learning HOW TO LOOK GOOD NAKED

FAT is video chat. Channel hopping. wots ur name sxy?

FAT is looking at photos of strangers on Facebook, and LOL-ing

FAT is skinny, ugg-mug, butter-face and junk-in-the-trunk

FAT is about being trapped in the television. And not sure of the way out

FAT is being, watching, and being watched.

Talking Shop are trying to see if they can even make theatre about FAT. And they want you to watch them as they try.

FAT is a theatre piece about bodies in crisis.

FAT is about:

- how bodies are represented in visual culture
- how the body has become a commodity for consumption
- how body fascism saturates everyday living
- how the body represented has become the body humiliated

FAT is about watching and being watched.

The audience will encounter our live exploration of FAT.

FAT will be episodic; interrupted fragments of live action.

FAT will articulate through movement, music, multi-media and performance. It will reference diverse sources from television and internet culture, psychoanalytic and Marxist theory; it will seek to demonstrate our interaction with the subject matter and form during the creation of the work – presenting the process within the performance.

Talking Shop Ensemble

Talking Shop Ensemble began working together as a theatre collective after graduating from the Drama and Theatre Studies course in Trinity College. Those currently working on this project are Oonagh Murphy, Lisa Walsh and Aisling Byrne, while a fourth member, Robbie Sinnott is completing a stage design course at Motley Design School, London. TSE's debut production Ann and Barry: What Kind of Time Do You Call This? took place as part of the Absolut Fringe Festival 2009, and sold out two-weeks prior to its run. The company makes
theatre through collaborative devising; however, each member brings a specific strand of expertise to the work.

Oonagh is the company’s primary director. She wrote and directed TSE’s premiere show, Ann and Barry… In October 2009, she participated in The Next Stage as part of the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival. In December 2009, she was creative producer for Asylum Speakers as part of the Theatre Machine Turns You On festival at Project Arts Centre. Oonagh is interested in working with
companies as a dramaturg. She is a Foundation Scholar of Trinity College, holds a gold medal of Drama Theatre Studies and will begin a Ph.D. in September researching dramaturgical processes.

Lisa performs, produces and devises with the company; playing the role of Young Ann in Ann and Barry… Since then, her work has included devising and performing in a tableaux vivant performance piece For Better Or For Worse, created for the Straylight Visual Arts Festival (Oct 09, The Dublin Art Mill Studios) and playing the role of Ada in Asylum Speakers as part of the Theatre Machine
Turns You On (Dec 09, Project Arts Centre). Lisa has just completed voiceover work on the film Pope Pius XI to be released in Italy this year (dir. Christian Duguay). Lisa recently took part in Louis Lovett’s Actor Training Course at Ark Children’s Cultural Center and the Corn Exchange Workshop facilitated by Annie Ryan.

Aisling choreographs the company’s work and contributes to the ‘wrighting’ of the devised material as she did for Ann and Barry... Aisling trained in Modern Jazz and contemporary dance at the Peelo School of Dance in North Kildare. Aisling works as an Applied Theatre specialist at St. John of God’s Kildare services for adults with intellectual disabilities, which involves arts facilitation, devising, and the writing and direction of performance material for the service users. In 2009 she was funded by the National Lottery to complete a theatre
project with Speak Up!; a self-advocacy council for people with special needs. She is currently completing her Postgraduate Diploma in Drama-in-Education at Trinity College Dublin.

T.S.E. collaborated with students and graduates of NCAD in the creation of Ann and Barry. The primary contributor, Aoife Giles, will join the collective to work on FAT this year. Aoife Giles (1980, Dublin) is a visual artist currently based in Dublin. She works in a variety of media including, photography, performance, video and installation. Her work explores the relations created between spaces
and activities that we deem sacred or profane, the crossover between our public and private lives and the challenges of representing subjective experiences. She has exhibited and worked in Ireland, Brazil, England and Sweden.