Taught: The Off-Broadway Premiere
Taught is a dark comedy that explores body image by satirizing competitive weight loss shows.
Taught” is a play that looks at body image and weight loss through the lens of reality television. Join Northwestern alums Mercedes, Diana & Thomas as we stage a show that pushes the boundaries between “fat” and “fit” in our world premiere off-Broadway.
Ellie and Jessica are ecstatic to be cast on the newest season of TAUT (Totally Awesome Untamed Thinness). They enter the show with the promise of losing weight, receive awe-inspiring coaching and support from their trainer Shawna, and the chance to win $100,000. The goal of TAUT is simple: lose weight, win money, and most importantly, change your life for the better. But, Shawna’s fitness program is all about breaking Ellie and Jessica down to build them back up, and Ellie and Jessica end up losing more than their love handles.
Taught is a play that pushes the boundaries of health, fitness, and “reality” television to expose the hidden hurts and complicated truths of weight-loss culture.
What do a stand up comedian, a screenwriter/actress, and a German translator have in common? They’re all coming together to bring you the off-Broadway premiere of Taught.
Mercedes, Diana & Thomas all met as graduate students in Northwestern University’s Writing for the Screen + Stage program. Mercedes instantly fell in love with Diana’s quick wit and Thomas’ sharp, insightful world view. After co-writing the pilot of FUN!TV! as part of Northwestern’s sitcom writing class, Mercedes and Diana were eager to find another project that they could tackle together. Mercedes applied to the Araca Foundation’s 2016 Araca Project with her play Taught and was selected to stage the show Oct 19th–22nd at the John Cullum Theatre in the America Theatre of Actors. (Woohoo!) Mercedes knew that she wanted a director who would approach the play with equal parts precision, empathy, and imagination—which meant bringing Thomas on board.
Get Taught: Mercedes
Mercedes graduated Cum Laude from Marlboro College in 2012 with a concentration in American Studies/Theatre. For her senior thesis, Mercedes wrote, directed, and produced a show of her original plays entitled The Gun Behind the Door. Mercedes graduated from Northwestern University’s Writing for the Screen + Stage MFA program in June 2016. In her time at Northwestern, Mercedes acted as a co-producer of MasterClash, a Northwestern University reading series designed to bridge MFA writers and directors. Mercedes’ plays The House Call and After All These Years have received readings at the Chicago Dramatists. Her play Grove Street was a finalist for the Brooklyn-based Scrap Mettle reading series. Her original pilot FUN!TV! was a finalist for the Northwestern University sitcom grant. Mercedes’ collaboration with Rory Cooper, That’s Our Lincoln Play, was selected for Fraud and Phony’s “Unproducable” theatre festival.
Get Taught: Diana
Diana Losen graduated with her MFA in Writing for the Screen + Stage from Northwestern University this June. While at Northwestern, Diana taught two quarters of The Foundations of Screenwriting to undergrads, worked as a teaching assistant for a graduate level Health Communications course, and was involved in over a dozen student films and theater productions as a writer, director, actress, producer, and creative consultant. During her time in Chicago, Diana held a marketing and literary internship with A Red Orchid Theater, took classes and performed at Second City, learned to sail, and trained in Krav Maga. Diana held a production internship with Radar Pictures in Los Angeles where she handled script coverage and interfaced with talent surrounding the release of Spring Breakers. Most recently, Diana acted in A Red Orchid’s production of Sick by Seven and began filming a grant-funded web series.
Get Taught: Thomas
Thomas Murphey is a playwright, screenwriter and director from Montpelier, VT. After graduating from Bard College, he continued to study and translate modern Austrian drama as a Fulbright scholar and English teacher for two years in Vienna. In 2016, he completed Northwestern University’s MFA program in Writing for the Screen + Stage. Mr. Murphey’s original work has twice been produced for Northwestern’s MasterClash reading series, and his short play Embrace Your Meteor received a workshop reading with Chicago Dramatists. Last summer, he worked as a production intern with Chicago’s Living Room Playmakers.
Currently we have a combined $6,000 in grants from Northwestern University and the Araca Project. Which is great! Moving forward, we still have a ways to go. Our ultimate goal is to raise another $4,000 to complete a working production of the show. Our biggest expenses are:
Take a look for yourself!
What’s in it For You:
As a playwright, Mercedes’ passion lies within representation. The Taught team believes that all bodies are valuable and wants to create roles for larger actresses who are typically not cast due to their size. To stage an original, complicated, and funny play that addresses self confidence, the disconnect of reality television, and the assumptions made about women and their bodies. This story is important because it extends to real people, real problems, and real consequences.
This is a tough business. Theatre’s most important quality is also its riskiest: it takes hundreds of people to share the experience. Just out of graduate school, theTaught team is new to a producing a full-scale play. Over the last six months, we’ve put our blood, sweat, and tears into this show, and have no guarantees that we’ll have a full audience. It’s scary stuff. Instead, we’re focusing on this:
Our goal for the show extends beyond the production itself. We want to open up the dialogue of what it means to be “healthy.” We aim to bring the body-positive community to the theatre, and bring the theatre to the body-positive community. That will be the measure of success.
Taught is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a nonprofit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of Taught will be made payable to Fractured Atlas and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.