Around the time that “A Chorus Line” came out, Harriet Brown — a magazine, news and digital journalism professor at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications —went to Weight Watchers with her mother and lost 20 pounds. That weight was significant enough to be completely life changing for her as a teenager, she said.

“Everything changed in terms of opportunities that opened up to me,” said Brown. “It was a huge deal, which is very upsetting to me now and look back on that, but that’s how it was.”

As Ralph Zito — professor and chair of the department of drama at SU’s College of Visual and Performing Art — said, sometimes theater and media need a critical eye. That’s what SU’s drama department Sunday Salon Series is aiming to do with their “Body Image: Healthily Managing the Personal, Professional and Societal Pressures Discussion and Q+A.” The panel will start on Oct. 6 at 4:30 p.m. in the Syracuse Stage’s Storch Theatre.

Zito curated a panel of relevant speakers to speak about body image in conjunction with the SU Drama’s production, “A Chorus Line.” The panel includes professors, a nutritionist and people who have worked the theater industry.

Karleigh Merritt-Henry | Digital Design Editor

While “A Chorus Line” is a brilliant piece of musical theater, Zito said, there are ways it reflects the time in which it was written. He wanted to open a conversation to investigate some of the assumptions that operate for the characters in the play.

Brown said that in the 1970s, there was little conversation around body image. She said there was a very rigid idea of beauty and people had to meet those norms.

“It never even crossed my mind as a kid that maybe it could be okay to have a body that didn’t conform to those sort of norms,” Brown said.

Brown added if you simply present a show like “A Chorus Line,” it can seem like endorsing the messages in the work, which may need to be contextualized.

A scene that Zito specifically noted as needed critical analysis is the number “Dance: Ten, Looks: Three” in which a woman sings about having cosmetic surgery in order to be able to be employable.

Zito said that we’re currently in a time when attitudes around these issues are beginning to shift broadly, but added they’re not shifting quickly or widely enough.

Andrea Leigh-Smith, a professor in the department of drama and panelist, said in an email that the negative pressures of weight are still prevalent in the dance world, adding that the aesthetic in ballet is “thin.”

“The media is beginning to include different shapes and images in advertising but many in the industry still struggle due to the fact that the world still embraces those that are thin above the stereotypical healthy person,” Leigh-Smith said.

Leigh-Smith said that especially for dancers, the day-to-day of living and looking into a mirror and watching yourself dance with scant clothing can create a harsh judgement of self, compared to others.

Zito said that these issues affect all people, not just those in the entertainment industry. He said he is positioning the talk to be enlightening for the entire campus, not just those in the department of drama.

“I hope that we’ll be able to provide some information about available university — and broader — resources for people who might be struggling and give them some strategies for coping and moving to success,” Zito said.

@_allisonw | alweis@syr.edu

Published on September 24, 2019 at 11:04 pm

Contact Allison: alweis@syr.edu