“All of us have that moment where puttin’ the shit on us is the best choice we have.” (Finley, cited in Potier, 2002)

From looking at the eating disorders of Winnie The Pooh and friends, Karen Finley then took the idea of honey and using visual art she smeared her body with the food. I think this is very impacting visually and has a lot of meaning behind it. If I were to just sit and talk about what it’s like to have diabetes I feel like the audience would become bored and therefore I think if I show what it is like rather than just talk it will be more engaging and memorable. Seeing and hearing something at the same time like Laurie Anderson suggests, plays with the senses. Like her use of microphone distortions and the repetitions of certain words, phrases or dialogue I want to create interesting visuals and text together.

Like the 21st century slogan “eat. sleep. rave. repeat.” I want to repeat “Blood test. Carb count. inject. eat.” I think this is catchy and also sums up my daily repetition, through repetition of the script.

“Imagine carb counting every time you eat. Going out for a meal and not knowing how many carbs are in what you’ve ordered as there’s no packet to look at. Or what if you then order desert and you’ve already injected.

Re-test. Re-count. Re-guess. Re-inject.” (Baillie, 2016)

The idea of food onstage I think would work in the opening of my piece- as the audience enter I will place sweets into a jar. This will represent the constant counting of carbs and the resistance of eating the sugary foods. But also challenge the audience’s pre conceptions that diabetics  can’t eat sugar at all… as half way through my piece I want to then show myself “Blood test. Carb Count. Inject. eat. ” By eating jelly babies on stage instead of my initial thought of I’ll eat an alpen light bar (as the packing is easy to read and carb count from the box) I thought this may confuse the audience to them thinking I have to eat low fat things (when in fact I just like alpen light bars). So jelly babies would have more of an inpact- like Karen Finely I need to do something that stands out. I feel injecting myself on stage will definitely have that shock factor.

“food has also been used as a prop in displaying the intrusion and penetration that the characters experience in the form of a visual abuse to the body.” (Finley, cited in Holmes, 2012)

Holmes, L. (2012). Progress Through Provocations: Analyzing the Work of Karen Finley. [online] CUJAH. Available at: http://cujah.org/past-volumes/volume-iii/essay-3-volume-3/ [Accessed 2 May 2016].

Potier, B. (2002). Harvard Gazette: Karen Finley provokes, reveals in lecture. [online] News.harvard.edu. Available from: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/02.14/06-finley.html [accessed 2 May 2016].

I want The start of my show to be colourful and cabaret style as I want the atmosphere of the piece to change as the performance develops. After thinking about the idea that my pancreas is like a door it doesn’t let insulin out to break down glucose, I don’t have the right hormones to enter the ‘locks’. I thought about instead of having a hanging curtain like in a cabaret, to have a simple door frame with hanging beads.

This may confuse the audience though as it would be quite ambiguous. I would only enter through it at the beginning dramatically and then not enter or leave through it again. As much as I think this is quite a clever idea I also think why put a door frame in the middle of the stage. I want more of an impacting stage. I am going to be using lights anyway as a major part of my piece and I want projections. However, because I want to set up objects in the space if I have TV’s in the space I feel this would look odd. So I am going to use the giant projection screen at the back and reveal it from behind the curtains. It will then act as almost a back drop. I can also shine the lights onto the black curtain to create the cabaret style effect.

Due to living around 145 miles which works out at around 2 and half hours, away from the most important people in my life, who gave me life- my parents. I couldn’t record my mum’s voice personally and ask her questions about what it is like living with a daughter who has had type 1 diabetes since the age of 6. It must be hard for a parent having to learn about a condition that they never thought they’d have to deal with, especially my parents as no one in my family has ever had type 1 diabetes (which is strange to tell people as type 1 is genetic). As I’ve become more independent and moved away from home to university my parents have to put complete trust in me to cope myself and keep my health in check. Obviously my mum texts me most days to see how i am and if i have any health problems i tell her for example if she asks how my day’s been and i respond by saying I’ve been asleep most of the day due to having high blood glucose levels. As well as having her on the phone to the Ipswich diabetes centre team like in January when i was waking up hypo every morning, my mum was scared for my health and I nearly had to go home just so she could look after me and not have to worry i may fall hypo in the night and not wake up. It can be scary. Due to my parents also not being able to come watch my performance at 9.30am on May 17th i want to in some way include them in my piece, as i have been interested in different people’s perceptions. So i asked my mum to sum up how it feels to be a parent with a daughter with type 1 diabetes…

 Living with a diabetic daughter

 From being an active child to struggling to walk home everyday from primary school, to going on diabetic camps where i learnt that i’m not alone and there are many others who have the same ‘condition’ as me, in a way being diabetic has made me who i am and with time my confidence has grown and not stopped me doing what i love- performing.

These are photos that represent that having type 1 diabetes does not stop you living your life- i have written a 9000 word dissertation (and hopefully will gain a degree in drama), i’ve performed in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for a whole month, Peter Pan an intensive Christmas show for a whole month and many many other shows!!!!!!!! Yes i go through lots of struggles but this is why i want my final degree performance to teach people about type 1 diabetes as it is another part of me that no one understands (and if i have a future career in the performing arts industry, performers along side me should probably know what to do if i was to collapse, which luckily has never happened in all the years i’ve performed)

I got up at 7am to get ready for my diabetes centre appointment, i booked a taxi the night before as the hospital is too far away to walk at that time in the morning. I wanted to make sure that i had time to wake myself up, shower, grab some breakfast to take with me. If i rush in the morning my levels end up dropping because i get so flustered. Got to the hospital… a nurse walks out “Laura? Did you get a letter?” “yeah i got a letter with my appointment time 9am” “no a letter saying that because of the strike your Dr has to cover another ward”

thinking to myself- well clearly i didn’t get that letter otherwise i wouldnt be sat here this early in the morning when i’m in my final semester at uni and have other stuff to be getting on with. MY HEALTH IS IMPORTANT AND NO ONE SEEMS TO CARE. In January of this year i had over 30 hypo’s, mainly in the morning’s and i requested a diabetic hospital appointment, 3 months later they give me one, and it’s cancelled. Never mind. I’m used to dealing with my own problems. Sometimes though it’s hard trying to juggle and adjust everything, i don’t want future complications, i need advice and just someone to keep me on track.

Talking of mornings, my solo performance is the first to kick off the run of our final degree showcases. at 9.30am. I found this quite ironic as mornings are the worst time of day for me. I could just stay in bed and skype in my performance, after all i did want videos and projections. I could just be laying in bed slowly getting up, eating my breakfast, nice and slowly. The slower and less stressful the better for my levels.

i rang up the Ipswich diabetes centre to ask for my folder of details, my charts and graphs etc… i then had to ring another number to ask fro permission, they then sent me a form to fill out and return… £10 to receive my own medical details. It is scary to think that someone else knows more about my body than i do.

Tomorrow i am going to Lincoln diabetes centre for the first time… i never wanted to swap centres as ive grown up in the hands of the same team since i was 6, 15 years seeing the same people who know that i do drama and that i like to have my target level above 4 which is supposedly the normal target range 4-8. My levels have always ran higher. maybe i have a fear of going hypo… the feeling of not being in control of my body is horrible.

Tomorrow i will probably get another realisation that my levels are too high and i need to control them better.This never ending cycle will continue, one minute i’m back on track and then the next minute something new is happening in my life and they spiral out of control. It’s a balancing act. As a third year university student, i struggle to cope sometimes. Mentally i am fine, as ive been reading a lot of diabetics suffer with depression due to the pressures of being diabetic. Others may also look at me and think there is nothing wrong with me and that i am fine. Deep down though i struggle everyday to deal with stress of uni, eating healthy to lose weight, carb counting, going to the gym then going hypo and having to eat carbs or sugar, then feeling guilty because ive eaten something unhealthy.  Then i eat too much sugar which sends my levels too high. I then become drained. My day is ruined, i cant concentrate on uni work, i feel yuck and want to just sleep and wake up feeling refreshed.

Tomorrow is a new day. I won’t know what it will bring but hopefully going to the hospital will enocurage me to get back on track to reduce my risk of future complications. The main things i can visually remember about the diabetes centre back home are all of the leaflets spread out across the tables, in the racks, stuck on notice boards. All the empty packets of food and drinks with details of carb counting all over the notice boards too. I want to play on this idea of the audience’s minds being over loaded with information as i always am. Therefore, i have gathered as many leaflets as i can with all the different things linked with being diabetic, from getting a tattoo, to sex, to travelling abroad, things that most people wouldn’t even think about as a problem for me.