Rachel Stockdale’s powerful one-woman play, Fat Chance, is heading on tour around the UK this Spring, coming to Camden People’s Theatre on 26th-27th April. Stockdale speaks out with sincerity on the struggles faced by anyone grappling with the pressures of toxic beauty standards and body shaming.
Written and performed by Rachel Stockdale, this powerful one-woman play has been touring since 8th March, International Women’s Day. This funny and honest production, directed by Jonluke McKie, explores Stockdale’s true-life experiences of weight gain from size 8 to size 18 as she rebels against toxic beauty standards and expectations, and takes back the word fat.
In the midst of the tour, we’ve spoken to Rachel to find out a little more about the creative process behind this extremely personal production.
Hi Rachel! I just wanted to start today by asking how are you?
I’m really good, tired, but good!
For those who may not be familiar with your previous work, could you please introduce yourself?
I’m a fat, benefit class Actor & Theatre-maker from central Middlesbrough in the North East, in the top 1% of underprivileged areas in the country.
As a writer/performer I was selected as a BBC Development Fund Comedy Creative 2023 and I’m currently working on adapting my work for screen. My work includes the five-star Fat Chance at The Pleasance, Edinburgh Fringe; Tub Timeat Northern Stage; the award-winning Bin Day on BBC iPlayer and Coal Girls at Oldham Coliseum.
As an actor you might have heard me as the voice of Newcastle United on TNT Sports or in Scar Top on BBC Radio 4, seen me in The Black Prince on Netflix, or spotted me treading the boards in various theatres across the country! From A View From The Bridge at the Bolton Octagon, to 1984 at Oldham Coliseum, to Black Dark at Live Theatre, Newcastle.
I recently won the John Fernald Award for Directing and have worked as an Assistant Director on productions at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Harrogate Theatre and Northern Stage.
You have been touring the UK with your one-woman production, Fat Chance. How has it been going out on the road?
It’s going really well! It’s been a lot, this week alone we’ve performed at Shakespeare North Playhouse, the Torch in Wales, Hull Truck and Leeds Playhouse! And I’ve been fitting in radio interviews and instagram takeovers along the way. The audiences make it worth it though. To be performing my life story to sold out audiences across the UK is unbelievable and I don’t take it for granted.
What can audiences expect to see from the show?
People can expect to see a dark comedy peppered with camp joy. It’s all-singing, all-dancing with original songs and even a bit of kickboxing!
‘Fat Chance’ is my life story, going from a size 8 to a size 18 in my twenties and all of the ridiculous things that happened along the way. It’s about fighting fatphobia and classism as a fat, northern, benefit class woman. It’s also a celebration of our differences and how they make us unique.
This sounds like an incredibly personal piece. What was the creative process like for creating a production based on your true life experiences?
It has been quite an interesting process in that the play has been in my head for 6 years but it took me 4 years to get the funding. So, as I had been thinking about it for so long, it only took a few weeks to write the initial draft. I took myself off to a cheap hotel for a couple of nights to write the beginning, as that was the hardest part for me and then Laura told me I had actually written 3 plays!! I streamlined it by centering my life story around the fatphobia I have experienced and then I had a research and development week at the ARC in Stockton, where I played around with the structure and received mentoring from the fabulous Dr Charlotte Cooper.
I got fantastic feedback from the Fat Performance Network after previews and our Edinburgh Fringe run at the Pleasance in 2022. Despite receiving multiple 5 and 4 star reviews, I didn’t think I had quite cracked the beginning and wanted to add a few things along the way. So last summer I sat down with my director, Jonluke Mckie, and we watched the preview recording at Northern Stage and I was able to watch it solely as a writer. I realised I needed to book end the piece with a completely different beginning, and I wanted to add another original song that gets to the heart of the piece. I also played around with how ‘Rachel’ & ‘Stocky’ could interact with each other and added in extra scenes whilst streamlining other sections.
As an actor, I have to pretend someone else has written it and approach Rachel as any other character. Which probably sounds strange, but it works for me!
As we slowly begin to challenge the impossible standards enforced by the beauty industry, why do you think it is so important to see conversations like this within the theatre world?
I think it’s important as you so rarely see fat people onstage (unless we’re sat on a sofa eating and crying about not being able to find a partner) and that is just not the world we live in! 65% of the UK is overweight and obese and we all lead very different, very full lives. We need to represent the world we live in authentically and have all kinds of different people on our stages.
The show opened on March 8th, which was International Women’s Day. Could you tell us a little about why opening the show on this date is so significant for you?
Fatphobia affects everyone, it’s institutional and we all have pressure to look a certain way.
It was important to me to open on International Women’s Day as the pressure put on women in particular to stay the size they were at 16 years old and take up as little space as possible, is a feminist issue. Diet culture is a form of control.
As women it can be hard to fight for changes in attitudes towards beauty standards, when many of our peers cannot even see a cause. What small steps can we all take to help in levelling the playing field for women in everyday society?
I would say the first thing is challenging our internal prejudices. Question why you feel a certain way about particular people and try not to assume anything about anyone. And remember… no-one owes you health.
Let’s throw out the scales and stop commenting on other people’s weight. Becoming smaller isn’t automatically positive and getting bigger isn’t automatically negative. There are so many more important and interesting things we can talk about!
What do you hope audiences take away from a trip to see Fat Chance?
I hope that you laugh and cry! In the best possible way. And start to treat your body with care and kindness.
The best reaction is when people tell me they’re not going to diet anymore. It seems to resonate with lots of different types of people. I think the show highlights the pressure we put on ourselves to look a certain way and everyone reacts to it differently.
Fat Chance is touring until the 27th April 2024. For more information or to book your tickets, click here:
Tour Dates:
8th – 9th March Northern Stage, Barras Bridge, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RH
13th March Stephen Joseph Theatre, Westborough, Scarborough, YO11 1JW
14th March Gala Theatre, 1 Millennium Place, Durham, DH1 1WA
15th March Harrogate Theatre, 6 Oxford Street, Harrogate, HG1 1QF
19th – 20th March Theatre 503, 503 Battersea Park Road, London, SW11 3BW
21st March The Seagull Theatre, 19-75 Morton Road, Pakefield, Lowestoft,
NR33 0JH
23rd March Skipton Town Hall, High Street, Skipton, BD23 1AH
26th March Darlington Hippodrome, Parkgate, Darlington, DL1 1RR
27th March Alnwick Playhouse, Bondgate Without, Alnwick, NE66 1PQ
28th March Middlesbrough Theatre, The Avenue, Middlesbrough, TS5 6SA
30th March Oxford Playhouse, 11-12 Beaumont Street, Oxford, OX1 2LW
2nd April Shakespeare North Playhouse, Prospero Place, Prescot, L34 3AB
3rd April Torch Theatre, St Peter’s Road, Milford Haven, Wales, SA73 2BU
4th April Hull Truck Theatre, 50 Ferensway, Hull, HU2 8LB
5th – 6th April Leeds Playhouse, Playhouse Square, Quarry Hill, Leeds LS2 7UP
10th April Queen’s Hall Arts Centre, Beaumont Street, Hexham, NE46 3LS
12th April The Corn Hall, 10 St Nicholas Street, Diss, IP22 4LB
13th April The Atkinson, Lord St, Southport, PR8 1DB
24th April Midlands Arts Centre, Cannon Hill Park, Birmingham B12 9QH
26th-27th April Camden People’s Theatre, 58-60 Hampstead Rd, London, NW1 2PY
CentreStage 