INTERVIEW: Fat Theatre Project founder and director Eileen Tull on sobriety, activism and abortion
Eileen Tull is the founder of the Fat Theatre Project, a director and a theater educator. Photo by Joe Mazza.
Eileen Tull is a Chicago-based director, performer, theater educator and the founder of Fat Theatre Project, a theater company that tells stories by, about, for and with fat people.
Tull talked to Mustard about FTP’s upcoming play, “Funny, Like An Abortion” by Rachel Bublitz, which opens to the public at the Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble on March 14. A preview of the play will also take place on March 10.
In addition to directing “Funny, Like An Abortion,” Tull is currently working toward her MFA in directing and playwriting at Randolph College in Virginia. She has worked for theater companies across the country (We Players, San Francisco Theatre Pub, Playwright’s Foundation), directed, and performed solo plays at theaters and fringe festivals throughout the nation (San Francisco Fringe Festival, United Solo Festival, Chicago Fringe Festival).
In 2022, Tull self-published “33 Poems About Peanut Butter,” and in 2024 she founded the creative collective, the Fat Theatre Project. Through her work, Tull weaves tenants of sobriety and activism, creating a place where actors can not just hone their craft, but thrive.
Eileen Tull is the director of FTP’s latest play, “Funny, Like An Abortion.” Photo by Joe Mazza.
Mustard Magazine: You founded the Fat Theatre Project in 2024. What led you to creating this space?
Eileen Tull: I created performance work about body image and have used my own body as a performance tool for a long time, but never in a way that was joyful or positive. It was always these intense pieces about diet and exercise and violent things and using food and trying to shock people.
Through my own personal journey I was like, ‘I kind of just want to do some work where fat people, including myself, can have a good time and not ignore that part of our identity.’
So I'd been kicking around this idea and there have certainly been big influences—Knife and Fork in Chicago made some incredible work about bodies and food and that organization just disbanded—so I was really feeling a lack of an organization for that work.
I sort of started the project as kind of like, ‘We’ll see if anybody care about this,’ and immediately we got so much attention, so much feedback, so much validation—from audiences, from artists, both Chicago folks and people nationally—that it was kind of, like, ‘Ope, I think we started a theater company.’”
MM: What are some challenges you’ve faced in starting a theater company from scratch?
ET: Right off the bat, it’s money. Wanting to be able to pay people is one of my biggest values and that is a challenge, especially if you're dealing with a marginalized group. The idea that you’re inviting this marginalized group to be vulnerable on stage and in their work and then not be able to pay them any kind of comparable wage is a tough thing, so I've been very used to working on a shoestring budget. I design a lot of the work I do to be malleable, so [it can be done] in basements and restaurants and bookstores. We don’t need a theater, I just need my props and a box.
Getting more people on board involves more funding, so that’s been a challenge, having to ask people for money and having to fundraise. Luckily, we've been the benefactor of very generous audiences and funders. All of the money we've raised has been donation-based. We are not a non-profit yet, so we don’t have any grants or private investors or rich parents who are helping us out.
We have people who are connecting to the work and helping fund every project, so that feels very grassroots. And it is challenging, because we’re not able to pay people a lot, but we’ve been able to pay people and pay for the rights for things, which is very important.
MM: “Funny, Like An Abortion” is a co-production with the Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble. How did they get involved with this production?
ET: I started working with them 10 years ago. Ellyzabeth Adler, who is their executive director and their engine, is just such a great advocate for the arts. What I love about them is that they’re multidisciplinary. They're dance, they’re visual art, they’re theater. In the storefront theater-world, sometimes people are scared of multidisciplinary things. They don't know how to treat multidisciplinary artists or don’t know how to expand their definition of what a play can be, and Danztheatre has always really embraced that variety.
Ellyzabeth and I met and I pitched this play, which is written by Rachel Bublitz, who is a friend of mine from San Francisco. As soon as I heard the title, I messaged [Rachel] and was like, ‘Send me that script,’ and I fell in love with it.
I was like ‘I need to do this, I need to do this in Chicago, I need to do it now.’ It’s an intense show in terms of props and design and spectacle, so I knew it would probably be best to partner with another company. When Ellyzabeth and I met she was so excited about it so we decided to join forces in a co-production.
Bianca Thompson (left) and Saniafaith (right) play friends Monroe and Jade in “Funny, Like An Abortion.” Photo by Matthew Gregory Hollis.
MM: Has the play taken on new meaning considering what’s going on in our country right now?
ET: The play is very political and very topical, but really, it’s a play about two friends and it is a play about female friendship at its core.
There’s certainly moments of it that are direct and very much directly address what's happening today—the character’s address the audience and talk about the world to the point that there will be notecards that are updated weekly with what new things are happening. But the story is so familiar of these two friends—one is in this spot where she needs help and support and the other one is there for her.
Looking at the core element, for me, it’s about what lengths people will go to to pursue their freedom, what danger will they put themselves in, what action will they take and how hard will people fight for their freedom.
Sometimes that is choosing dangerous things and that’s choosing death, it’s choosing back alley, it’s choosing it’s choosing coat hangers. And I think that's been something that people who can get pregnant have faced for a very long time—and now those things are being restricted so swiftly.
Elizabeth and I started talking about this play in 2024, and I thought, ‘sure, it’s going to be hard-hitting, but it’s probably not going to feel as hard-hitting when we have a democratic president in office.’ A few days after the election I was having many thoughts of despair, and one of them was like, ‘Oh no, this play is too relevant now.’ Obviously we knew this piece is a bold, socially-political piece, but I feel like now it's taken on a different level.
I feel like there are people who want to abolish abortion, that want to control female bodies and bodies that can get pregnant and there's a big dehumanization—you have to dehumanize people in order to want to exterminate them and in order to control them, and I hope that this piece reaches people who need to see two humans dealing with this, as opposed to the boogeyman of whatever people think is like, the demonic person getting an abortion.
The play takes place in a not-so-distant future where you’re not even allowed to say the word abortion, where there’s hints at public execution, there’s hints that you have to check pregnancy tests out from the government. There’s no books and libraries anymore, so it’s very much a totalitarian government that has taken over not only the legal aspect of life but the social aspects of life and the information—which does not seem far off at this point in our world.
“Funny, Like An Abortion.” Photo by Matthew Gregory Hollis.
MM: This is the play’s Chicago premiere, right?
ET: Yes. This play has gone up, I believe, in Austin, Cleveland and maybe a couple other places. I'm also conscious of the fact that to do this play in Ohio and Texas feels more risky than doing it in Chicago. Chicago, technically, right now, we have access to abortion. It doesn't mean everyone can financially access abortion. Legally, our state is protecting people, but what about our friends in Wisconsin and Indiana and the south, where now [abortion in] is so unaccessible? Chicago is kind of a sanctuary city for abortion and Illinois is a big state and not everybody in Illinois is on the same page.
MM: Why was it important that the Fat Theatre Project tell this story?
ET: The script in itself does not mention weight at all. These characters are not written to be fat or thin or anything, and that is part of our mission at the Fat Theatre Project. One tenant is to tell fat stories that are explicitly about fat people, and then another tenant is to just tell stories and allow fat people, fat creatives, to tell those stories. This is an instance where the script is not mentioning any body size or shape, but it's important to me that we look at all kinds of people and all kinds of bodies being controlled.
The other issue is the history of fat people and medical bias. Plan B is only effective for bodies, I believe, up to 175 lbs and it loses its efficacy after that. So for a person over 175 lbs, taking Plan B is not going to be effective and that person is more at risk for an unwanted pregnancy—they just do not have medical access to the same thing as someone under 175 lbs. A lot of fat people experience medical bias with their doctors. There are a lot of stories of pregnant women who are fat having different experiences than thin women.
MM: You’ve had two different chapters in Chicago. You went to Loyola University for your undergrad and then returned to Chicago in 2014. What brought you back?
ET: I grew up in Cincinnati, came here for college and after that I moved to the Bay Area in 2010. I moved back home to Cincinnati and I got sober there, which was a very seminal thing in my life and needed to happen in my home supported by my family.
I was ready to go somewhere and I chose to come back to Chicago where I had roots, but also had this sort-of shadow of a past person who had done a lot of drinking and done a lot of personal damage.
I chose to come back and repair relationships and really reclaim my life here because my time in Chicago had ended in not the most positive ways. To be able to come back and reclaim the city and reintroduce myself both to the arts scene and individual people and to the city itself felt really important.
Tull in “Too Fat to Run” at the Elgin Fringe Festival. Courtesy.
MM: There’s a strong relationship between alcohol use and the arts. What has it been like continuing your creative career while sober?
ET: It’s been a process, because I really used alcohol and substances to manage my anxiety—whether that was creative anxiety, social anxiety, or personal anxiety.
Unequivocally, I've done my best work sober. I’ve been sober for 11 years and it's not a coincidence that my career, my life and my creative world has thrived and that I've been able to access all of these different disciplines. I’ve done standup and performance art and storytelling and I’ve been able to experiment in a lot of different creative realms and that is because I’ve unclouded my mind.
What I thought was helping manage my anxiety was actually building it up more into my body and brain. What has been really illuminating is being very loud about sobriety and then being able to then attract folks who are also seeking not necessarily sobriety, but seeking wellness and seeking stasis as opposed to chaos.
When everybody is drunk, it's really easy to make things unsafe, so I’m very grateful to be watching our community move toward safety in all aspects. I feel like that, to me, is when people can do their best work. And that’s also from my life as a theater educator. If someone doesn't feel safe in the room, if they don't feel safe and comfortable or cared for, then they're not going to do good work. And they’re also going to feel bad. It just seems kind of simple to me to be like, ‘Lets create an environment where people can do good work [and] people don’t feel bad.’
I'm really grateful to be able to be sober. I tell my story on stage a lot and I've had a lot of really great experiences with other artists and audience members. Along with fatness, sobriety and addiction is something people can feel a lot of shame about. But you want to be present. You want to be able to escape into the moment and if you’re worried about shame clouding your every move, [it’s] not going to work.
MM: You’ve lived and worked all over the country. What makes Chicago different from any other city you’ve been in?
Tull by Joe Mazza.
ET: I really loved working in the Bay Area and I really loved being back in Cincinnati … but there's something about the energy of Chicago. We have all these high-calibre, driven artists that still maintain their personhood. We’re not an industry-town in the same way that LA and New York can feel, where people are not always their most authentic. I just feel like Chicago is always itself. The beautiful lake, the gorgeous summer, the hellish winter—she just is who she is—and I feel like that rubs off on people who really plant here. There is a pursuit of authenticity and a pursuit of truth in art, which sounds a little pretentious, but some of the best things I've seen in Chicago have been in the basements of abandoned storefronts and on the river and in these kinds of corners. Everywhere [you look,] there's things happening. Chicago makes the best of everything.
MM: Advocacy is intertwined and indistinguishable from your work. How did you come to bring art and activism together?
ET: I grew up in Cincinnati, which is a pretty—or at least was—a pretty conservative town, especially the suburbs. I grew up very conservative, very religious.
Coming to Chicago for college, I met people and talked to people and rode the train next to people—and once you see people, you realize, ‘Oh, people just kind of live their life and no person is more deserving than another person,’ which also is an idea [in sobriety]. I am no better than any addict and no addict is worse than me. I am on the same level as someone who is really struggling and I am only a few steps away from that person.
Meeting people opened up my eyes a little bit. I really am grateful for that opportunity to grow. I think sometimes progressive folks can get frustrated with people who we feel can't see our same perspectives, and I feel like I’m a product of someone who was able to grow. I was not raised by liberal hippie parents, I had to really discover my own views.
My skills are organizing and producing creative events, so that is the power that I have. I don't want to go law school, I don’t want to be a labor organizer. I will attend protests but I'm not very good at confrontation, and so my skill set is to be creating art around things. And for me, art is an empathy machine.
There’s a great quote by Harold Clurman from the Group Theatre that I’ve always carried with me: ‘The truth is like castor oil, people don't want to swallow it, so you make them laugh and when their mouths are open you pour it in.’
Me walking up to people on the street and telling people that [they] should support abortion, that’s not going to necessarily make change. I believe in the power of art. The more you can expose people and start to change their heart a little bit, the ripple effect has a great impact.
