NH Theatre Project's Elephant-in-the-Room Series Opens February 7

New Hampshire Theatre Project's provocative Elephant-in-the-Room Series opens its second season with the topic of Eating Disorders & Body Image, featuring a reading of Linda Daugherty's play Eat: It's Not About Food by seacoast actors and teens. The script dramatizes the dangerous and confusing world of eating disorders in women and men, girls and boys, exploring causes, warning signs, and the influences of both society and the media on this too often tragic issue.

Following the playreading of Eat: It's Not About Food, facilitator Timothy Barretto will host a discussion with the audience and a panel of community members working in the field of eating disorders. Dr. Mardie Burckes-Miller is a professor in the Plymouth State University Department of Heath & Human Enrichment, and Director of the Eating Disorders Institute which has sponsored a statewide biannual conference since 2003. Monika Ostroff is the Manager of Outpatient Behavioral Health Services at Parkland Medical Center in Derry NH, and directs Reflections Eating Disorders Treatment Center. She is co-author of Anorexia Nervosa: A Guide to Recovery and a contributing author to Self-Harm Behavior and Eating Disorders. Jessie Felber is a 23-year-old graduate student, recovered from Anorexia Nervosa, who currently works as a social worker in the child protection and welfare field.

Admission to the reading and discussion is free, but donations will be gratefully accepted to benefit the Multi-Services Eating Disorders Association in Newton MA. Founded in 1994, MEDA is the foremost eating disorders nonprofit in New England, touching thousands of lives each year. For more information: www.medainc.org

Now in its second year, NHTP's Elephant-in-the-Room Series presents playreadings and community conversations about subjects that we as a society often have difficulty discussing. Additional topics for 2019 include The Opioid Crisis & Families, School Safety in the 21st Century, and Suicide & Self-Harm. Each event is moderated by Timothy Barretto, known for his UNH and Great Bay Community College courses on Managing Conflict in the Community. Questions focus on attitudes about ethical issues involved in the subject over time and today, and our responsibility as a society to bring these issues out of the shadows and into the cultural mainstream. Audience members who wish to help bring these social issues out into the open will be provided with an Action Plan for positive action steps and ways to get involved. The presentation on the Opioid Crisis & Families, featuring Mary-Ellen Hedrick's moving script A Wider Circle, will tour to Concord, Rochester, Exeter and Gorham NH as well as the Portsmouth presentation.

The 2019 Elephant-in-the-Room Series is possible through generous funding by New Hampshire Humanities, NH State Council on the Arts, and Exeter Hospital with additional funding from the NH Charitable Foundation, Portsmouth Lodge of Elks #97, and The Edgewood Centre. For more information, please visit www.nhtheatreproject.org.

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