HEALTH-EPERFORMANCESCRIPT

HEALTH-E PERFORMANCE SCRIPT

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(Kathy Acker interview) –HADLEY as Kathy

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Interviewer: Hello and welcome back, today on the show we have a writer by the name of Kathy Acker, she's going to talk to us about her quest to overcome breast cancer by rejecting Western medicine and setting on a journey of recovery.

Hi Kathy, thanks for coming on the show today, first of all what an amazing story.

So Kathy, what were you’re first thoughts as you left the doctors office after rejecting chemotherapy:

KA: As I walked out of his office, I realized that if I remained in the hands of conventional medicine, I would soon be dead, rather than diseased, meat. For conventional medicine was reducing me, quickly, to a body that was only material, to a body without hope and so, without will, to a puppet who, separated by the fear from her imagination and vision, would do whatever she was told.

I: What do you mean?
KA: I’ll say this in another way. When I walked out of that surgeon’s office, I thought that I might be about to die, to die without any idea why. My death, and so my life, would be meaningless.

I: What do you think Western medicine does to the body?
KA: The reduction of all that one is to materiality is a necessary part of the practice of conventional western medicine.

I: Did you ever think you made a mistake at any point?
KA: Actually, I was this one thought: I know I wanted to live. To live was to stay alive and to not be reduced to materiality. There was no way I was going to go through chemotherapy. I never got in touch with that doctor again, except to pay his bill.

I: That's an interesting point-
KA: My search for a way to defeat the cancer now became a search for a life and death that were meaningful. Not for a life that presented by conventional medicine, a life in which ones meaning or self was totally dependent upon the works and actions of anther person, even of a doctor. I had already learned one thing, though I didn't at the time know it: that I live as I believe, that belief is equal to the body.

I: What was the hardest part of it?
KA: The hardest part of my cancer was the walking away from that surgeon and from conventional medicine. Belief in the conventional, in what our doctors tell us, is so deeply engraved in our society that to walk away from conventional medicine is to walk away from normal society. Many of my friends phoned me, crying and yelling at me for not undergoing chemotherapy.

I: Well that's all we have time for today, thanks for coming in Kathy. Now let's take a short commercial break and we will be right back.

Show advert video 1 (butterfly abs)
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(compliments)
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Compliments scene (women sitting on the floor, one standing, each time taking turns to pay compliments- improvised) standing person can move as they want from where they are standing from.

2mins

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(Mary1)
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Narrator speaks off camera:
After 3 days, I was not eating or drinking, only lying on the floor, except once, when I slid my body along the floor and banged my feet against the partition where there was a meeting.
Ronnie came:

“let me help you up, come with me. There’s other people in the room. You can open your eyes. Let her sit there, on the floor.”

I’m murmuring. After coming home, I didn’t talk anymore.

Ronnie speaks: ‘Mary different people are going to feed you. Will you eat and drink what they give. Do you agree?”

“Mn. Mn. Mn”

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A: God I think to myself how resilient I must be, I swam in the sea for an hour and I feel great, not even in sniffle.

B: I know the others were asking me that today too, how she gets a tummy ache as soon as she gets in, I was like that’s weird I’ve never had any pain.

A: My daughter takes after me too, strong-you know.

B: Yes were the same, strong women. Oh god it’s so annoying when you go swimming with someone and as soon as they hit the water their like ‘oooo this is too cold, I'm out of here.’

Scene 5- Deniz solo narration -HADLEY
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Reading her account of her regression made me dislike her at once. What a stupid selfish woman (Mary). Wanting all that attention to be cared for day and night, how did Joe want to give so much to this woman. I wondered why I disliked Mary Barnes so much in the beginning, maybe I was jealous of her ability to get all this attention and care and not feel guilty for it.
To be so free to not do anything in your day, and to go there, places where ppl don’t want to go, smear shit all over and over again.
Jealous at that. So here I am, hating being looked after and dependant in this weird holiday home of my mother limbo land, aching to get going again. Every time I do get excited and think my body is totally ok and go about the day I fall. Try to live in full, my body is like hold up, your not there yet and bang the pain is back, back in bed, back to the waiting game. All this whilst secretly loving the care given, loving when all my friends came round and looked after me, loving telling my friends I had an operation and seeing the concern in their faces or their replies. Admitting this is so embarrassing. How I wish I could be like Mary Barnes, to be a baby again. If there was a way to be like that for a while and no one would talk about it during or after, it was just something that happened, I would be up for this.

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Mary 2
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Props: Two cup s of water.
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Once, when Joe brought me a little water in a glass, I started to drink. Then, knowing it was ‘wrong’ I spat it out. Joe played (along) with me. Everything was right. Joe understood. There was no ‘gone against’ feeling. Then Joe brought me water. Joe understood. He fed me so most of it spilt. It seemed then I was in a garden with beautiful flowers. Chrysanthemums of all different colours.

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Compliments scene (women sitting on the floor, one standing each time taking turns to pay compliments- improvised)
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Deniz Bed 2
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Stuck in the little white room upstairs. Been back one day and the pain has got a lot worse, been asking ppl to take me to the hospital but no one really wants to. The program has moved forward we have 4 new guests in the house, 2 cousins and their wives. Iil d does not fit this program, best for me to stay in my room and keep out of the way and sleep. Mum always had her priorities right in these situations, being a good host seemed to always trump being a 'good mother'. I can’t help but shift into this little angry girl vibe when I’m like this, here in this situation in her house. I could of course go to the hospital myself but I can't walk and I have no car, I could hitchhike… I have to now wait till my cousin’s wife wakes up as my mum forgot my wallet in her bag yesterday, with my painkillers. If only I could get my hands on my Nurofen. Nurofen my magic drug, oh how I love my Nurofen.

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Girls swimming 2
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A; just swam 30 laps, god I feel so good.
B: that was me yesterday, I like to do 30 laps, take a quick break then hit another 30
A: yep, I’m setting myself time limits to push myself a little further. 30 laps in 30 minutes
B: yeah we should swim together, we can really work on each others swim techniques.
A: good idea. my body’s look mighty fine from all the workouts.
B: yeah everyone keeps telling me Im looking amazing,

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SHOW INTRO VIDEO AGAIN
Part 2
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Kathy interview 2
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Props: 2 chairs

Hi Kathy, thanks for coming on the show today, first of all what an amazing story.

So Kathy, what were you’re first thoughts as you left the doctors office after rejecting chemotherapy:

I: What do you think Western medicine does to the body?
KA: The reduction of all that one is to materiality is a necessary part of the practice of conventional western medicine.

I: Well that's all we have time for today, thanks for coming in Kathy. Now let's take a short commercial break and we will be right back

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Compliments 3
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Deniz solo bed text 3
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HADLEY NARRATES

Another bedroom, another bed, this time my hotel bed. Stuck in the parameters of the bed, like when the bed was a boat when we were kids. I spotted the bath when I came in, a nice clean bath. I had longed to be completely submerged in water; I felt like if only I could be completely submerged, I could heal myself. In London I thought about going swimming but that would mean I would have to swim, I can't do laps, there are only swimming lanes for proper swimmers. All I wanted to do was nothing but lay still and submerged. It was not a good idea to take a bath in my own bath at home, the bathroom’s really moldy, I tried it once, it felt so gross and dirty. I could ask a friend who had a nice bath if I could borrow there bathroom but I guess that an odd request.
And so I take a bath here, I fill the bath up and dive in, I find out that its impossible to fully submerge myself, once the water gets to a certain stage it goes out again, meaning my knee or the top of my head is still above water no matter what position I try. Oh well. I will have to find another solution to my submersion treatment . 2 days till I have to show something, I’m busy trying to heal myself in the hotel room.
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Two swimmers 3
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A:Hey
B: Hey just bumped into some friends at the pool and they were asking me how I got to be so strong – I said it all starts in the mind, train your mind and you can train your body.
A; you know I was just thinking the same thing, Im doing this thing now, which is really helping me re focus my energies and think about what is important in my life right now. You know?
B: god yes! I am so feeling you, its all about refocusing that energy to where it matters most. Mind and heart at one with each other resulting in this super hot bod that's fast, yet agile and flexible
A: and this is the centre of my incredible success as a human being in this world we live in today.

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Mary
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In the room I lay on the blankets that I wet and wet. Feeling very bad, lying still in the warm wet, I would go to sleep. Also after playing with my shits, I would sleep with it one me. When Ronnie came I showed him my painting in shit on the wall. A sperm, an ovum, a breast. The cross- eternity forever. Birth- suck-suffer-space -eternity.

I told Ronnie “I could put my shit all over you, you would still love me”

Once, covered in shits, I crawled up to the flat. Bent over at the door I heard Allan say “look up, there are several people here.’ Slowly I unbent and, seeing a girl, whispered, “will you bath me”’ ‘I would but I’m not sure how.’ Allan took me to the bath. He washed it all away, and out of my hair. Then warm and relived, he put me back to bed.

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Deniz solo bed text 4
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I’ve come back to that Kathy Acker text, the article she wrote for the Guardian a bit before her death. I’ve come back to that text many times now over the past year, she can articulate some of the things I’m thinking and feeling way better, a million, a trillion times better. I’ve come back to that text because it does give me some sort of strength by reading it, it gives me something, again that I don't know how to articulate. Of course hers was a question of life and death, mine is not that at all, it’s nothing in comparison really. But to know when she talks about the body as being reduced to diseased meat, as reduced just to a body, seeing that happen in the generic nods of my doctor when I go to see him, generic reassuring nods, and why should he care anyway? It's in our interest that he doesn’t care. To care means some kind of attachment, when he is cutting me up during surgery it’s important that I am just a body on the operation table, a piece diseased meat that he is there to incise of, if he were to see me in any other way, then what would happen would he burst into tears every time he had to operate on someone?

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