8A
Tuesday, March 28, 1995
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
The image behind the image
Photos and story by Jennie Zeiner
The last night of the play
"Tartuffe," Louise Flory gathers the flowers her parents had given her opening night. "I always get so sad leaving the dressing room the last night," she says.
"You never know if you'll be back again."
"There is nothing like the moment before you go on stage," Louise Flory says. "You realize all of the work and training come down to this moment, and you could make it or break it."
When the curtains go up and the spotlight focuses on Louise Flory, what the crowd sees is a talented, young actress.
But when the show is over, and the costumes and make-up have been stripped away, the woman Flory sees in the mirror is not the same person that everyone applauded only a short time before.
When she looks in the mirror, the person she sees is fat and afraid.
Seemingly successful in her career as a student, Flory Lawrence senior, struggles every day, on stage and off, to see the beautiful woman everyone else sees. Despite being one of the top actresses in the theater department and having gone to Australia last summer to perform in the play "Displaced," Flory still fears the voices of failure.
After landing a principal role in "Tartuffe," a University Theatre production last semester, Flory remembers what she thought when she learned her character was a charming and beautiful woman
"Tremember saying, 'Oh yeah, I'm a real
As practice began, her fears only continued to grow. Ron Popenhagen, the director of the play, told the cast what kinds of animals their characters were like. Flory's was like a swan and a fox.
"Everyone is going to say, 'Why is she playing that role?'" she said. "I sat in my room and cried and I went, 'I do not want this part, everyone's going to laugh at me.'"
swan,' and thinking the parts where Elmeer is described as a fair creature would be sarcastic." she said.
Voices like these have forced Flory to struggle with her self-image and the control of her body weight. Usually the struggle manifests itself in a strict diet, but there have been periods when she basically stopped eating, she said.
"It's so weird how all those old demons never die," Flory said.
The demons were born when Flory was young.
Both Louise and her mother acknowledge the tremendous influence that acting
"I started dancing when I was little, and I remember sitting on the bench, all of us in leotards, and I would look at all the other girls' thighs," she said.
Flory's mother, Donna Flory, said she noticed her daughter's consciousness of her body in junior high, both during the onset of adolescence and during increased involvement in acting.
"I didn't see overt changes in her eating but a constant fluctuation between dieting and relaxing about what she was eating." Donna Flory said. "She would usually eat salads and fruit and exercise but would become angry if she'd eaten pizza the night before."
has had in the formation of her personality and her awareness about her eating habits. Since she started acting in grade school, parts have not been decided on talent alone, but also on how the actor looked.
alone, but also on how the actor looked. "Your body does matter," Louse Flory said. "Your appearance is part of how you define yourself, whether you want to believe it or not."
Louise and her mother also believe that this ultra-consciousness is particularly prevalent in acting.
"I think most everyone I know is on a diet most of the time," Louise Flory said. "It might exist in other departments, but people don't sit around and talk about how they went to an audition and felt like a cow or went to a modeling agency and they were told to lose 30 pounds."
The constant exposure to this type of pressure, in society and in acting, makes Louise's struggle difficult. But she is making progress, she said.
"Every day is a matter of coming to terms with myself," she said. "I can tell it is getting better now because there is a mirror in our house that I used to walk by and think I was really fat. Recently I went by and asked if someone had changed it. I looked in it and said, 'Hey, I don't look so bad.'
"Dinner is the meal that is the hardest to skip." Louise Flory says. "Your friends are there, and they notice." Louise usually eats with her roommates before going to practice.
Louise Flory struggles with her self-image to see the same reflection that friends, family and the audience see.