116 Grams Review: A Punchy Edinburgh Show About Diet Culture and Female Rage
In Edinburgh, performer Letícia Rodrigues is challenging cultural mechanisms of body surveillance through her autobiographical production titled 116 Grams: A Play to Lose Weight, staged at Zoo Southside. The performance examines the psychological toll of diet culture, exploring personal histories of weight management and social expectation. According to the performance documentation, the work draws directly on the creator’s experiences growing up in Brazil and navigating lifelong external scrutiny of her physical form.
- Letícia Rodrigues explores the psychological impacts of lifelong body policing and diet culture through a character named Gorda.
- The production features a live weigh-in and weigh-out structure, critiquing historical weight-loss programs like commercial diet clubs.
The Mechanics of Body Surveillance on Stage
The production opens with a meticulously staged ritual. A smiling woman steps onto weighing scales in front of the audience at Zoo Southside, dressed in a trendy red trouser suit with gleaming nails and bobbed blond hair. She states her weight as precisely 84 kilograms. This theatrical gesture mirrors the historical introduction of commercial diet clubs, referencing an environment where the artist’s mother first enrolled her at the age of eight years old.
Through her dramatized persona Gorda, Rodrigues navigates themes of shame, rage, and societal surveillance directed at female bodies. The central conceit involves a targeted weight loss of exactly 116 grams over the course of the hour-long performance. By framing the show simultaneously as a training session and a theatrical critique, the production highlights the absurdity of hyper-specific dietary metrics imposed on individuals.