Daniella Isaacs is Green Girl and today she is hear to teach us how to be 'well'. While she waits for her mum to arrive she takes us through a 're-energising meditation' which is essentially a squat with a supposedly empowering chant. We launch straight into the show seeing her inspiration in Elle Mcpherson, and learning about all of the benefits of wellness. Ella proceeds to make a beetroot matcha smoothie which is where everything starts to go wrong, as she becomes visibly more stressed, and she makes more and more mistakes.
Every kitchen implement begins to haunt her, with the voices of all of the pressures in her life - her parents, sister, her fit bit, the voices telling her to be healthy. We soon learn that Ella's life is not perfect, and her mum isn't coming. In fact, Ella's relationship with her family is strained, because her 'lifestyle' is really an obsession. We learn that she didn't really start a new career but lost her job. We begin to see her as neurotic, with a desperate need to control everything and a profound fear of being unhealthy.
The show is hard-hitting and, at times, even uncomfortable to watch the breakdown Ella goes through. However, it ends on a far more positive note. The show is autobiographical, and Daniella has truly suffered from Orthorexia Nervosa - an eating disorder where people become obsessed with 'healthy eating' but which has serious medical consequences. Isaacs went so far as to assuming a whole other identity of 'Ella the health blogger'. However she tells us how she is recovering and learning to let go. Her performance was intense and deeply moving. The acting was incredible and the show was very cleverly written and staged, with excellent use of props and technology. It is incredibly brave to be telling this story to a room full of strangers but to physically enact it is something else altogether and it has a profound effect upon the audience.
Isaacs show is a truly powerful mode of storytelling, and in a world of 'wellness' obsessions, it is a story that needs to be told.
For tickets and more information visit the Ed Fringe website.
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