Filler Up!

European première
Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh Fringe 2002
performed by Deb Filler
co-written by Deb Filler and Lowry Marshall

Audiences will be eating out of Deb Filler's hand!

As Deb Filler bakes a loaf of golden challah bread to her father's cherished recipe on stage, she fills us in, with equally warm wit, on her complicated relationships with food and family in a skinny society. The delicious aroma of this traditional, sacred bread will waft out into the Assembly Rooms foyer and entice audiences into sharing the funny and life-affirming experience that is FILLER UP! - they even get to take the recipe away in the programme!

Born in New Zealand into a family of bakers weighing "six and a half loaves and a Chelsea bun", Deb was caught between her Holocaust survivor father who hated waste, and her fanatically fad-dieting mother. Her move to the US did nothing to help her battle with the bulge, as she tried to reconcile her reverence for good food and the need to find success in the body-obsessed entertainment industry (first role: Pudgy Earthquake Victim).

FILLER UP! is a truly hilarious, piping hot tale of coming to terms with food and feelings that keep us down and fill us up, eating and overeating, living and over-living. Deb Filler brings her whole colourful extended family to life, from laconic Long Island Aunt Vippy, to loving but unhelpful mother (spending all morning in the supermarket planning meals then going on the Scarsdale Diet), to the black radical activist girlfriend rapping how much she loves her ass just the way it is. Most of all, she introduces us to her beloved, dignified dad who, having suffered the unimaginable, baked bread after the liberation of the camps with his former captors to save them all from starving.

Deb Filler has been described as 'Tracey Ullman meets Jackie Mason', and is best known for her previous one-woman show Punch Me In the Stomach!

Reviews from Edinburgh 2002:

The Sunday Herald, 11 August 2002
"Part confessional, part musical cabaret... .a funny and thoughtful celebration... ..and it's almost certainly the only Fringe show serving freshly-baked challah bread."(Andrew Burnett)

The List, 15 August 2002
"Deb Filler's story is told with passion, humour and great understanding of the 'skinny culture' while she bakes a delicious loaf of her father's challah bread... . Go on, take a bite." (Jane Hamilton)

The Scotsman, 20 August 2002
"Deb Filler unfolds her delightful tale, she bakes a loaf of bread to her grandmother's recipe... ..This is a moving portrait of a woman leaving behind the self-consciousness accrued after a lifetime of not fitting into clothes or a skinnier world... ..mixing storytelling with song, Filler's warm, riotous personality and talent simply overflow from the Assembly's Wildman Room." (James Mulligham)

Other Reviews:

"Extraordinary work, an extraordinary story-teller... we laugh, we weep." (Village Voice)

"Magnificent... hilarious... to miss her would be madness" (NZ Herald)

"A delicious ragout... a highly entertaining story about food, cooking, failed diets and family" (NZ Evening Post)

Biographies:

Deb Filler (writer & performer)
Deb Filler was a founder member of The Ratz and Debbie and the Dum Dums, two celebrated New Zealand punk cabaret groups, and sang in several rock and roll bands before leaving to study theatre in the US with Stella Adler and Uta Hagen. She performed Off-Broadway and in Europe with a number of companies during the 80s, including cabaret spaces such as the Gusto House, and came to the Edinburgh Festival in 1990 with The Gusto House Cabaret, followed by a UK tour. Her one-woman show Punch Me in the Stomach! opened at the New York Theatre Workshop in 1992, and toured internationally for several years, including opening performances at the refurbished New York Jewish Museum's Theatre and the Hong Kong Jewish Theatre. The show was also the subject of a documentary, and was made into a feature film that toured film festivals and was screened on TV. Punch Me... is also the subject of several PhD theses and books on humour and survival. Filler Up! was workshopped at the New Zealand International Festival of of the Arts and at Open Stage Harriburg.
Deb Filler is a member of the Usual Suspects Playwrights Lab at New York Theatre Workshop and is currently developing a film script and a new solo show as well as working regularly in film and TV.

Lowry Marshall (co-writer/director)
is a Professor of Theatre, Speech and Dance at Brown University, Rhode Island. She collaborated with performance artist Lisa Kron in the development of her Obie Award-winning solo play, 2.5 Minute Ride, and directed it for performances at New York Theatre Workshop and La Jolla Playhouse, California. Other directing credits include the ANTA national tour of El Grande De Coca-Cola, Art and Always, Patsy Cline at the Pennsylvania Centre Stage, work with Perishable Theatre and most recently Filler Up! at the Gloucester Stage Company.