Woman, uninterrupted

Jennifer Berry addresses epidemic 'pill pop'

By Elizabeth Marglin, for the Colorado Daily
March 23, 2004

Hell has no fury like a woman not on anti-depressants. Boulder playwright Jennifer Berry's new one-woman show, "Big Pharma," which opened at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (BMoCA) on Friday, is a scathing, deeply personal look at the way pharmaceutical companies are targeting women in their thirties as prime candidates for Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil.

The idea for the play began when Berry noticed a direct correlation between the amount of airplay the anti-depressants were getting on television and the number of her friends who had started taking them.

Berry, a tall, striking woman who will only reveal her age as 30-something, is deeply disturbed about what she calls the "marketing of unhappiness." "We all feel unhappy sometimes," she said in an interview. "Everyone is vulnerable to that. But now we're not trying to deal it with it first."

Today, pharmaceutical advertising is one of the fastest-growing categories of advertising. In 1997 the FDA softened its requirements that TV and radio advertising contain extensive information about prescription drugs' side effects. Unburdened by having to tediously include all the small print, pharmaceutical companies could now use direct-to-consumer advertising to market medications in a more patient-friendly light.

Currently, direct-to-consumer advertising is allowed only in the United States and New Zealand, but it is undergoing a trial period in the European Union for drugs related to AIDS/HIV, diabetes and asthma.

Advocates of direct-to-consumer marketing say that it encourages patients to participate in their healthcare decisions and helps start a dialogue between patients and doctors.

But Berry vehemently disagrees. She sees the ads as a form of drug pushing, showcasing anti-depressants as the habit of choice of highly effective women. "We were the generation that was told "Don't do drugs in the '80s' only to be told 'Ask your doctor for this.... in the '90s,'" she says in one of the play's monologues.

And women are asking. Berry, in the show, says that more women in their thirties are buying anti-depressants than any other consumer. The ads tout the medications as the answer to everything from PMS to postpartum depression. Berry points out the way a lot of new disorders, like premenstrual disphoric disorder (PMDD), have "popped up at the same time that a lot of drugs have popped up to fix these disorders."

"It's all about money and big business," Berry said.

Berry began her research on "Big Pharma" four years ago. She recorded TV commercials and ripped out ads from magazines. She got on every mailing list for every pharmaceutical company that she could find, which led to some interesting looks from other tenants in her apartment building. She did over 20 interviews, some with representatives of pharmaceutical companies.

The show uses a very simple set and few props, which she says is influenced by the late Spalding Gray, who became famous for his intimate, moving stage monologues, several of which were made into films such as "Swimming to Cambodia" and "Monster in a Box."

In Berry's multimedia presentation, film, slides and music convey the perspective of both advertiser and consumer. Berry plays a variety of roles: she is at turns an advertising executive, a doctor, a homeless woman, an artist, and her own grandmother.

The jaded advertising executive explains the way ads turn the "three S's - sad, submissive, and sloppy" - into the "three P's - perky, peppy, and pretty." The ads market anti-depressants in terms eerily similar to laundry detergent commercials: a failsafe product that will wash away unseemly stains in no time.

Berry, a performance teacher at Naropa who has written and produced eight plays, said that the common theme of all her plays is "strong heroines trying to overcome obstacles of oppression." In "Big Pharma," Berry wanted to show "how the problems of her generation fit into the larger context of social problems."

Berry calls our contemporary culture "the Great Anti-Depression." She is critical of the "pill pop" as the method of choice to relieve depression and advocates it only as a last resort, after other means, such as therapy, have been explored.

Towards the end of the play, one of her characters has an epiphany in which she realizes "the healing was in the pain." A recurring subtext in the play is that the raw experience of depression can offer insight that the medicated approach glosses over.

Ultimately, Berry says, "theater has always been political, the biggest avenue for social change." "Big Pharma" is her plea for "a return of some sort of moral standard in advertising." Eventually, Berry would like to take the show nationwide.

"The show is very intimate and provocative," says BMoCA associate curator Brandi Mathis. "I think it will generate much thought and discussion."

After the Saturday night performance, April 3, Berry will host a question-and-answer session. Anyone who has seen the show prior is welcome to attend.

"My job as an artist is to hold up a mirror to what's happening in our culture," she said. "What people choose to see in that mirror is up to them."