Method Acting

Charlie And The Chocolate Factory was a hit with the kids yet certain healthy eating lobbyists had always been concerned about its promotion of junk food, so they wrote their own version, Toria And The Tofu Factory, a story about a group of children who win tickets to a healthfood factory, where they meet various entertaining demises such as drowning in a vat of wheatgrass juice or being turned into rice cakes. Amazingly, it was even more popular and the day inevitably came when it was made into a movie and a theme park followed.

Samantha was very committed to method acting. She could hardly believe her luck at securing a summer job acting as one of the Scarlets in the Inventing Room tableau, but was concerned that her performance would be less than authentic. Luckily, when she got the job she’d managed to persuade her manager that it would be necessary to try the scene out for real.

Standing self-consciously in her bright red body stocking, she waited for the gum to arrive. It was essential for her to go through the experience exactly as it was written in order to convince her audience. With baited breath she waited for the “magic” sun dried tomato to arrive. Billy Bonka picked it out of the machine and handed it to her. She had to be word perfect for this.

“What’s so fab about it?”, she asked, nervous about what was about to happen.

“This little sun dried tomato is a three course dinner, but I haven’t got it quite right yet.” replied Bonka. In his hand, he held the shrivelled piece of fruit. Or vegetable.

She grabbed it and stuck it in her mouth. Chewing it, she had to keep up the pretence that it was a real tomato rather than a piece of gum.

“I don’t care.” Yes, that was it.

“Oh, I wouldn’t do that, I really wouldn’t.”

And on went the dialogue, which by now she knew off by heart. Here came the tricky bit. Without breaking character, she surreptitiously grabbed the thin flexible tube by her foot and gummed it to the side of her mouth with the before she said the next line, miming chewing. The tube vibrated as the soup started to squirt into her mouth.

“It’s tomato soup! Hot and creamy, and I can actually feel it running down my throat!” And she really could. It was hard to speak as she alternately gulped and said the lines. The soup kept filling her mouth and she kept swallowing. It began to fill her stomach. Since she hadn’t eaten all day, it brought a nice, warm, sated feeling. Then the red spotlight shone on her face.

“What’s happening to your face? Scarlet, you’re scarlet!”

She steeled herself for the next bit. Faintly, from behind the wall she heard the soup pump change gear, and it began to gush into her mouth, which she closed and grabbed the tube properly. It gurgled down into her stomach, which was now full. Luckily, from this point onwards, she had no more lines.

She began to feel quite stuffed with tomato soup and could feel her stomach getting quite tight. This had to happen quite quickly for dramatic effect. A wave of nausea passed over her as she filled, but it soon went. She could now hear and feel the soup squirting out of her stomach further into her, filling her more. The pressure was starting to build up inside her and as she looked down her whole belly was bulging and felt really stretched. This was enough now.

“What’s happening to you now? You’re blowing up like a balloon!”

This was supposed to be the signal for the pump to switch off and be replaced by the inflation of her suit. Unfortunately, the script hadn’t included that particular stage direction and she heard the whirring in the other room step up another notch. The soup pump was speeding up!

Soup was now gushing into her. She had to keep gulping it down despite her ever-increasing girth and rounding belly or she would suffocate. The other actors simply seemed to be impressed that she was giving the most convincing performance of her life as she flailed her arms and legs about, trying desperately to get someone to realise that this was real, that she was really swelling up with enough tomato soup to feed her for a month. She was now totally full up with it and it was forcing her chest up, crowding her lungs and making her feel like she was about to split open. How was she going to stop it? Was she going to?

Still the soup surged into her and she didn’t know where to put it. Her rounded Pilates ball of a belly bulged out before her and she fell over under its weight, bouncing briefly and rolling along. More and more soup pushed her out in all directions. Now she felt like she was going to pop. She was full to bursting with the soup and it was showing no signs of stopping.

She was totally round now, limbs splayed out. She creaked and shuddered as the soup continued to inflate her, managing to gasp briefly, but there was scarcely any room for her to breathe now anyway. Then, just as she was sure she was about to explode, the soup ran out.

Samantha lay there, a human tomato just like in the book. She felt like she’d never want to eat or drink again. Her whole consciousness was as full as she was with the incredible feeling of being filled to the brim with tomato soup, with not an inch left inside her. She was faintly aware of the midgets employed as Impa-Limpas rolling her through the double doors out of the Inventing Room and hoped she’d be squeezed before she exploded.