Stethoscope Stage Play Festival Spotlights GLP-1 and Body Image Stigma

FORT WORTH — The stage lights inside an auditorium at the Amon G. Carter Museum of American Art opened on a mundane conversation in a local shop aisle between TCU Theatre students, Kellen Clinton and Avery Tarbet, that instantly exposed a hidden friction point where personal health care and public judgment collide.

“What have you done?” Clinton said. “I walk with a women’s group five days a week and I know for a fact you are not a member. What have you been doing to get this size? You’ll have to join our next walk.”  

Tarbet paused for a second to think before responding with a confused look on her face.  

“I thought it was a closed group,” Tarbet replied. “I don’t understand; you never invited me to join before. The only thing that’s changed about me is my weight so do I look a little more inviting?” 

Clinton scoffed at her. “You lose some weight and forget your manners, and you won’t even share your secret,” Clinton said. 

This tense exchange was part of a deep dive into the stigma around the use of GLP-1 medications for weight loss, addressed during the 2026 Stethoscope Stage Play Festival, co-presented by Theatre TCU and the Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine at Texas Christian University.  

Founded and directed by Ayvaunn Penn, an assistant professor in the TCU Department of Theatre, the initiative bridges the gap between artistic expression and clinical reality. A joint review committee of theater faculty and the Burnett School of Medicine Physician Communication team vetted original monologues submitted from applicants around the world. The resulting performances acted as an unvarnished mirror to contemporary health care struggles. For instance, the monologue by Clinton and Tarbet was written by Rachael Brennan and titled, “Have a Blessed Day, Sir” highlighting how everyday interactions can fundamentally alter a person’s self-image and emotional health. 

Following the 10 performances, the creative and clinical worlds merged for a panel discussion featuring Sarah Meredith, D.O., a family medicine physician at Baylor Scott & White Health; Antonio Miranda, PhD, RD, CDCES, a registered dietician; and Grant Fowler, M.D., Chair of Family Medicine at the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU. 

The panel dissected the heavy themes in current medical headlines, focusing directly on the nuances left out of popular media narratives. For the clinical faculty on stage, the true value of the performance was in its power to expose the unspoken psychological burdens patients bear behind closed doors. 

“What I think is really important is they brought up other issues with GLPs that are not talked about in the media,” Dr. Fowler said. “Things such as ‘should you feel guilty if you lost the weight from using a GLP?’ and the emotional part of it. People think if you’re taking the medicine the weight just falls off, but it requires a lot of hard work to go with it.” 

That emotional weight includes the mental health effects of GLP-1 medication use when patients see the weight return once the medications have stopped, according to Dr. Fowler. 

“What happens when they’ve lost the weight and it comes back with a vengeance,” he said. “You can’t cure the problem if you don’t deal with the mental health side of it as well.” 

By confronting the deep-seated biases overweight and diabetic patients encounter daily it forces a level of direct and vulnerable dialogue that rarely occurs during standard clinical visits. 

“These body image questions got brought during the performances which never get brought up one on one with your physician,” Dr. Fowler said. 

By bringing these raw patient stories into a major community space, the festival reinforced a core lesson for TCU’s medical community: a clinician must understand the human story long before opening a prescription pad.  

“This is a start,” Dr. Fowler said. “When we see playwrights writing about it. Authors writing about it. It’s overdue because it’s a very powerful tool, we have not explored all the consequences for or all the benefits for.”