FRINGE FILE #4: Touring Show Spotlight: Too Fat to Run

A promotional image for Fat Theatre Project’s presentation of Too Fat to Run, one of more than a hundred original shows appearing at the 2026 Minnesota Fringe Festival.

Many Fringe shows are ephemeral: a product of a particular time, place, and crazy and/or compelling idea, vanishing into the ether with festival’s end. Not so with Eileen Tull’s Too Fat To Run, an autobiographical show inspired by other people’s unwanted advice. On Friday, August 7th, TFTR will have its sixth festival opening this August, as part of the 2026 Minnesota Fringe Festival.

Read a 2015 interview with Eileen Tull about Too Fat to Run.
Read a 2026 review of Eileen Tull’s Too Fat to Run.

Chicago-based performer and playwright Eileen Tull.

For Chicago-based performer-playwright (and runner) Eileen Tull, the road to completing her first marathon was filled with more than potholes and sore feet. Her aims were modest: finish her local marathon (the Chicago Marathon, one of the largest and most prestigious running events in the world)’s 26.2 miles. Don’t get hurt. So she enrolled in a training course through the Chicago Area Runners Association, and put in structured running for a year and a half. Then, as she approached the 20-mile run training mark, an unsolicited email arrived in her inbox, telling her that she was too fat to be running a marathon.

The starting impetus for the show was an out-of-the-blue email received while training for the Chicago Marathon, one of the world’s largest. Photo courtesy of WorldMarathoner.com.

“It was such a ludicrous and frankly rude email,” Tull said. “From someone who had no idea how hard I had been working for a year and a half.” And, because she was already writing and performing her own plays, she also thought, “Oh, I absolutely must make this a one-woman show.” Now, five bookings later – that’s a premiere at the Elgin Fringe in 2024, plus stops in Arkansas, Wisconsin, and two different Chicago area bookings – she’s coming to Minnesota.

After signing up for the 2022 Chicago Marathon, Tull received mixed messages from people in her life. Some were supportive, but some were “concerned” about her fat body being able to finish all 26.2 miles. In collaboration with directing team Jessica Landis and Jules Dreitzer, Tull created a 60 minute, highly physical play for people who want to reconnect with their bodies on their own terms, free from shame, comparison, or unrealistic expectations.

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Amy Donahue

Amy Donahue is a staff reviewer at the Twin Cities Arts Reader. She interned with the magazine during the summer of 2017, served as a guest contributor while studying abroad in Europe that fall, and has moved up to regular old reviewing. She served as interim Editor-in-Chief in 2023.

She admits to being at least 50% terrified of contemporary German opera.