ABOUT THE PLAY
In these dramatic monologues, twenty-three women reveal the details of their lives, families and relationships as they tell the stories of their abortions. Sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking, but always thought provoking, The Abortion Monologues exist in stark contrast to the real world in which women seldom publicly discuss this choice. The characters in this play face everyday hardship, financial crisis, relationship break down, illness, death, radical shifts in expectations and the truth about themselves and their own deepest desires.
The characters in this play will challenge you to think again about what you believe and why you believe it.
The Abortion Monologues premiered in Portland, Oregon in April, 2009 to an audience of almost 400 people, many of whom work as providers in clinics throughout Canada, The United States and Mexico. Audience members say the play is accessible and moving and that it captures the emotions and ambivalence many women feel when making the choice to abort. One provider said that the play offered him a rare opportunity to speak openly about his work. Another audience member described the play as a "contemplative look at what is real."
At the Canadian Premiere in Calgary, Alberta in February 2010, one audience member said, "I laughed out loud. I cried, especially when, early on, after she'd spoken, one of the women backed up into [the chorus] and other women reached out for her and guided her — incredibly powerful for me, the community of women. I think your play helps reaffirm and heal the community of women, a community that's crucial to all of us, and that in so many ways has been and is being assaulted and harmed by intent, accident and neglect." Another said, "We laughed, empathized, identified, supported and cheered.... It was about women first, and rhetoric second."
Another audience member said, "I was amazed. Not only by the writing, and the acting, and the directing, and the sincerity, and the 'realness' - but by how it moved me. Tonight made me realize how lucky I am. How lucky that the nurses were so nice to me and were willing to help with my abortion options, and how my Mom supported me no matter what. I ended up keeping the baby, who is now the love of my life, but it felt good to have those options so I could make the choice. It was always up to me."
More Praise for The Abortion Monologues
Cawthorne’s insightful prose captures the complex circumstances surrounding a woman’s decision to terminate a pregnancy. The Abortion Monologues gives a voice to the perspectives of real women who are all too often missing from the public debate. These powerful monologues have the potential to change the way people talk about abortion.
— Vicki Saporta, President and CEO of the National Abortion Federation
MEDIA REACTION TO THE CANADIAN PREMIERE
IN CALGARY, ALBERTA
REVIEW — Dispatch: The Abortion Monologues
By Halfstep Friday, February 5, 2010
Some titles make you a little more squeamish than other titles.
The Abortion Monologues? Yikes!
Still, maybe that said more about me than the play, a series of about 20 monologues by Jane Cawthorne that made their Canadian debut last night at the Leacock Theatre in Mount Royal University.
The play was sold out. Unless they made themselves invisible, I didn't notice anyone protesting the show, although the people taking tickets for Brighton Beach Memoirs, the other show playing, looked mildly envious at the crowd swarming into the Leacock. There was also one large, ominous-looking security dude standing off in the distance, projecting an air of physical threat.
The show itself? It was a night of storytelling, well performed by the large cast (who were directed by Tarra Lois Riley), who formed a kind of Greek chorus up onstage as each one of the 20 performers took their turn doing her monologue. (Full disclosure: my wife Melanee Murray-Hunt was one of them).
There was the young woman who went up to Fort Mac because they paid her $24 an hour to do a job so boring she couldn't be bothered to say what it was, who got pregnant from a guy she met in a bar.
There was the young woman with the fat sister who liked the way she looked with her metrosexual boyfriend, who knew he wouldn't respond well to the news that she was pregnant.
There was the abortion clinic employee who was afraid to tell people where she worked. "I get death threats," she said, "Because of where I work."
It was a pretty hot topic, something everyone has strong opinions about, both pro and con. All of which makes talking about it in a play that's performed in a dark theatre a perfectly good idea.
That's what theatre is there for: to locate the subjects we have strong feelings about, lay them out on the table, and explore them in a way that's passionate, controversial and human.
And after the show, everyone can go for a beer.
The other thing that resonated about the show was listening to women's stories. They told so many good ones — and it felt as if still, at the place we're at, early in the 21st century, that there is still something taboo about women telling their stories in the broader culture, as if their stories aren' t all our stories. (Many of them funny as hell, too).
After the show, one bystander said, "I'm glad to see so many men here."
I thought, true, that. But I guess, upon further reflection, why not?
shunt@theherald.canwest.com
Macleans, February 8, 2010
http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/02/03/abortion-play-draws-a-big-crowd/
The Calgary Herald, February 4, 2010
http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Abortion+play+beyond+politics/2521140/story.html
(Factual error: The play premiered in Portland in April 2009. The Calgary show sold out two weeks prior to it's performance.)
Metro Calgary, February 03, 2010
http://www.metronews.ca/calgary/local/article/441226--backlash-hasn-t-hit-mru-production-of-abortion-monologues
CJSW Radio Show – Yeah, What She Said, podcast Monday February 1, 2010
http://www.cjsw.com/podcasts/ywss/2010-02-01.mp3
CBC, January 18, 2010
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2010/01/18/calgary-abortion-monologues-prolife-prochoice.html
The Reflector, Mount Royal University, January 27, 2010
http://www.thereflector.ca/2010/01/27/shining-the-spotlight-on-reality/
(Factual error: Tarra Lois Riley was not involved in the writing process, but is a magnificent Director.)
Calgary Sun, January 26, 2010
http://www.calgarysun.com/life/columnists/kelly_doody/2010/01/26/12624476.html
The other Monologues
Hold on to your chastity belts, conservative Cowtown.
Despite estimates it would go over like a wet sock in Calgary, the controversial new play The Abortion Monologues sold out a solid 10 days before it hits the stage for a one-night-only Feb. 4 performance at Mount Royal University's Leacock Theatre.
Chronicling the journey of 19 women telling tales ranging from hilarious to heartbreaking, you can bet that, in the same way The Vagina Monologues went from marginal to mainstream, we'll be seeing more of this one. The A-word has arrived.
Calgary Sun, January 17, 2010
Abortion play author hopes work provokes thought, not backlash
By NADIA MOHARIB, Calgary Sun
The author of a play delving into the abortion issue hopes it will attract theatre-goers, not disruptive controversy.
The Abortion Monologues by Calgarian Jane Cawthorne makes its Canadian debut next month at Mount Royal University.
It is touted as "a controversial new play," but Cawthorne hopes it shares rarely told stories and paves the way for healthy debate.
"This is a play, this is art," she said.
"I think it really looks at the lives of real women - I hope nobody takes issue with that.
"I think there are enough real-world things to worry about."
Bill Spring, head of MRU security, said they are aware of the passions the issue provokes and have had some brief discussions about it but have no indications of any issues.
"It's a concern, but not a major one," he said.
"Again, it's just a play."
Vicki Goodfellow Duke, a Calgary Pro-life board member, said she doesn't know much about The Abortion Monologues but said art can be a way to promote "critical thinking" as long as it doesn't muddy the waters on the reality of abortion.
"Obviously, theatre and literature are excellent vehicles for ideas," said Goodfellow Duke.
"Anything that opens minds to think, question and reflect on the realities of abortion is a good thing.
"To me, the abortion issue gets really clouded with emotional language, people in general are not well educated about the reality of when life begins and the realities of abortion, the process and the consequences of it all."
Cawthorne said the monologues are a complication of many voices, often silenced given "polarizing, politics" and "judgement" abortion attracts.
She said about 30% of Canadian women have an abortion yet it's very difficult to talk about it.
"None of these are actual women," Cawthorne said.
"These are untold stories, a way for womens' stories to be told without any woman taking on that judgement.
"Whatever your views on abortion, this play will challenge you think again about what you believe and why you believe it."
The Abortion Monologues (www.abortionmonologues.com) runs February 4 at MRU's Leacock Theatre.
MORE MEDIA
From the University of Texas Brownsville Production, April 26, 2010
Abortion, final ‘Difficult Dialogue' in Ford Foundation grant
"By LAURA TILLMAN, The Brownsville Herald
When it comes to difficult conversations, Liza Dimas says abortion is one of the toughest. Though Dimas is directing a play entitled "The Abortion Monologues," which will be presented at UTB-TSC this evening at 7:30 p.m., she still hasn’t decided whether or not she will invite her mother.
"She’ll be like, ‘You’re directing what?’" Dimas said, as she sat with two of the actors in the play and her co-director, Professor John Cook.
Dimas is the event organizer for the Ford Foundation’s Difficult Dialogue Initiative at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College, a series that has asked the community to engage in tough conversations about divisive topics.
Cook is hoping that Brownsville residents who don’t necessarily support the right to have an abortion, like Dimas’s mother, will come to the play, thereby fulfilling the mission of the Difficult Dialogues grant. The Ford Foundation has asked campuses like UTB-TSC to create a space where people of differing opinions on issues like immigration, religion and gender can come together for civil conversations in an otherwise increasingly polarized political landscape.
"I really think we have accomplished something with these dialogues," said Cook, who began working on these events more than three years ago. "People who have lived in the Valley a long time tell me that ten years ago, no one would have had a symposium on gay and lesbian issues, for example."
While "The Abortion Monologues" will mark the last event funded through the Ford Foundation grant, Cook says that UTB-TSC will continue to put on Difficult Dialogue events. The Free Speech Ally, for example, challenges commonly held beliefs with demonstrations and conversation.
Though it’s tempting to say that many in Brownsville are strangers to protest, the Difficult Dialogue series has proven that assumption false, by using radical imagery to force confrontation. In one demonstration, for example, Dimas asked several girls to dress up in provocative outfits and hold signs, asking passersby whether they thought the girls "deserved" to be raped for dressing this way. In another, students with pro-choice posters stood with taped mouths, the word "live" written on their lips.
During tonight’s play, student Stephanie Lucas will be performing two monologues. In the first she will portray a married woman who has an abortion after deciding that she won’t be able to care for her sick husband if she has a child. In the second she will play a young woman who finds out she is pregnant, only to have her boyfriend break up with her to marry someone else. It is unclear in the play whether the second woman chooses to have an abortion or not.
Lucas says she was adamantly against abortion before participating in the play. Now, she says, she has realized all of the very real situations in which women find themselves.
"Sometimes abortion is the only answer," Lucas said. "If I had a 13-year-old daughter who was raped, I don’t think she should have that child."
Lucas hopes that her boyfriend’s mother, who she tried to discuss the play with, will come and see for herself. Then, maybe they could have the kind of difficult conversation UTB-TSC has spent the last few years trying to promote.
"The Abortion Monologues" will be held today at 7:30 p.m. in the Gran Salon, in the UTB-TSC Student Union. The play is free and open to the public.
In these dramatic monologues, twenty-three women reveal the details of their lives, families and relationships as they tell the stories of their abortions. Sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking, but always thought provoking, The Abortion Monologues exist in stark contrast to the real world in which women seldom publicly discuss this choice. The characters in this play face everyday hardship, financial crisis, relationship break down, illness, death, radical shifts in expectations and the truth about themselves and their own deepest desires.
The characters in this play will challenge you to think again about what you believe and why you believe it.
The Abortion Monologues premiered in Portland, Oregon in April, 2009 to an audience of almost 400 people, many of whom work as providers in clinics throughout Canada, The United States and Mexico. Audience members say the play is accessible and moving and that it captures the emotions and ambivalence many women feel when making the choice to abort. One provider said that the play offered him a rare opportunity to speak openly about his work. Another audience member described the play as a "contemplative look at what is real."
At the Canadian Premiere in Calgary, Alberta in February 2010, one audience member said, "I laughed out loud. I cried, especially when, early on, after she'd spoken, one of the women backed up into [the chorus] and other women reached out for her and guided her — incredibly powerful for me, the community of women. I think your play helps reaffirm and heal the community of women, a community that's crucial to all of us, and that in so many ways has been and is being assaulted and harmed by intent, accident and neglect." Another said, "We laughed, empathized, identified, supported and cheered.... It was about women first, and rhetoric second."
Another audience member said, "I was amazed. Not only by the writing, and the acting, and the directing, and the sincerity, and the 'realness' - but by how it moved me. Tonight made me realize how lucky I am. How lucky that the nurses were so nice to me and were willing to help with my abortion options, and how my Mom supported me no matter what. I ended up keeping the baby, who is now the love of my life, but it felt good to have those options so I could make the choice. It was always up to me."
More Praise for The Abortion Monologues
Cawthorne’s insightful prose captures the complex circumstances surrounding a woman’s decision to terminate a pregnancy. The Abortion Monologues gives a voice to the perspectives of real women who are all too often missing from the public debate. These powerful monologues have the potential to change the way people talk about abortion.
— Vicki Saporta, President and CEO of the National Abortion Federation
MEDIA REACTION TO THE CANADIAN PREMIERE
IN CALGARY, ALBERTA
REVIEW — Dispatch: The Abortion Monologues
By Halfstep Friday, February 5, 2010
Some titles make you a little more squeamish than other titles.
The Abortion Monologues? Yikes!
Still, maybe that said more about me than the play, a series of about 20 monologues by Jane Cawthorne that made their Canadian debut last night at the Leacock Theatre in Mount Royal University.
The play was sold out. Unless they made themselves invisible, I didn't notice anyone protesting the show, although the people taking tickets for Brighton Beach Memoirs, the other show playing, looked mildly envious at the crowd swarming into the Leacock. There was also one large, ominous-looking security dude standing off in the distance, projecting an air of physical threat.
The show itself? It was a night of storytelling, well performed by the large cast (who were directed by Tarra Lois Riley), who formed a kind of Greek chorus up onstage as each one of the 20 performers took their turn doing her monologue. (Full disclosure: my wife Melanee Murray-Hunt was one of them).
There was the young woman who went up to Fort Mac because they paid her $24 an hour to do a job so boring she couldn't be bothered to say what it was, who got pregnant from a guy she met in a bar.
There was the young woman with the fat sister who liked the way she looked with her metrosexual boyfriend, who knew he wouldn't respond well to the news that she was pregnant.
There was the abortion clinic employee who was afraid to tell people where she worked. "I get death threats," she said, "Because of where I work."
It was a pretty hot topic, something everyone has strong opinions about, both pro and con. All of which makes talking about it in a play that's performed in a dark theatre a perfectly good idea.
That's what theatre is there for: to locate the subjects we have strong feelings about, lay them out on the table, and explore them in a way that's passionate, controversial and human.
And after the show, everyone can go for a beer.
The other thing that resonated about the show was listening to women's stories. They told so many good ones — and it felt as if still, at the place we're at, early in the 21st century, that there is still something taboo about women telling their stories in the broader culture, as if their stories aren' t all our stories. (Many of them funny as hell, too).
After the show, one bystander said, "I'm glad to see so many men here."
I thought, true, that. But I guess, upon further reflection, why not?
shunt@theherald.canwest.com
Macleans, February 8, 2010
http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/02/03/abortion-play-draws-a-big-crowd/
The Calgary Herald, February 4, 2010
http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Abortion+play+beyond+politics/2521140/story.html
(Factual error: The play premiered in Portland in April 2009. The Calgary show sold out two weeks prior to it's performance.)
Metro Calgary, February 03, 2010
http://www.metronews.ca/calgary/local/article/441226--backlash-hasn-t-hit-mru-production-of-abortion-monologues
CJSW Radio Show – Yeah, What She Said, podcast Monday February 1, 2010
http://www.cjsw.com/podcasts/ywss/2010-02-01.mp3
CBC, January 18, 2010
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2010/01/18/calgary-abortion-monologues-prolife-prochoice.html
The Reflector, Mount Royal University, January 27, 2010
http://www.thereflector.ca/2010/01/27/shining-the-spotlight-on-reality/
(Factual error: Tarra Lois Riley was not involved in the writing process, but is a magnificent Director.)
Calgary Sun, January 26, 2010
http://www.calgarysun.com/life/columnists/kelly_doody/2010/01/26/12624476.html
The other Monologues
Hold on to your chastity belts, conservative Cowtown.
Despite estimates it would go over like a wet sock in Calgary, the controversial new play The Abortion Monologues sold out a solid 10 days before it hits the stage for a one-night-only Feb. 4 performance at Mount Royal University's Leacock Theatre.
Chronicling the journey of 19 women telling tales ranging from hilarious to heartbreaking, you can bet that, in the same way The Vagina Monologues went from marginal to mainstream, we'll be seeing more of this one. The A-word has arrived.
Calgary Sun, January 17, 2010
Abortion play author hopes work provokes thought, not backlash
By NADIA MOHARIB, Calgary Sun
The author of a play delving into the abortion issue hopes it will attract theatre-goers, not disruptive controversy.
The Abortion Monologues by Calgarian Jane Cawthorne makes its Canadian debut next month at Mount Royal University.
It is touted as "a controversial new play," but Cawthorne hopes it shares rarely told stories and paves the way for healthy debate.
"This is a play, this is art," she said.
"I think it really looks at the lives of real women - I hope nobody takes issue with that.
"I think there are enough real-world things to worry about."
Bill Spring, head of MRU security, said they are aware of the passions the issue provokes and have had some brief discussions about it but have no indications of any issues.
"It's a concern, but not a major one," he said.
"Again, it's just a play."
Vicki Goodfellow Duke, a Calgary Pro-life board member, said she doesn't know much about The Abortion Monologues but said art can be a way to promote "critical thinking" as long as it doesn't muddy the waters on the reality of abortion.
"Obviously, theatre and literature are excellent vehicles for ideas," said Goodfellow Duke.
"Anything that opens minds to think, question and reflect on the realities of abortion is a good thing.
"To me, the abortion issue gets really clouded with emotional language, people in general are not well educated about the reality of when life begins and the realities of abortion, the process and the consequences of it all."
Cawthorne said the monologues are a complication of many voices, often silenced given "polarizing, politics" and "judgement" abortion attracts.
She said about 30% of Canadian women have an abortion yet it's very difficult to talk about it.
"None of these are actual women," Cawthorne said.
"These are untold stories, a way for womens' stories to be told without any woman taking on that judgement.
"Whatever your views on abortion, this play will challenge you think again about what you believe and why you believe it."
The Abortion Monologues (www.abortionmonologues.com) runs February 4 at MRU's Leacock Theatre.
MORE MEDIA
From the University of Texas Brownsville Production, April 26, 2010
Abortion, final ‘Difficult Dialogue' in Ford Foundation grant
"By LAURA TILLMAN, The Brownsville Herald
When it comes to difficult conversations, Liza Dimas says abortion is one of the toughest. Though Dimas is directing a play entitled "The Abortion Monologues," which will be presented at UTB-TSC this evening at 7:30 p.m., she still hasn’t decided whether or not she will invite her mother.
"She’ll be like, ‘You’re directing what?’" Dimas said, as she sat with two of the actors in the play and her co-director, Professor John Cook.
Dimas is the event organizer for the Ford Foundation’s Difficult Dialogue Initiative at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College, a series that has asked the community to engage in tough conversations about divisive topics.
Cook is hoping that Brownsville residents who don’t necessarily support the right to have an abortion, like Dimas’s mother, will come to the play, thereby fulfilling the mission of the Difficult Dialogues grant. The Ford Foundation has asked campuses like UTB-TSC to create a space where people of differing opinions on issues like immigration, religion and gender can come together for civil conversations in an otherwise increasingly polarized political landscape.
"I really think we have accomplished something with these dialogues," said Cook, who began working on these events more than three years ago. "People who have lived in the Valley a long time tell me that ten years ago, no one would have had a symposium on gay and lesbian issues, for example."
While "The Abortion Monologues" will mark the last event funded through the Ford Foundation grant, Cook says that UTB-TSC will continue to put on Difficult Dialogue events. The Free Speech Ally, for example, challenges commonly held beliefs with demonstrations and conversation.
Though it’s tempting to say that many in Brownsville are strangers to protest, the Difficult Dialogue series has proven that assumption false, by using radical imagery to force confrontation. In one demonstration, for example, Dimas asked several girls to dress up in provocative outfits and hold signs, asking passersby whether they thought the girls "deserved" to be raped for dressing this way. In another, students with pro-choice posters stood with taped mouths, the word "live" written on their lips.
During tonight’s play, student Stephanie Lucas will be performing two monologues. In the first she will portray a married woman who has an abortion after deciding that she won’t be able to care for her sick husband if she has a child. In the second she will play a young woman who finds out she is pregnant, only to have her boyfriend break up with her to marry someone else. It is unclear in the play whether the second woman chooses to have an abortion or not.
Lucas says she was adamantly against abortion before participating in the play. Now, she says, she has realized all of the very real situations in which women find themselves.
"Sometimes abortion is the only answer," Lucas said. "If I had a 13-year-old daughter who was raped, I don’t think she should have that child."
Lucas hopes that her boyfriend’s mother, who she tried to discuss the play with, will come and see for herself. Then, maybe they could have the kind of difficult conversation UTB-TSC has spent the last few years trying to promote.
"The Abortion Monologues" will be held today at 7:30 p.m. in the Gran Salon, in the UTB-TSC Student Union. The play is free and open to the public.