The Boston Globe: Ruby Rae Spiegel has suffered for her art: As a junior at Yale, she earned a C-minus in the class “Work and Daily Life in Global Capitalism.” But the grade, she says, can be attributed not to partying or the distractions of a first love affair. Instead of having her head buried in a textbook, she was writing her first full-length play.
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DIY abortion is a terrifying concept and it is currently why we have legal abortions! The stigma against abortion is ridiculous because no one remembers what it was like before legal abortion. Women would take wire coat hangers, insert them into their uteruses, and scrape out the child. This would often cause major internal bleeding and infections because this is neither safe, sterile, nor remotely smart. Millions of women died from this process because abortions were illegal and they had no other options.
Getting pregnant is not as happy go lucky as everyone thinks when it is unplanned. Having a child changes a person’s whole life plans since you can’t just dump them in the woods anymore. Women are forced by nature to carry around the baby for 9 months, and then are expected by society to raise and care for it until it reaches adulthood. I know for certain that at this point in my life, I wouldn’t be able to do that for a child, so why would I subject myself to pain and misery for 9 months of my life then to dump the child in an orphanage? Abortions should not go away because people don’t remember the horror that went on before they became legal, and I should not suffer because old white men say it’s against their own religion. My body, my decision!
A lot of the time I think plays that people describe as being about “taboo” or “controversial” issues aren’t really as taboo as people act like they are. In my mind, this is one of the cases where the topic really is taboo. As a culture we don’t really talk about abortion, and when we do we are usually discussing it more in terms of the legality or morality of it, not the personal reality of it. Talking about self-induced abortion is even rarer. I think this play is very important. It takes the topic of abortion and moves it from an ethical discussion to a discussion about how abortion affects people, and how laws that prevent it hurt people. Part of the power of theater is it’s ability to get an audience invested in the lives of characters different from them, and by extension to get them to care about, and hopefully better understand the issues people with lives similar to the lives of those characters face. I think Spiegel really takes that aspect of theater to her advantage, and I hope audiences really consider what she has to say.
Abortion is an extremely important right that women should have easy access to. I think this play is phenomenal in its analysis of the emotional turmoil and destruction that comes with a abortion. The mental state of a woman who wants an abortion or is put into a situation where she is as desperate as Amy (the pregnant character in Spiegel's play) should be shown and talked about. Understanding that abortion is hard on all parties involved humanizes the issue. If people understood why women get abortions and understand that when an abortion is preformed it is needed, thewy might be more willing to accept this practice as a necessary one. What I would also love to see in the theater is a display of the situation around the abortion of a wanted child. These surgeries are preformed only when vital to saving the life of the mother or in cases where the fetus has severe health problems. Such situations are, like self-induced abortion, rarely talked about and would help further societies acceptance of legal abortions. Sorry about the mostly incoherent rant, but abortions need to be legal and availiable. Its the mothers choice and that should be respected.
This sounds like a pretty worth while play, I wish I could see it. At first I was a bit surprised to read that the play was difficult to buy people on, especially when she was already young and established. There are so many people in New York putting on shows that are controversial because that is, in part, what is popular right now. Though thinking about it further, the subject of abortion is a touchy one in certain places. New York is actually one of those places obviously, but it is the subscribers and tourists that are mainly responsible for the profit of these theaters. Thinking of those individuals, yes, probably a good amount of them do not want to change ignorant minds about abortion. It is interesting to think about the difference between the audience this play will attract and the audience that should see a play like this one. I feel like people who will go to see a show like this are more…pro-choice.
I think one of the main points of theatre is pushing boundaries and talking about things that no one else will talk about. This play seems to do both. Abortion itself is such a controversial topic, and DIY abortion is even moreso. I think most people who are supposedly "pro-life" don't really stop and put themselves in others' shoes before making that claim. This play forces people to put themselves into those shoes and experience the need for an abortion. It also points out the dangers of DIY abortions.
The idea of capturing a normally very confident person within a moment of weakness usually yields a compelling narrative. Though I do not know how this concept has been executed as an actual play, the general outline provided here seemed like a careful selection of oft used, attention grabbing story elements made remarkable - nay, noteworthy - by the presentation and background of the writer. Though the relationship between a writer and their work is important, the merit or "original" quality of a work must be able to stand separately. Though the author's story, and process of development for this piece is interesting, by removing herself from the story and distancing the work from her, the potentiality to explore and utilize the individual, unique aspects of her story is eliminated, leaving behind a seemingly straight forward (and perhaps hollow) tale about two different people interacting on a kind of level of elevated banality.
I think it's very interesting that she had such trouble finding a theater to produce her play. While most theaters pride themselves on pushing boundaries and presenting presenting controversial material that makes a person think, I think they would rather be controversial about topics they are fairly certain their audience will agree upon, like sexuality for instance.
However, abortion is still an incredibly uncomfortable topic for a lot of people. And to come face to face with a situation in which a young girl is trying to self-induce an abortion would be difficult subject matter for even the most pro-choice among us. Because seeing a girl rather do that than talk to people about her situation makes facing the stigma that still hangs heavy on abortion inevitable.
I always hate reading these kinds of articles, because inevitably it just makes me sad I can't hop on a plane and go see it myself. I also find it funny she had such a hard time finding a theater to produce the work - people want theater that is thought provoking, but not TOO thought provoking, as that will offend our subscriptiors. I also find it ironic that she was unable to find a venue for a play she failed for her class on participating in capitalism. She failed to participate in capitalism once to create her art and again to preserve its integrity. I thought that was neat.
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