Idlewild play reconsiders abortion

Last Thursday I walked into the Shiva Theater expecting to see a two-hour play about abortion. That's what the "A" in Susan-Lori Parks' "Fucking A" stands for, right? Wrong. "Fucking A," directed by Ellen Geissal '11 and Zoë Dostal '13 and performed by the Idlewild theater ensemble is a sprawling universe in its own category of epic theater.    
The story focuses on Hester, played by Katie Sherman '11, an abortionist trying desperately to reclaim her imprisoned and estranged son. Hester's world is one most corrupt; she must pay exorbitant amounts of money to see her son for one afternoon, and when she finally goes on a long-awaited picnic with him, she finds an imposter, Jailbait (Julianna Gonzalez '11), in his place.

Hester's story is paralleled by that of the Mayor, played with utmost creepiness by Danielle Morvant '10. The despot is displeased with his wife, the First Lady (Estefania Fadul '10), because she has not given him an heir yet. He sends her to the wilderness while he canoodles with his mistress, Canary Mary (Caroline Warren '11).

Throughout the rest of the play we see that Hester's son, Monster (Akari Anderson '12,) has escaped from jail and meets the First Lady in the woods. They have an animalistic and passionate affair, she gets pregnant, and faces a dilemma as to whether to keep the baby and lie to her husband or to visit Hester's shop. Meanwhile, three sadistic hunters, played by Belén Ferrer '10, Erin Gallagher '13, and Gonzalez, track down Monster while discussing the best way to torture him, and the local butcher (Dorothy Thomas '12) shares tender feelings with Hester.

Sherman's Hester stood out as one of the strongest characters for me. She portrayed the fierce love a mother feels for her offspring well and remained identifiable even when the story was not. The surprise of the evening came from Dorothy Thomas '12, who delivered a five-minute monologue oozing with dry wit and good comedic timing.

The production was set in a bare, stylized world with little room for color or joy. The set was against the entirety of one of the longer walls of the Shiva, playing with the latitude of the space in a fresh way. The colors of the set, props and lights were rooted in brown and yellow tones, evoking earth, blood, and human flesh. Trees were signified using hanging mesh fabric from the ceiling, and the hanging carcasses in the butcher shop were subtly evoked through hanging wire sculptures. Lighting was used to differentiate between the different spaces and transitions went smoothly and felt well rehearsed. Costumes also stayed in the realm of browns, tans, and beiges, while only Canary Mary, in her tacky yellow dress, and the First Lady, in her seductive red satin, diverged from the plain tones of the rest of the clothing. In most cases the design choices of the play exhibited a continuity that helped keep the audience engaged and absorbed in Susan-Lori Parks' world of violence and betrayal.

In the play, abortion does not exist as the controversial issue of women's agency and control over her body, but rather as a dirty but necessary task required by society. While most of the women are under the grip of a man or an institution, they can come and go freely from Hester's shop and abortion is accepted as a natural result of copulation at all levels of society. Abortion becomes the women's only freedom of choice in this patriarchal and repressive society. "Fucking A" was written in the tradition of epic theater and takes inspiration from Brecht's "Mother Courage." Idlewild's execution of this piece was excellent and obviously well thought out, a fact which allowed the epic qualities of the work shine through.