It’s usually the anti-abortion activists—the sign-wavers outside clinics, the tellers of post-op horror stories—who want to show you, in great detail, what a fetus looks like. There’s something about the peach-and-hibiscus shock of flesh and blood, about the smallness of that embryonic presence: the picture is supposed to appall you into some new way of thinking and feeling about the politics of birth. It’s only right, then, that the first big laugh of the raucously pro-choice musical “The Appointment,” by the Philadelphia-based theatre collective Lightning Rod Special, directed by Eva Steinmetz at WP Theatre, is earned with a similar kind of representation.
When the curtain opens, there’s a fetus onstage, moving slowly and subtly, as if bobbing in fluid. It’s soon joined by several others. We know they’re fetuses precisely because of those images we’ve seen used as agitprop, even if we’ve strained to avoid them. The fetuses are played by members of Lightning Rod Special— Katie Gould, Jaime Maseda, Lee Minora, Brett Ashley Robinson, Scott R. Sheppard, Alice Yorke, and Danny Wilfred, all vibrating with talent and hip smarts— wearing skintight, skin-colored suits marbled with purplish-gray veins. From their tummies sprout ropelike umbilical cords.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der January 30, 2023-Ausgabe von The New Yorker.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der January 30, 2023-Ausgabe von The New Yorker.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
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TRIPLE FAULT
A meal is never just a meal in a Luca Guadagnino movie; each bite is a prelude to a kiss, every feast a form of foreplay.
NIGHT MUSIC
“Stereophonic” and Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club” on Broadway.
LITTLE OLD HER
Is Taylor Swift doing too much?
BEASTLY MATTERS
Where the logic behind the concern for animal welfare begins and ends.
PULSE
He footed off his shoes, the logs balanced on an arm, and tugged the door shut.
TOWER IN FLAMES
What kind of right is academic freedom?
THE BATTLE FOR ATTENTION
How do we hold on to what matters in a distracted age?
ON NATIVE GROUNDS
Deb Haaland faces the cruel history of the agency she now leads.
DESIGN FOR LIVING
Can converting office towers into apartments save empty downtowns from ruin?
HOROSCOPES WRITTEN BY MY MOTHER
Your zodiac alignment this month is governed by Venus, the planet of intuition, something my daughter Bess seems to lack.