After ending a preview efficiency of her hourlong stand-up present about reproductive rights, “Oh God, a Present About Abortion,” the comic Alison Leiby was ending dinner Monday night time when she checked her telephone.
She had dozens of messages, all concerning the breaking information {that a} leaked draft of a Supreme Courtroom opinion confirmed that the courtroom seemed to be poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional proper to abortion in the USA.
“It was simply an absolute confrontation with actuality, that this isn’t theoretical anymore,” Leiby, a self-described abortion rights activist maybe greatest recognized for work co-producing “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” mentioned in an interview.
As Leiby started to course of what this potential resolution would imply for the nation, she additionally realized that she wanted to rapidly begin eager about the way it would possibly reshape her present, a 70-minute stand-up set about her personal undesirable being pregnant and the way it was resolved with a Saturday afternoon journey to Deliberate Parenthood. So at Tuesday night’s preview on the Cherry Lane Theater in New York, she addressed the information on the high of the present.
“I’m not going to disregard the literal elephant within the room,” Leiby mentioned on Tuesday, thanking the particular person behind the lone guffaw within the viewers for getting her wordplay.
From Opinion: A Problem to Roe v. Wade
Commentary by Occasions Opinion writers and columnists on the Supreme Courtroom’s upcoming resolution in Dobbs v. Jackson Ladies’s Well being Group.
“I’m not altering something in response to the information, however I perceive that your emotions towards it is perhaps completely different,” Leiby mentioned. “If one thing is humorous, not humorous, cathartic — really feel that. That’s legitimate. I’m not up right here dancing for applause. We’re on this collectively.”
The information that the courtroom could possibly be on the verge of overturning Roe, which might result in quick abortion bans in some states and immediate others to maneuver to challenge bans and restrictions, comes as theaters and cinemas round New York Metropolis and the nation are presenting works about abortion.
In Atlanta, performances of “Roe,” a play by Lisa Loomer targeted on the plaintiff within the landmark case and the lawyer who argued it in entrance of the Supreme Courtroom, start Friday. The identical day, the Metrograph Theater in New York will start a collection dedicated to movies that contact on or discover abortion, together with Josef von Sternberg’s 1931 drama “An American Tragedy” and the 1987 romantic comedy “Soiled Dancing.” And this summer season, a small nonprofit theater in Chicago will premiere “Roe v US,” a play billed as giving “voice to the ladies who made the selection.”
The identical night time Leiby’s present opens within the West Village, a play that appears at abortion via a really completely different lens is scheduled to be held at a theater in Midtown: “Oh Gosnell,” about Kermit Gosnell, a physician who was convicted of homicide in 2013 following botched late-term abortions. The case turned a rallying cry for the anti-abortion motion. Phelim McAleer, an Irish-born filmmaker and producer, mentioned that he had seen Leiby’s present billed as an “abortion comedy” and determined to counter it by producing a play about Gosnell that attracts its textual content from a grand jury report and trial transcripts, saying he needed to offer audiences an “various viewpoint.”
The present has confronted difficulties: The theater it initially deliberate to make use of backed out, and two of its seven actors walked out shortly earlier than previews have been set to start.
Intent on ensuring the play goes forward at its new venue, McAleer — who has made documentaries questioning the opposition to fracking, and mentioned he was engaged on a movie about Hunter Biden — mentioned that he was nonetheless processing the Supreme Courtroom information. “It undoubtedly means the Gosnell story is extra related than ever and performs about abortion are extra related than ever,” he mentioned.
Leiby and McAleer’s two reveals may hardly be extra dissimilar. One is a comedy about an uneventful abortion process that makes a case for broad abortion entry and the opposite is a graphic play about an notorious abortion supplier whose clinic was described by prosecutors as a “home of horrors.” However Leiby and McAleer share one related aim: to speak about, and to get audiences to hearken to, a piece about abortion.
“Oh God, a Present About Abortion,” — which is being introduced by the comic Ilana Glazer and directed by Lila Neugebauer — is scheduled to run via June 4. After seeing an earlier iteration of Leiby’s present, Jason Zinoman wrote in The New York Occasions that, “And not using a hint of didacticism, she finds humor within the messy, complicated, typically banal expertise of an undesirable being pregnant and an abortion.”
The present tells her story: of a 35-year-old comedy author who learns she is pregnant in a lodge rest room in St. Louis. She is so assured in her disinterest in having youngsters that within the act, she compares her eggs to these by Fabergé (“female however ornamental”). At Leiby’s first point out of Deliberate Parenthood, a gaggle of younger, feminine public well being college students who have been within the viewers burst into cheers.
One member of the group, Zoe Verzani, 24, who wore a hot-pink Deliberate Parenthood T-shirt to the present this week, mentioned that she thought Leiby dealt with the fabric good.
The State of Roe v. Wade
What’s Roe v. Wade? Roe v. Wade is a landmark Supreme courtroom resolution that legalized abortion throughout the USA. The 7-2 ruling was introduced on Jan. 22, 1973. Justice Harry A. Blackmun, a modest Midwestern Republican and a defender of the suitable to abortion, wrote the bulk opinion.
“She was acknowledging that this was her expertise,” however not the one expertise, Verzani mentioned, including, “she made area for different folks’s experiences.”
Leiby calls within the present for extra discussions of abortion. “We solely speak about abortion when it’s in disaster when it’s being legislated away,” she says. “The extra we discuss overtly and actually about abortion, the much less of a disaster it’ll be.”
As a result of, she notes, it was not a disaster for her — it was a pesky inconvenience. That’s what made her really feel a wave of guilt after listening to the Supreme Courtroom information. As a New Yorker, she famous, her entry to abortion is unlikely to vary, whereas ladies in, for instance, Missouri — the place Leiby realized she was pregnant in 2019 — stand to lose practically all abortion entry if the leaked draft of a Supreme Courtroom opinion turned a actuality.