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Birth, The Play

Karen Brody exposes the myths about the miracle of childbirth

A A A Comments By Dusti Rhodes Thursday, Aug 30 2007

“The hardest stories to hear, by far, were the ones of women who had been physically violated,” says playwright Karen Brody. “The hardest stories to write in the play were the ones where women were verbally violated.” The women who inspired the stories in Brody’s play weren’t victims of domestic abuse or residents of a war-torn country. They experienced their mistreatment through the miracle of childbirth. Birth, The Play is based on Brody’s 100 interviews with women who gave birth between 2000 and 2004. “The number of women who told me accounts of their births where they were treated without compassion and were verbally talked down to are so many I lost count,” Brody says. “How can we be treating anyone like this?” Brody shares serious and joyous accounts through the experiences of eight women who discuss cesarean sections, epidurals and doctors who violate women by performing unnecessary or unwanted procedures.

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“I think the majority of people view birth as scary because this is just about all we see on television shows,” she says. “It’s important to correct these misconceptions because the truth is, birth is not an emergency medical situation, or an illness, and most women are not going to be suddenly woken up with contractions and have their babies in five minutes in their driveways.”
Aug. 31-Sept. 1, 7 p.m.; Sun., Sept. 2, 2 p.m.; Mon., Sept. 3, 1 p.m.

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