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.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة January 30, 2023 من The New Yorker.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
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هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة January 30, 2023 من The New Yorker.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
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HEAVY SNOW HAN KANG
Kyungha-ya. That was the entirety of Inseon’s message: my name.
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Reckoning with Donald Trump's return to power.
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COLOR INSTINCT
Jadé Fadojutimi, a British painter, sees the world through a prism.
THE FAMILY PLAN
The pro-life movement’ new playbook.
President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.
On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.
