[Philadelphia News and Opinion] Normally, when we get a press release from a local theater company about its latest work, the press release includes, you know, the name of the play. But Philly theater company Lightning Rod Special bucked that trend this week went they sent us a notice announcing its musical comedy about abortion, which debuts in August at the Painted Bride."We were going with ’Fetus Chorus,’" explains co-creator Alice Yorke, pictured below. "But there were a lot of mixed feelings about it. The best comment we got was, ’I understand you want to provoke your audience, but do you want to do that in the theater or before they even get there?’"
The abortion musical has its roots at the Pig Iron School for Advanced Performance Training, where Yorke and the co-creators studied. Yorke says it was there that she developed a character of an "irate gun-toting fetus running around and shouting about how it would kill anyone who tried to hurt it."
In those early days, there was also a Busby Berkeley-inspired song-and-dance kick-line of fetuses, though Yorke isn’t sure that it will be included in the final version.
Yorke, a 31-year-old South Philadelphia resident, tells Philly Mag that the company is currently debating other titles. Her favorite is "The A Word." Others in the mix: "Baby Girl," "Mine," "Monster," and "Wanted."
Now, if you’re thinking that this is just some pro-choice propaganda, Yorke downplays that idea.
"We’re definitely, as makers, on one side," Yorke admits. "But we’re trying to ride a funny line. This isn’t self-congratulatory. I want us to examine why we feel this way. I want people to reckon with themselves. This is a show about personhood, the right to bodily autonomy, and the violence of the partisan politics that surrounds this issue."