Giving “Birth” in Little Rock

What I love about stories the most is the power they have to teach us of possibilities that might not occur to us without them. —Ina May Gaskin

I enter the darkened theatre to find a seat on the side of a thrust stage. Behind me, I hear girlfriends comparing notes on obstetricians. Across from me, I see mothers cooing to babies in papooses on their chests. With the first few chords of an acoustic guitar, everyone’s attention turns toward projections of black-and-white photos — a baby’s face emerging through a pool of water, a team of doctors huddled over a woman giving birth, and other photos of women in labor. The lights gently fade and rise again to reveal eight actresses, wearing accents of orange, seated on wooden chairs.

Little Rock Actresses Monica Clark-Robinson, Verda Davenport-Booher, Stacy Blackburn and Stephanie Ong. Amanda (Clark-Robinson) “giving birth” while supported by her husband (Davenport) and friends. Photo by Michelle Posey Click here to enlarge

“Birth to me was all about the ‘loud, frantic, rush to the emergency room!’” laughs Jillian.

“Birth was what bad girls did to punish their mothers,” explains Janet.

“Deep in my soul I felt like: MY BODY ROCKS!” Amanda admits.

As the characters share their preconceptions of birth with the audience, I wonder: Do the men here feel uncomfortable? Do the women? And why do I feel so — excited? I am experiencing “Birth: The Play” in Little Rock, Arkansas, a city where some say attitudes toward birthing are influenced by a “subculture of fear.”

Two Little Rock midwives arranged for a local production of “Birth” after they realized too many women were experiencing childbirth in a negative atmosphere. Little Rock serves as home for a teaching hospital that specializes in high-risk births, and the midwives wanted to “educate women and the community that birth is a normal thing 97% of the time.”

“Birth: The Play” and the BOLD Movement

Karen Brody, “Birth” playwright, founder of BOLD. Photo by Judity Filgueiras Weinberg

Playwright Karen Brody explains “Birth” as a “snapshot of how women are giving birth today.” The play is based on Brody’s interviews with more than 100 American women about their low-risk experiences of giving birth. While some interviews made it into the play almost verbatim, Brody also took dramatic license by altering and combining stories to condense the interviewees into eight characters. These characters represent the “most typical stories” Brody heard, focusing on epidurals, cesareans and natural births. Since its initial staged reading in 2004, the play has been produced more than 100 times.

As with Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues” and the V-Day campaign to end violence against women, Brody’s “Birth” has been the foundation for a larger movement — BOLD, which works to promote mother-friendly birth care. The naming of BOLD occurred as a happy coincidence: The worldwide debut of the play happened to fall on Labor Day weekend, hence “Birth on Labor Day” or BOLD. The campaign invites local community artists and activists to produce the play for free. In exchange, the producer agrees to donate money to an organization that advocates for mother-friendly maternity care, host talk-backs after the show to educate women on their local birthing options, and send copies of the show with letters to three influential community members who can create positive changes in local birthing practices and policies. Also similar to “The Vagina Monologues,” “Birth” has received some criticism as the play can be viewed as biased toward natural birthing methods. Brody, however, maintains her goal is merely to educate women to make informed choices within a system friendly to their needs and wants. Since 2006, BOLD has raised more than $150,000 toward its education and advocacy goals, said Brody in a radio interview on Sound Authors.

A Little Rock Homecoming

The Little Rock production of “Birth” serves as a sort of homecoming for Brody. In 1999 and 2001, Brody gave birth to her own children at her home, then in Little Rock. Assisted by midwives from local midwifery/doula service, Birth Works, Brody says of her two-and-a-half hours of pushing: “Everyone was chanting ‘you can do it.’ For me, mentally, that was the difference between being able to do it and not do it.” It wasn’t until Brody traded birth stories with other mothers on the playground and started paying attention to media portrayals of birth that she realized her positive experience was the exception. Brody did not understand why so many of her peers, educated women with low-risk pregnancies, were treated as high-risk cases in the hospital delivery room.

BOLD Duluth, Minn., 2007 Click here to enlarge

Brody’s Birth Works midwives Ida Darraugh and Mary Alexander explained their “subculture of fear” theory. Alexander had wanted to see a Little Rock production of “Birth” for years, and mentioned her desire to Arkansas actress Verda Davenport during her first two midwife-assisted pregnancies and home births. On the third, Alexander devised an exchange — free midwife services if Davenport agreed to produce the play.

A little over one year later, I sat with Davenport in her sunlit living room amid a gathering of actors, nurses and midwives involved with “Birth.” “Giving birth is like Buddhism. It’s like life: If you fear it, it’s going to hurt like hell,” Davenport enthused. “When we talked about natural birthing sounds in childbirth class, I was like ‘I got this’ because it’s theater,” explained director Stacy Pendergraft; she followed with a demonstration complete with deep cleansing breath and low, resonant moan. “Women need to share birth stories,” actor, nurse and former midwife Stacy Blackburn intoned. Though convened under the auspice of an interview, these women required no prompting to discuss their experiences as mothers and actors participating in “Birth.” And I felt a nagging impulse to join in: “Well, with my son’s birth…” and “Yeah, I felt that, too.” Brody discusses how some women would insist to her that they didn’t have a birth story but, four hours later, she would be forced to politely cut them off. It seems that women want to discuss birth but rarely have the opportunity in American society.

“Birth: The Play” as a Means of Reclamation and Information

Americans often characterize childbirth with two words: scary and painful. Media depictions of the laboring woman portray her as a victim of the birthing process rather than an active participant in giving birth. The characters in “Birth” give voice to these phobias and fears, inviting audience members to collectively purge themselves of the anxiety associated with labor and delivery through positively re-presenting women in labor.

“Birth” performance in San Francisco, Calif., September 2008. Photo by Lexine Alpert Click here to enlarge

The character of Amanda is an example; She wants to give birth naturally but fears the responses of friends who choose to take epidurals. But she chooses not to play the passive patient. As Amanda pushes, she repeats her mantra of “My body rocks!” Amanda’s doula encourages the audience to recite Amanda’s mantra: “My body rocks….my body rocks…”. “Louder!,” exclaims the doula, “Say it with her!” And the audience yells with Amanda: “MY BODY ROCKS! MY BODY ROCKS! MY BODY ROCKS!” until Amanda delivers a healthy baby boy, maintaining her role as an active agent in the birthing process by instructing the doctor and attendants on how she wants to give birth. The audience’s recitation of “MY BODY ROCKS!” with Amanda serves as a collective act of reclaiming the creative power within the female body and the intuitive wisdom of generations of women.

In addition to re-presenting the woman in labor, “Birth” aims to prepare women for what they may encounter during delivery through the sharing of birth stories. According to renowned midwife and author Ina May Gaskin, birth stories “teach us that each woman responds to birth in her unique way and how very wide-ranging that way can be.” However, with the onset of medically managed maternity care, and its heavily prescribed drugs, many women in America lost their ability to share their birth story because they could not remember it. The characters in “Birth” model how to tell stories of birth and enable audience members to experience the feelings aroused in listening to those stories.

Birth stories can also be cautionary. “Even if the birth story is scary,” says Little Rock midwife Alexander, “it gives women wisdom to know what they should avoid.” One character, Lisa, had gone to midwives with the intention to give birth naturally. When an ultrasound showed Lisa’s baby in the breech position, the midwives pressured Lisa to get a c-section. After the c-section, Lisa grieved her birth:

I felt like my body physically understood that it never went into labor…I had a very strong sense after I had Ashton that my baby had died. Not that I really thought he was dead at any point…I just felt that my body had experienced his birth as a death…I should have been allowed to have at least one labor pain. That’s all I wanted.

Doula Amy Cefalo said Lisa’s story was a very powerful moment for the husband of one of her clients. After the play, he explained to Amy that he had never heard of the grief some women may experience as a result of unwanted medical interventions in birth because no one ever talks about grieving in the context of a new baby. This exchange of information empowers women who have not yet given birth, women who want a different birth experience, and the partners, like this husband, who support them.

“Birth” performance in Chicago, Ill., September 2007. Photo by Anita Evans Click here to enlarge

The character of Jillian best embodies Brody’s ultimate message for women. The play ends with Jillian’s fourth birth story. Jillian pushes: “Aaaaaa…..aaaaaaa…..aaaa! Ooooooh! It BURNS! It BURNS!” Her midwife assures her “Great! Here she comes!” as Jillian starts to cry. “She’s out! She’s out!” Jillian’s friend announces. And then, from Jillian’s older child: “She’s beautiful, mommy! She’s an angel!” In Jillian, Brody embodies the process of childbirth self-education. With each of her four births, Jillian takes increasing ownership of the birth process leading up to the climax in which she gives birth at home as she chooses and surrounded by only those people she has invited. Some birthing women truly cannot give birth in the manner they most desire because of health circumstances beyond their control. For the majority of women, however, the message of the BOLD movement is clear: Educate yourself and make informed choices about your birthing options.

The Future of “Birth” in Little Rock

Davenport proposes presenting a staged reading of the play at Arkansas Governor’s School, a summer program for gifted and talented high-school students. More than 300 young people could learn about birthing options and mother-friendly maternity care through this reading. Brody and her BOLD goals may enter a community through the production of “Birth: The Play.” Once the play’s message takes hold, however, the local advocacy it inspires continues through artist/activists like Davenport. BOLD lives beyond its theatrical beginnings -- at least in Little Rock.

April Gentry-Sutterfield is a mom and free-lance theatre practitioner and teaching artist living in Little Rock, Arkansas.

References

The BOLD Movement. 8 June 2009

Brody, Karen. Birth: The Play. 2005. Cast copy. Available from the BOLD Movement Web site.

Gaskin, Ina May. Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth. New York: Bantam Books, 2003.

Gustavson, Kent. “Radio Interview with Karen Brody,” March 2009. Sound Authors. 8 June 2009

Pierce, Rebecca. “Radio Interview with Karen Brody,” 12 January 2006. Inspiration Corner. 97.3 WRIR: Richmond, Va. 8 June 2009

Original CAN/API publication: June 2009