We are a company of artists guided by the principles of

reproductive justice.

OUR MISSION

Our mission is to place reproductive stories in public memory by developing representational practices for telling these stories onstage. These practices refer to process (artist experience) and presentation (audience experience), both of which work toward:

  • Connections to somatic memory;

  • Body literacy and sovereignty; 

  • The development of individual and collective philosophies of birthing; 

  • Means of marking reproductive grief, joy, and rage;

  • Reproductive justice. 

“Reproductive Justice: the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.”

-SisterSong

Our Birth Story

The BPP began as a site of artistic research in 2020. Madeline Wall, now company director, was then recently graduated from the University of Minnesota, where she was introduced to the reproductive justice movement through a Sociology of Women’s Health course co-taught by a local midwife and a nurse practitioner-turned Minnesota legislator. 

Madeline studied representations of the pregnant body in the premodern world through a history department research grant, wrote a script weaving Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure with the labor story of an incarcerated parent, and began to develop practices for staging scenes of childbirth, informed by training in intimacy choreography. 

The Birth Play Project’s first production played to limited, masked Minneapolis audiences in autumn of 2020. That script, I With Things New Born, was a revision of the Shakespearean birth play conceived during Madeline’s undergraduate years, and some of its passages were incorporated into our adaptation of Measure for Measure in autumn of 2024. This is just one example of our commitment to longitudinal storytelling, which — like many labors — is often an intricate, circuitous dance between work and rest. 

In addition to I With Things New Born (2020) and our adaptation of Measure for Measure (2024), we have produced the world premieres of Joel F. Wilshire’s Aquelarres, after the works of Fransisco de Goya y Lucientes (2021) and Madeline Wall’s Mary’s Wondrous Body (2022 & 2023). 

As of 2025, we are a company of twelve associate artists, and we are a fiscally sponsored project of Springboard for the Arts.

Associate Artists

These artists began their relationship with The Birth Play Project through one full production process. They now participate in monthly meetings, take advantage of training opportunities, and serve as ambassadors for the BPP in the larger community.