I With Things new Born

DIRECTOR’S NOTE

I decided to produce a play, and I decided that the play’s performance weekends would straddle the presidential election. Today I am anxious and I’m asking myself: why did I do this? 

I did this because the play depicts a precipice of becoming. I did this because the story is intimate, specific, and grounding. I did this because someone wise once told me: ‘If you’re missing something, give it.’ 

The world of I With Things New Born is a dystopia — fraught with civil unrest, dangerous disease, oppressive theocracy, and institutions of justice and healthcare that perpetuate systemic harm.

The world of I With Things New Born is also a small, burgeoning utopia — a world where the heroism of an incarcerated pregnant person demands our absolute focus, where a first-time birth-giver is respected as a credible knower, where a medical event is a traumatic event is a healing event is a personal odyssey, where we do not feed off of each other’s shame but rather hold each other up to the light and speak of the beauty we see as we work to transform strangers into beloveds in fast, harrowing moments. 

If you are one of the people who will be with us at one of our four remaining performances this weekend, we will do everything we can to keep you safe. Our play has been called euphoric, and by God, do we need some euphoria right now. Let us show you what we see. Let us offer a vision for how things could be new again.