Journalist and playwright Paula Kamen first began researching Jane, the underground feminist collective founded in Hyde Park that helped people find safe abortions in the pre-Roe v. Wade years, back in the early 1990s. The play she eventually created from interviews with those involved with Jane has had several iterations over the years, including a star-studded reading in New York in September featuring Cynthia Nixon, Ana Gasteyer, and Kathy Najimy (among others) done as a benefit for the pro-choice theater organization A is For.
PAULA KAMEN: I had the idea to track down women who used and ran Jane after meeting a Jane member on a panel on different feminist generations that we were on in 1991. I was there because at that time, I was representing the young ones, with a book I had just written soon after college about Gen X views of feminism [Feminist Fatale]. One of the women on the panel had been involved with Jane, and after she described this network doing thousands of underground abortions, I couldn’t believe this really happened. I had heard absolutely nothing about it before then, despite considering feminism my “beat” as a freelance journalist.
Fast forward to 2016. I felt new urgency to tell the story with the Supreme Court turning even more right wing. And Jane, which had been very obscure before, to the point of seeming like a bizarre thing to ever write about, was in the spotlight, with at least three movies in the works. With all these versions being based on both coasts, I wanted to tell the story from the ground in Chicago. I also had learned more about dramatic writing in the meantime, knew about things to fix, and wanted to reflect the Trump era with a new ending and beginning. I found a dramaturg to work with in NYC, Julie Kline, who saw the potential of the script. While before there was no main character (the main character was the group), I drew out three identifiable main characters, each of whom organically was a lead Jane driver during different times during the history of the Service (which Jane members called itself). The version I worked on with her debuted at a celebrity benefit last September, to benefit A is For. That is the version that Connective will read.
What are some other plays that you’ve encountered that look at the issue? We have both seen Keely and Du in the past [a 1993 play by the pseudonymous Jane Martin, about a pregnant woman kidnapped by anti-choice activists] and Ruby Rae Spiegel’s Dry Land [a 2014 play about two teenage girls in Florida, one of whom asks her friend to help her terminate a pregnancy on her own]. Do you have thoughts on how those works or others approach it, since they aren’t taking the documentary/drama approach of your play and Roe?
Yes, there is still a lack of plays that deal honestly with women’s real experiences with abortion, without referring to it obliquely. A very under-dramatized topic. I’d like to see more that reflect the actual experience of a typical person who gets an abortion: a poor woman of color who is already a parent, and one who has to overcome a lot of obstacles (red state laws, finances, etc) to to get one.
I am frustrated that there is a binary way we talk about “choosing life.” The world doesn’t cleave neatly into “people who have abortions”‘ and “people who choose life.” Many who have abortions go on to have children and/or parent in some form or another. Many who are already parents choose abortion as the best option.
Roe: Through 2/23: Wed-Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM; also Sun 2/2, 7:30 PM; Thu 1/30 and 2/20, 2 PM; Tue 2/11, 7:30 PM, Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn, 312-443-3800, goodmantheatre.org, $20-$60.
Jane: Abortion and the Underground: 1/30-2/1: Thu-Sat, 7:30 PM, Nox Arca Theatre, 4001 N. Ravenswood, connectivetheatrecompany.com, $12 online, $15 at the door.
