Abortion has always been a hot-button issue and the arguments for and against it are about more than the termination of a pregnancy. It is about control and agency over one's own body. Idle Muse Theatre Company is now staging Jane: Abortion and the Underground, dramatizing a true 1970s story of women in Chicago returning control to women no matter their income, race, or ability to pay. Playwright Paula Kamen crafts a compelling story that is suspenseful even knowing how it turns out. The documentary style direction by Morgan Manasa is enhanced by really cool projections designed by Laura J. Wiley.
The Jane Collective started in 1969 with the Chicago Women's Liberation Union at the University of Chicago. A graduate student named Heather Booth (Jillian Leff) gets a call from a male friend whose sister is "in trouble," which was code for an unwanted pregnancy when it was considered inappropriate even to say the word pregnant. Leff plays Heather as a firebrand woman who speaks her mind and calls out the misogynist bullshit that is still so common today. The word gets around and Heather is joined by other women Ruth (Jennifer Mohr) and Jody (Kristen Alesia) to build the collective that becomes Jane Abortion Counseling Services.
Mohr and Alesia project the strident confidence needed in dealing with politics and any kind of community group that isn't run by men. Mohr projects Ruth as authentic with an edge. Women's lives were literally at stake with back-alley abortions or attempts to self-abort with chemicals or insertion of improvised scraping tools such as a coat hanger. The Jane Collective found doctors who demanded anonymity and had the patient brought in blindfolded the entire time to preserve their medical licenses. Ruth finds a doctor who has been performing abortions for more well-to-do women for $1000.
Troy Schaeflein plays Dr. C with a sinister edge that made my skin crawl. There are scenes recreating procedures that women endured without anesthesia where Dr. C snaps at the patients to quit whining and to be still. Schaeflein is also quite funny in an earlier scene as a student obviously out of his depth. He is a Maynard Krebs-type from The Dobie Gillis Show. Krebs was a prototype beatnik played by Bob Denver and it is suggested that he might be stoned. A Schaeflein line about Karl Marx got a good laugh but it also illustrates how clueless some of the men in academia were. Men were expected to go to college in the post-war prosperity and some of these guys became the ones who stifled women's ambitions and freedom.
The play does not skim over the fact that the Jane Collective started out as a group of white women who had to prove that their mission was more than privilege. Cat Evans plays the sole Black woman in the collective who points out that some Black men in particular felt that abortion was a genocidal plot to keep the population of Blacks down. Evans plays Micki as a woman who is understandably leery of the liberal 'lady bountiful' white women but also has to get involved because there are Black women who desperately need the services. A woman could not continue working if she was pregnant. There was no maternity leave and a woman was required to give her notice if she were pregnant.
Elizabeth McDougald is funny and sympathetic as housewife Alice who lets her home be "the front" where the women could arrange counseling and then be taken to various sites for the procedure. Caty Gordon, Jamie Redwood, and Aleta Soron round out the women of the collective. Gordon is really believable as Sunny the self-emancipated teen who finds herself caught up in life, finds her way to the Jane Collective, and finds a new purpose in helping other women.
Joel Thompson is wonderful as Reverend Parsons who guides some women who come to him for help to Jane. There are some really good Catholic jokes thrown in as Rev. Parsons is a Baptist (!) at the Theological Seminary at the University of Chicago. This town was run by the very Catholic Richard J. Daley for a long time. Another tidbit that I found hilarious was a mention of my alma mater Mother McAuley. A sophomore got pregnant because she was told it wouldn't happen on her very first time.
The play is for the most part from verbatim interviews with women from the Jane Collective who actually learned to perform the abortions themselves from midwives and paramedics. They were able to perform abortions for much less and even pro bono for destitute women. The music is a flashback of hits from the '50s and '60s, curated by music and sound designer L.J. Luthringer. The sounds of the El grinding on the tracks and seeing the old Green Hornet buses attached to electric lines took me back to that time on a cellular level. Chicago has always had a gritty and determined vibe to me that I remember from back in the late '60s and '70s. There is a reference to an underground newspaper that Jane advertised in called The Seed. It was run by hippies and one man who became a pornographer.
Props designer Tristan Brandon found or made some very authentic props. The princess phones and the early answering machine are really fun as are the costumes by Elizabeth Monti. Every aspect works together to create a good play that is very important today as the rights that women fought so hard for are being taken away. Jane: Abortion and the Underground not only retells history but also takes a stance on women having to take things into their own hands again. I highly recommend this play as a good dramatization and a story that needs to be told again. Three Stars.
Jane: Abortion and the Underground runs 2 hours and 10 minutes with one 15-minute intermission. It is playing through October 15 at the Edge Off-Broadway Theater, 1133 W. Catalpa in the Edgewater neighborhood. Tickets and more information can be found at www.idlemuse.org/productions/jane
For more information on this and other plays, see theatreinchicago.com.
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