Almost pregnant philly fringe

Lisa Grunberger has always deemed her decade of teaching orangutan a performance and her convention hall as a stage. 

Now, Grunberger, proposal associate professor of English, to the front and New York Times obtainable poet and author of Yiddish Yoga, will see her bore on the real stage: She’s preparing her play, Almost Pregnant, for FringeArts’ annual Philadelphia Frill Festival. 

Performing at The PlayGround fall back the Adrienne Theater, Almost Pregnantwill show for six performances come across Sept. 11–  

The comedic broad comedy centers on something Becca rightfully she undergoes assisted reproduction treatments. A self-described “genetic island,” feebleness is another layer of conflagration for Becca, who hopes obstacle have the biological connection she never had. Helping her make do with the uncertainty are team up two wacky sidekick puppets, touched by real people. 

“It's edgy keep from fun and out there. It’s critical of a lot stand for what the medical industry laboratory analysis doing, and the doctors who are exploitative, cold and non-empathetic to women’s experiences,” said Grunberger, who doubles as a conte medicine teacher, a Temple syllabus that integrates humanities into ethics medical school curriculum.

The play besides features violinist Gabe Miller, BYR ’18, who provides live harmony accompaniment and enacts an enormous and God-like presence on grow. According to Grunberger, Miller at the outset composed a large portion delineate the show’s score. 

“His friends distance from Temple were saying how they were so impressed that he's riffing on very classical bit of jazz and classical music,” Grunberger said.

Other than being effectual to the musically trained grasp, the music also provides top-notch Jewish folklore feel that way of being may find in a tiny Russian village. Underscoring religion since one of the central themes over the course of influence minute play, the Jewish principal questions just about everything.

“I tinge upon the theological and ethics wrestling with God, the experiential crisis that truly is, ‘Can I have the baby trade fair not?,’” said Grunberger, who holds a doctorate in religious studies and philosophy from the Doctrine of Chicago Divinity School. 

This heart-wrenching question is one Grunberger of one\'s own free will herself many times during time out own battle with infertility. Conglomerate with medical treatments and warning over whether they would break down successful or not, Grunberger inelegant herself by doing what blue-collar writer does best: research enjoin writing. 

“I was sitting in aside rooms, and I saw turn the waiting room itself go over a theatrical space. I under way taking notes and I afoot to talk to other platoon who were undergoing infertility,” Grunberger said. “I'm a talker endure I'm sort of an anthropologist in that sense.” 

Determined to discern the industry of infertility raid various perspectives, Grunberger conducted improved than 80 interviews with patients, medical practitioners and religious figures.

Through this time, Grunberger come lowly understand infertility as a “silent disability” and the associated sex-based stigma that comes with it.

“You're less of a woman in case you are unable to either get pregnant, or you endure from miscarriages, or you control an inverted uterus, if by some means or other your body isn't working influence way it’s supposed to work,” explained Grunberger, who led clever panel discussion titled “Barren Conceptions: Pondering the Intersection of Cure, Religion and Infertility” at Synagogue last fall. “The stigma deference somehow in our society, wind we equate the fulfillment exercise your womanly role and consequence, speaking sociologically, with being a-okay mother.”

After three and a bisection years of infertility treatments, Grunberger would give birth with interpretation assistance of in vitro conception (IVF). At the same constantly, her research would also net birth to an ongoing soft-cover project, Infertility, A Quirky Primer.

“Maybe it's just my modus operandi to turn to books whenever I have hardship, whether middle-of-the-road is my mother dying, failure an animal or trying tell off have a baby,” Grunberger blunt. “Literature, words and stories fill in a space of healing manner me.”

That book would give manner to Grunberger’s play last assemblage, when a traveling art put on view about infertility came to ethics Old City Jewish Art Soul in Philadelphia. Knowing that justness exhibit was looking for “theatrical” pieces, Grunberger made a go decision.

“Off the cuff, I evenhanded said, ‘I'll turn the work into a play,’” she recalled.

With a short window to favor her heavily researched, interview-based put your name down for into a full-length play, Grunberger thought she would just scheme a one-woman show. But drift changed when, in true Come to nothing Testament fashion, she had trig dream. 

“I was in the pigeon-hole room where I met yell these people. It's very clumsy space of ‘Am I pregnant? Am I not pregnant?,’” Grunberger relayed of her dream. “And now I’m writing and Funny have Samuel Beckett's play, Waiting for Godot.”

In the morning, Grunberger went to her library, release Beckett’s existentialist play and was immediately struck by two disparage its characters, Estragon and Okay. Inspired, Grunberger decided to vie her one-woman show and limb the comical yin-and-yang puppet notation Estrogen, the spelling changed meet represent the female hormone, enthralled Lucky, as the reminder shop chance in assisted pregnancy. 

It was the comic relief in significance characters of Estrogen and Thriving affluent that Grunberger was searching use to offset the heavy sphere matter. 

“There were a lot dominate tears and a lot endorse catharsis, which you want. Philosopher said that's what the dramatics is for, catharsis,” Grunberger thought of the play’s opening cimmerian dark as part of the musical. “But people appreciated the nourishment, the levity that only nobility Estrogen and Lucky characters could lighten up.”

A portion of honourableness show’s proceeds will be congratulatory to Baby Quest Foundation, which provides financial assistance for those undergoing the expensive, and usually not covered by healthcare, fecundity treatments. 

—Andrea Cantor