A Mirror Is Not a Window: Roe v. Wade | Staged Reading

The story of two women born on opposite sides of the tracks in Dallas, Texas. Growing up in the 1960s Jeannie is gay and poor and looking for love. Alison is middle-class, married, and has ambitious, revolutionary visions, wanting to change the lives of all women across this country. Their two lives meet at the crossroads of the Roe v. Wade case, when both women are only 27 years old, and Alison is the lead attorney, fighting for women’s rights to abortion. Jeannie, through coincidences of the cross-class, criminalized condition of lesbian life at that time, ends up as the plaintiff, Jane Roe.

Though the two meet only once, their names are linked forever in history. While Alison struggles with the disappointment of revolution unfulfilled, Jeannie struggles to exist. As they grow older, both women face bumpy rides, and surprising shifts, until they become emblematic Americans, representing the divide in this nation that has continued to this day.

Acclaimed author and playwright Sarah Schulman blows open the American myth of the Roe v. Wade case, and reveals its true and entirely unpredictable history, through the lives of the two very different women who lived it.

Sarah Schulman (Playwright) is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and nonfiction author whose work spans literature, theater, and film. She is the author of numerous acclaimed books, including Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP, NY 1987–1993 and Conflict Is Not Abuse. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, and Interview, and her films and plays have been presented internationally. A Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of multiple literary awards, she is a Distinguished Professor at the College of Staten Island, CUNY, and lives in New York.

Lisa Peterson (Director) is a two-time OBIE Award-winning writer and director. She wrote and directed An Iliad (Seattle Rep, McCarter Theatre, NYTW) with Denis O’Hare and The Good Book, commissioned and produced by Court Theatre. Her directing work includes the world premiere productions of new plays by Tony Kushner, Beth Henley, Donald Margulies, Naomi Wallace, Marlane Meyer, Jose Rivera, Luis Alfaro, Chay Yew and many more. She has also directed classic plays at theaters across the country, including the Guthrie, Arena Stage, Yale Rep, Hartford Stage, OSF, Baltimore Center Stage, South Coast Rep and Actors Theatre of Louisville. Lisa has directed regularly at Berkeley Rep, where she was Associate Director for three seasons, at the Mark Taper Forum, where she was Resident Director for 10 years, and at La Jolla Playhouse, where she was Associate Director for 3 years. Other recent projects include The Waves, adapted from the novel by Virginia Woolf The Song of Rome, written with Denis O’Hare; and The Idea of Order, inspired by the poetry of Wallace Stevens and written with Todd Almond.

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