Reproduction Salon + Blood of the Lamb

Summer is almost here!

And so is the Reproduction Salon! It is time to come together again for an extravagant evening on the gorgeous rooftop terrace of Bush House, overlooking the Thames and the London Skyline.

This year, we are thrilled to bring you Blood of the Lamb: an award-winning New York theatre production about reproductive dystopia in Post-Roe America. Described by the Guardian as “the best of political theatre,” this urgent play is “a powerful piece of activism” that vividly exposes infrastructural reproductive injustices with “admirable subtlety, control and power.” --see below for many rave reviews.

We will follow the play with a Q&A with the cast from NYC and a panel of reproduction experts.

After the play, it is time for the Reproduction Salon: there will be sparkling drinks, an excellent sound system, colourful projections, and the opportunity to get to know and reunite with lots of people in our field. We will also have a reproduction book sale and, of course, a chance to share your own publications!

This is an invitation to everyone working on reproduction, be it reproductive technologies, abortion, stem cells, contraception, demography or developmental biology. You may be a scholar, writer, clinician, activist, regulator, podcaster or PhD student. It is a time for all of us to come together, showcase our work, make future plans, strategise and reconnect.

It will be delicious -- don't miss it.

4.00 - 5.00pm - Blood of the Lamb (Bush House North Terrace)

5.00 - 6.00pm - Q&A and Panel discussion (Bush House North Terrace)

6.00pm to sunset - Reproduction Salon (Bush House South Terrace)

About the play

In the not-too-distant future, a pregnant woman faints on a flight from California to New York. After an emergency landing in Texas, she wakes up without her ID, phone or luggage, detained by an unexpected adversary: a court-appointed attorney assigned to represent the fetus inside her.

This electrifying thriller is about two women with opposing beliefs, forced to navigate the bureaucratic chaos of post-Roe America. The play simmers with provocative twists and surprising humour. Winner of the Critics Circle Award at the 2024 Adelaide Fringe Festival and 2025 Drama Desk Award nominee for Outstanding Play.

Cast

Nessa: Meredith Garretson

Val: Christa Scott-Reed

Director: Brian Letchworth

About the playwright

Arlene Hutton’s other major works include Letters to Sala, Last Train to Nibroc (Drama League nomination for Best Play), According to the Chorus (New Light Theatre Project), See Rock City and Gulf View Drive (Rubicon Theatre: Ovation Award). An alumna of New Dramatists and member of Ensemble Studio Theatre, New Circle Theatre Company, New Light Theatre Project, and Honor Roll!, Hutton is a three-time winner of the Samuel French Short Play Festival, winner of the Macy’s New Play Prize, nine-time finalist for the Heideman Award, Francesca Primus Prize finalist, and recipient of an EST/Sloan Commission and NYFA Fellowship. Development and residencies include the Bechdel Group, Centenary Stage, the Lark, the MacDowell Colony, New Harmony Project, SPACE at Ryder Farm, Stillwrite, and Yaddo. Hutton’s works have been presented at FringeNYC, Off-Broadway, regionally, in London, and seven times at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Her scripts are published by TRW, Dramatists Play Service, Samuel French, Dramatic Publishing and Playscripts and appear in numerous anthologies. She teaches playwriting for The Barrow Group.

Reviews from the Fall 2024 Off-Broadway production at 59E59 Theatres in NYC:

“Timely and compelling…Blood of the Lamb is an essential must-see show…The play is superbly written by Arlene Hutton and expertly directed by Margot Bordelon. The time is now to see this show that shines a light on a hot-button issue.” - BroadwayWorld

“A compact howl of a play… There’s a conscious activism at work in Blood of the Lamb, an entreaty that we all listen — for just a moment, and in a moment where opinions are guarded like castles under siege — to something that dares to aspire to change minds.” - Sara Holdren, Vulture

“★★★★ – Powerful and relevant…Blood of the Lamb, somehow or other, appears to have been devised and written yesterday, today, and tomorrow. “ - Steven Suskin, NY

Theatre Review

"★★★★★ – I cannot say enough about this extraordinary piece of theatre…This galvanizing production of intelligent arguments, humorous fumbles, and desperate attempts at humanity is a must see.” - Front Row Center

“A humdinger of a play, effectively and scathingly satirizing the post-Roe assault on reproductive rights in this country while offering up a moving tale of two women on opposite sides of the partisan divide.” - Talkin' Broadway

“Masterfully written and executed…These two women gave incredible performances that burned with the kind of intensity that only comes from reality.”

- Pages On Stage

“Alarmingly real …Blood of the Lamb holds one’s attention and skillfully depicts a situation that, if it hasn’t yet occurred, seems frighteningly imminent.” - Off-Off-Online

“The acting, directing and other production elements are stellar…an engrossing hour of theatre.” -TheaterMania

Reviews from the Summer 2023 production at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

"★★★★★ - A powerful abortion-rights drama that shocks and outrages…a pithy twohander that packs the punch of a state-of-the-nation epic...Hutton isn't dully beating us over the head with a topic – instead, our outrage is stoked by the work's dark entertainment value, which marries a satirical excoriation of the patriarchal system with the twists of a trenchant thriller." - The Telegraph

“★★★★ - acutely tense drama… [Abortion law statistics are] never mentioned nor force-fed to us in the play, but shown in action, within the horrifying bounds of this scenario, and left to waver unsettlingly in our minds, as the best of political theatre does.” - The Guardian

“★★★★★ - Beautiful, suspenseful script…Women will want to see it, men should see it, and politicians…Well, good luck to us all.” - British Theatre Guide

“★★★★★ - Hutton drip feeds plot points with an exquisite sense of timing…This is a powerful piece of activism, an excellently-crafted play, and perhaps more importantly, a public service announcement to anyone who can get pregnant: you are at risk even if you're just visiting or passing through a place that has criminalised abortion. None of us can be complacent.” - Fest Magazine

“★★★★★ - Arlene Hutton’s Blood of the Lamb pulls no punches: it’s a searing indictment of recent changes to abortion laws in the USA… this heartbreaking and powerful production also manages to make us laugh at times, though generally in disbelief….I want to call it ‘urgent’, because this kind of thing is actually happening in the real world. Now.” – Bouquets and Brickbats

“★★★★ - Alarmingly real, fantastically portrayed…well written…It’s shocking to know that the basis of this piece comes from fact rather than fiction.” - West End Best Friend

“★★★★ - Incendiary…The horror of this play is that so much of it is realistic... [Hutton] has created a political play of admirable subtlety, control and power.” – Broadway Baby

“★★★★ - The rescinding of Roe v Wade is tackled head-on in this powerful twohander… as Atwoodesque as it is Kafkaesque… Blood of the Lamb, with its flyoverstate fever dream of a narrative, presents a story of two Americas: Nessa is trapped in the wrong one.” – The List

About the host

The Reproduction Salon is brought to you by the Reproduction Research Group at King's College London. This event has also been made possible with the financial support of the Wellcome Trust (318909/Z/24/Z) as part of the Speculative Fertilities project.

Lucy van de Wiel is a Senior Lecturer in Global Health and Social Medicine. She is the Director of the Reproduction Research Group at King's College London.

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