Karen Brody
Birth is a documentary-style play based on interviews playwright Karen
Brody conducted with mothers across America. It tells the true birth stories of eight
women painting a portrait of how low-risk, educated women are giving birth today. Since 2006 the play been performed around the world as part of
BOLD, an arts-based global movement inspiring communities to create childbirth choices that work for mothers.
This edition of the book includes the entire play, playwright's reflections, and the impact the play has had on BOLD communities. It also includes a foreword by Christiane Northrup, MD, FACOG, a well-known authority on women's health and wellness.
Karen Brody’s critically-acclaimed play, Birth, is currently playing in theatres
around the world as part of BOLD, a worldwide arts-based movement inspiring communities to create childbirth choices that work for mothers . She has written for Mothering Magazine and
several other magazines. Brody produced a short film about BOLD, Being BOLD, in 2007. Before becoming a
writer she was a community organizer working with women’s groups in Belize,
Guatemala, Kenya and New York City. Brody has a masters in Women and
International Development from the Institute of Social Studies in The
Netherlands. She is the founder and Artistic Director of BOLD (www.BOLDaction.org). Brody lives with her husband and two children in the woods.
INTRODUCTION
Who knew my play would spark a global movement to improve maternity care for mothers? I certainly didn’t when I wrote it. In fact, I remember the day I told my husband that after interviewing over one hundred women about their birth experiences I was no longer planning to write a book; I was going to write a play.
“You never wrote a play,” he said.
“I’ll learn,” I replied.
And that’s exactly what I did. I asked a neighbor – who wrote grants for a well-respected theater in the Washington, DC area – if he knew a place where playwrights could go to workshop their plays. He directed me to The Playwrights Forum. And the rest, as they say, is history.
I haven’t a clue why having two young boys who were three and four-and-a-half didn’t stop me. Or how I thought I was going to write a play when my husband traveled a lot for his work. I guess this is what an activist is – a person who commits to something they feel passionate about because they believe it has the power to affect social change. I didn’t know it at the time, but that is why I wrote this play. I wanted to swing the birth pendulum to a maternity care system that honors mothers. To put mothers and their birth stories – finally – center stage.
In 2006 after I started BOLD, a global arts-based movement to improve childbirth choices and put mothers at the center of their birth experiences, I quickly found out that I wasn’t the only person who thought this mission made sense. My idea resonated with so many other women who had been using traditional methods of educating the public about maternity care, like childbirth education classes and lectures. These women found that even when they dangled an over thirty percent cesarean rate in front of people most weren’t getting the urgency of the maternity care crisis and the impact on mothers’ lives.
Ironically, except for a small group of academics, most women studies programs today do not educate their students about childbirth and women’s rights. After a BOLD performance in Boston in 2007 a women studies professor who had brought students from her class to see the play wondered aloud with the audience, “How come women studies departments don’t address this issue?” I’m confused too. And that’s why BOLD started our BOLD College Campaign program, so that students - the parents of tomorrow - get information about childbirth early, before they are faced with making important birth choices.
It’s not surprising BOLD Organizers have sprouted up all over the world to say childbirth most definitely IS a woman’s issue. What I love about BOLD is that instead of doing the typical activist protests with signs and marches BOLD Organizers are producing a play about women’s birth experiences as a form of activism, showing audiences what is wrong with the current maternity care system by focusing on what they are for - mother-centered childbirth. Instead of having “My Body Rocks!” carried around as a sign by a pregnant mother at a march audiences all over the world are watching the character Amanda in the play chant “My Body Rocks!”…and they’re chanting right along with her. To me, this is the form of BOLD activism maternity care needs today.
