Wednesday, Sept. 23, was opening night for Journey
to the Center of the Uterus: Adventures Infertility! Everything
about this play, including the titles, elicited some interesting responses
audience members, the most common being laughter and the widening of eyes. Starring Kathleen
Puls , a forty-something Chicago-based voice-actor and improve artist,
it is a comedy about her own life experiences in trying to conceive and bear
a child. It is a one-woman show in which Puls plays both herself and
different people in her life, ranging from slightly eccentric doctors to
her own husband. She uses simple props and costumes appropriate for
each character, converses with recordings of other characters' words and
sings original musical numbers written by award-winning performing artist
Marshall Stern. The show also makes use of improvised audience interactions,
slides with pictures that were relevant to the medical aspect of the process
and animations.
The show was extremely entertaining, and I especially recommend it to those
curious about infertility. Puls exuded constant energy. Most
of her different roles involved various hilarious accents and facial expressions. The
script was clever and, of course, filled with many puns involving female
reproductive organs. The songs were just as funny, and I never thought that
I would ever have the chorus “Trip Down the Hoo-Hah Highway” running through
my head. Some of the props included pieces of fruit that represented
certain parts of the human anatomy. While playing her husband, Pep, she stabbed
an orange with a syringe and handed it to an audience member, saying, “Here,
could you hold my wife's butt?” Changes in lighting helped to serve
as transitions from one mood to the next. In particular, a red light
would turn on accompanied by high-pitched, mock-frightening music whenever
someone said, “Have you ever considered adoption?” When she asked another
audience member for advice after years of different procedures, he said: “Adopt
the first one; then you'll get pregnant.” She did acknowledge in the
script, however, that there was nothing wrong with adoption. The animations,
created by director Andrew Eninger, included interviews with real people
such as a sperm donor as well as an old-fashioned hygiene film. They
appeared similar to viral flash-animation cartoons.
Journey flowed well from funny to serious, from the slides and animations to
Puls' acting, singing and talking with people in the front row. The
events of her life fit perfectly in the context of a comedic drama. Besides
the script's hilarity and Puls' talent as a performer, the show also had
a great sense of meaning.
Puls, who, in the end, did not have a child, stressed that women going through
the similar struggles should remember that their lives did not depend on
their ability to bear children. She also acknowledged “this isn't just
a women's issue. The partner may not have to go through all of the procedures
and shots, but he or she is equally a part of the process.”
As for whether or not it's right to laugh about infertility, she said, “Laughter
is a wonderful healer and we laughed a lot during the roller coaster ride. It's
part of what kept us sane! … For those who are going through [infertility],
laughter is cathartic and a great stress reliever ... As we all know, there's
a difference between ‘laughing at' and ‘laughing with.' I'd like to think
that the audience is laughing with me.”
The journey begins in the Downstairs Studio of the Greenhouse
Theater Center , and will be running until Oct. 28. For more information,
or to
purchase tickets, visit www.greenhousetheater.org
