Labor Daze

[fauxklore]

I went to my first fringe show tonight. I know Rivka Willick from some storytelling conferences and her show "Labor Daze" was at the Goethe Institute. Essentially, she took several stories about birth and used (recorded) lullabies to weave them together. I'd heard her tell one of those stories ("Unwanted Wedding Gift") before, but the others were entirely unfamiliar. The most powerful was "Bound for Greatness" which had to do with slavery. It included a description of a doctor who bought a slave women with a vaginal fistula, which he reopened repeatedly so he could demonstrate his technique for closing it. Truly horrifying stuff there.

It was an interesting show and worth seeing. I hope she gets more people for the rest of her run, as I was her sole audience member tonight.