August 13 & 14, 2019

I think when you hear women speak about their own experience they speak in a way that’s very different than the kind of rhetoric that we usually hear publicly and it is something that’s very rarely heard,” says Cawthorne.

“Women don’t talk about their experience of abortion very openly, they still fear, I think, a lot of judgment and they take a risk if they do that but when they do speak about it, its quite different to what you would expect.” (source)

A community outreach project of PerSIStence Theatre
Tuesday August 13 & Wednesday August 14, 2019
Performed at The S.P.A.C.E.

In these monologues, twenty-three women reveal the details of their lives, relationships and families as they tell the stories of their abortions.

Sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking, but always thought provoking, "The Abortion Monologues" exist in stark contrast to the real world in which women seldom publicly discuss this choice.

PerSIStence Theatre was proud to present Jane Cawthorne's "The Abortion Monologues" as a special community outreach project.
Featuring:
Katie Baird
Tina Lynnette Baird
Jayne Batstone
Adriana Castano-Kutty
Jean Graham
Ashley Harding
Susan Kelsey
Bronwyn Keough
Mallary McGrath
Mary Moylan
Cher O'Keefe
Kathleen Parewick
Sarah Parsons
Sarah Power
Lisa Rottenecker
Rolanda Ryan
Katie Vardy
Blayre Way
Jenelle Welshman
Caitlin Whelan
Aedon Young
Jocelyn Young
Courtney Zwicker
St. John’s is home to a rich, diverse, and vibrant urban Indigenous community. Located on the ancestral and unceded territory of the Beothuk, the lands and waters in and around the City have traditionally served as a gathering place for the Mi’kmaq. The broader region of Newfoundland and Labrador continues to be home to diverse Indigenous Peoples, including First Nations, Inuit, and Métis. We honour and pay respect to the past, present, and future caretakers of these territories.

We also must acknowledge the labour theft extracted from people of African descent, used to build European wealth and economies globally, and in the Canadian nation state, including Newfoundland and Labrador’s shipbuilding and cod fishery industries, through the violence of trans-Atlantic enslavement.

We thank both First Light and the office of the Vice-Provost of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Racism at Memorial University for crafting and sharing these words that provide us with important perspectives.