Pregnant and Dying
From the Archives
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18-Jan-2014
Director/performer Rachel Garber Cole pulls a Eddie Murphy (via Nutty Professor) and plays a whole family, except she's not dealing in farts & fat jokes, but rather body + gender + family dynamics. The titular predicament is introduced in the first scene by the only character not played by Cole, the doctor. We have a woman, Elma, who is both pregnant…and…dying. Before we know it, any sense of realism is ushered away, replaced by highly stylized performances & rear screen projection a la Cindy Sherman. More than anything, we're watching a one-woman show, theatrical, artificial. Cole dutifully plays outlandish versions of Elma's mother, father and brother, and they don't take the situation gracefully. Will she keep the baby? Who gets to decide? Who will take of the child? A late kinetic shift into film + stock footage + nails being hammered, ropes being tied, pulsating, intensifying score, ups the finale into something sinister. Maybe Elma's body / her decision is not her own. We feel a larger societal point breaking through.
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