What To Perform When You're Expecting: Pregnancy in the Rehearsal Room and the Academy

Abstract

This article reflects on two pregnancies spent in the rehearsal room and the academy. I reflect on my experiences in order to explore the institutional pressures and limitations placed on pregnant women and the ideological underpinnings of those pressures. It serves in part as a confessional and in part as an attempt to provoke conversations about the treatment of pregnant bodies in the theater. By folding together my own reflections on the ways I performed pregnancy and the ways I performed while pregnant with research from the social sciences on the ways in which institutions frame pregnancy as an illness, I hope to suggest possibilities toward reframing some of the discourse around pregnancy in the rehearsal room and the academy.