Borrowed Babies

Olivia Charleson

2/29/2020

Dr. Richards

On Saturday February 22nd, I went and watched Borrowed Babies at the Black Box Theatre. The play followed four female college students who were taking a home economics class where they had to live in the house together and take turns caring for a newborn baby. The play has follows two different time periods, when the baby Katherine was a newborn and it also follows when the baby now goes by Wendy is a full adult pregnant with a child of her own. Wendy is looking for answers about her childhood and is questioning why she was never adopted and she blames it on this program saying that by the time she was sent back to the orphanage that she was too old and no longer cute enough for adoption.

A specific part of the play that caught my attention is the fact that Judy the teacher for the home economics class wanted to adopt Katherine, but the adoption agency would not allow her to because she was not a married woman. Another scene that shocked me was how each and every character involved in this play has had some sort of single story implanted against them. 

Many scenes from the play made me think back to our class and what we have been learning. The first one that comes to mind is when one of the four girls is moving to NYC to pursue her dream in art and she convinces another of the girls to go with her and when she tells her parents her father basically tells her that if she chooses to go that she will be cutting all ties with the family because only whores and sluts chose to live in the city alone. This relates back to a single story that we have been learning about. Her father had envisioned her marrying his bosses son and being a mother and never thought of her being a working woman. Another aspect of single story shown in this play is when they do not allow Judy to keep Katherine because she is not married. The agency doesn’t see how well the baby is doing under Judy’s strict schedule of care and how much she truly loved the baby. They could only imagine that if and only if there was a man in the house then the baby would’ve been taken care of financially that Judy could not possibly be doing it on her own. 

Going into this play, I had no idea what it was about or how it could connect to class. After getting the chance to watch it I believe my biggest takeaway is that women have been subjected to the single stories since the start of time. This play took place in the 60s and 80s and you can clearly see how the single story has impacted all of their lives in one way or another. To some women the single story narrative that society has set for them is to be considered negative and to a slim few they are ok with the fact that it is what they are supposed to do. Even though the plot of this play takes place over 50 years ago, the main ideas that the author was trying to get across are still relevant today.