Four years ago, Rachel Cairns went to the doctor to get an abortion. Now she’s given birth to her first play, Hypothetical Baby

Rachel Cairns, a multidisciplinary artist known for her work in theatre, film, and audio storytelling, is readying to perform her world-premiere solo show Hypothetical Baby. Directed by Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster, the show will run at Tarragon Theatre Extra Space, presented by the Howland Company. 

This deeply personal play marks two significant milestones for Cairn: it is both her first foray into writing for theatre and the first time she will perform her own writing on the stage. Until now, her creative work has focused primarily on making short films, web series, and the award-winning podcast Aborsh (which is a companion project to Hypothetical Baby).  

Hypothetical Baby was first conceived  (pun intended) in a real-life visit Cairns made to the doctor after confirming her unintentional pregnancy. The visit did not go the way she expected. “I went in with the question, ‘How do I get an abortion?’, and the doctor asked me a string of questions trying to qualify my choice,” she shares. She left the appointment without ever getting an answer to her question. 

Cairns recalls the visit in dual terms. On the one hand, it was “just an ordinary trip to the doctor’s office about one of the safest, most common healthcare procedures”. At the same time, it was fraught with abortion stigma and revelatory of barriers to accessing care and a general lack of education on the topic. “I had no idea how to get an abortion―on top of my complex (and honestly fraught) feelings about my fertility,” she explains. “Like, so much was going on in this one five-minute interaction.”  In an artistic out-of-body moment, she realized right there in the doctor’s office that this could make a compelling scene in a play – because it contained several layers of conflict: “between  me and the doctor, internally within myself, and also on a woman vs. society level”.

This visit would become the first scene in Hypothetical Baby. The impetus to create the play stemmed from her desire to “address abortion publicly in the same candid way we discuss it privately with friends… to normalize and destigmatize abortion”. Cairns yearned for that exchange of energy with an audience, in hopes that it would spark conversation and contribute to the ongoing discourse about reproductive rights, healthcare, and justice. “I followed that imaginative instinct, and four years later, I have this play to share as a result.” 

Along the way, however, she decided to adapt the show’s story into the podcast – in part as a practical response to the challenge of creating content during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Podcast storytelling is accessible to everyone all the time. And Aborsh was an ideal way for Cairns to share ongoing research that she was doing for the show. “Before the podcast, I used to describe the play as a blend between a stand-up TED Talk and a Public Service Announcement,” she recalls: “I channelled my insatiable appetite for data and research and analysis into the podcast.” Currently, she is at work on a second season of Aborsh.

Ultimately, Cairns’ experience with Aborsh significantly influenced the creation of Hypothetical Baby, which she had begun writing in 2020. The podcast research and analysis provided the foundation for the play’s script, and after releasing the podcast, she “received grant funding approval for the play. So I returned to the draft, took out most of the content that made it into the podcast, and challenged myself to delve deeper into the personal aspects of the story”.

For the core of Hypothetical Baby is Cairns’ personal experience: “This is a play about abortion. Or really, it’s a story about my experience with abortion”—including the societal pressures and financial challenges surrounding the decision to become parents. For Cairns and her partner have found themselves stuck in a relentless cycle of searching for an affordable two-bedroom apartment. Having experienced repeated disappointment, they are continuously discussing (“for the sixteenth time”) ways to modify their one-bedroom apartment for a hypothetical future baby. 

Even as they grapple with the rising costs of daily living and expensive infertility treatments, they find themselves delaying parenthood in hopes of first securing financial stability — a Sisyphean challenge that is increasingly common among first-time parents today. At present, “the feasibility of having children,” Cairns posits dryly, “is dictated by how good you are at capitalism.”  So she hopes that Hypothetical Baby will illuminate the “fundamental need for an infrastructure of ‘care’ in our lives and in society at large – and that ‘caring’ is a collective responsibility.” For “ultimately, care connects us all. We are all reliant on care, to some degree.”

Bringing this story to the stage was not without its own financial challenges. Despite initial rejections of her grant applications, Cairns is “incredibly thankful” for the arts funding available in Canada through all levels of government, for “this show would not be possible without it. In the US, Roe v. Wade was overturned in between her second round and the third (and ultimately successful) round of grant applications. Did this play a role in finally securing the funding from municipal, provincial and federal sources?  “Who knows? Maybe my previous grant applications weren’t strong, but part of me can’t help but wonder if the ‘relevance’ of the issue was at play.” 

Ultimately Cairns’ story is both deeply personal and broadly relevant because it exists at the intersection of politics, religion, money, and sex. She hopes through Hypothetical Baby to redirect the focus away from “the moral debates surrounding abortion [which] often serve as distractions from the urgent issues, and, at times, dictate people’s reproductive choices”. Instead, her goal is to highlight how abortion is a choice shaped by wider societal forces, including access to affordable housing, childcare, living wages, job security, and even the climate crisis. “Because this work is autobiographical, I approach these topics from my own experience, and by doing so, hopefully show how the ‘personal is political’ concept manifests in my life,” she shares. “But I also have to acknowledge that my perspective is a pinpoint along a vast continuum of abortion experiences. And my position along that spectrum is informed by the specific intersections of my race, gender, class, and ability.”

Cairns is also firm that the play navigates the tension between the ordinary and the extraordinary in abortion experiences. Asked about this interplay, she initially hesitates — “I feel like you’ll have to come and see the show to fully understand what I mean by that”.  Reconsidering, she offers the example of how her own experience of abortion compared to her mother’s — which she had previously known nothing about: “The juxtaposition between our experiences of ‘choice’ is extraordinary. I had a pretty straightforward, ordinary abortion, which stands in stark contrast to my mom having to illegally access care when she was younger than me.”  Reflecting on both their experiences, she notes how the decision to have, or not have, children profoundly shapes a person’s life: “It is entirely existential. And yet, it’s also informed by many smaller—sometimes seemingly inconsequential—choices that lay the path of our life’s journey. So that’s what I mean by the whole ordinary/extraordinary contrast.” 

Cairns further shares that, while she does not consider herself a spiritual person and has only a rudimentary religious education, the fact that her own abortion took place on Christmas Eve made her pause.  On “the  eve of this epic birth story that most of the world sets their calendars by”, she reflected on the power of storytelling, and who controls the narrative. “For example, the anti-abortion movement is heavily associated with fundamentalist Christians who have a theocratic agenda to criminalize reproductive healthcare (including gender-affirming care). They wield harmful narratives like so-called “parental rights” to justify attacking gender equality and bodily autonomy. And yet many people support reproductive and sexual freedom not despite their faith, but because of it.” Her hope is that the play will help audiences to contemplate the narratives we have been exposed to regarding abortion, consider who created these stories, and recognize the motivations for controlling pregnant people’s bodies.

When I ask Cairns for her final thoughts after a thoroughly engrossing conversation, she shares a question that she is often asked: “’Do you think what’s happening with abortion in the US can happen here?’  It’s not that I wish to be asked that question,” she explains, “but it prompts a necessary conversation.” The short answer to the question is “no” . . . but she is at pains to clarify that this does not mean, “Don’t worry about it”. Cairns notes that “We have entirely different political, legal and healthcare systems,” and in Canada, previous abortion laws were deemed unconstitutional under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. However, the creeping privatization of healthcare looms as the biggest threat to abortion access in Canada. She is sharply critical of the underfunding of health care by governments like that of Ontario Premier Doug Ford. And she sees a deliberate and alarming simultaneous shift towards profit-driven healthcare, which she fears will “widen our current social disparities and divides,”  potentially eroding reproductive rights. Cairns thus emphasizes the importance of being “vigilant and attuned to the nuances of reproductive health care across the country”. While she celebrated Canada’s progressive stance on reproductive rights, she warns against complacency, for “We have a lot of progress to protect.” 

She concludes with the emotional essence of her play, revolving around the concept of care, hoping to leave the audience pondering collective responsibility in society.

After a four-year developmental journey from that initial moment of conception, Cairns and her collaborators feel “very excited” to share their work with an audience and “hopefully stimulate an ongoing conversation” about our collective responsibility as a society. Considering the wealth of her research, her challenging personal experiences, and the depth of her reflection and insight, Hypothetical Baby promises to be a compelling and thought-provoking new theatrical experience. 

Hypothetical Baby runs at the Tarragon Theatre Extra Space from December 8 to 17, 2023. For more information and tickets, visit TarragonTheatre.com. 

Audience Advisory: This production runs 75 minutes (no intermission). Due to its mature content, including coarse language, and discussion of abortion, miscarriage, sexual assault, sex, and gender, it is recommended for audiences 16 years of age and older. 

© Arpita Ghosal, Sesayarts Magazine, 2023