Fresh Ink
01 Jillian Blevins
This is the inaugural episode of Fresh Ink, featuring playwright Jillian Blevins and her play, MERE WATERS.
Content Warning: Holocaust, abortion, infant loss.
Mere Waters is a Jewish abortion play by Jillian Blevins. Jewish gynecologist, Gisella Perl, finds herself made camp doctor at Auschwitz. Her daughter, Gabby, is somewhere in the camp but Gisella doesn’t know where. The SS promise her that if she plays her role of camp doctor well, she will be reunited with her daughter. Left to tend to her patients with nothing but some dirty rags and a sharp rock, she is told that there exists another doctor, an SS doctor, Dr. M., who can take the more “interesting” cases and provide them a higher standard of care. Pregnant women, Gisella is told, should be referred to Dr. M.
Desperate to be reunited with Gabby and duty-bound to save lives where lives might be saved, Gisella labors as a doctor for many months. During this time, she sends several pregnant women to Dr. M. for a higher standard of care. Finally, it is revealed to her through the divine intervention of two Biblical prophetesses that are also the embodiment of every Jewish tante, or aunt—Hannah and Abigail—that the women she sends to Dr. M. are not in fact receiving a higher standard of care. Spurred on by divine encouragement, she confronts the guard, demands the truth, and discovers the unimaginable: the women she thought she was saving are in fact being tortured and experimented upon. None of them, and none of their children, will survive.
And so Gisella has a new charge, one with divine importance: to perform illicit abortions in secret on the pregnant women in the camp. She is told by the prophetesses that if she does this, not one of them will die, and she will one day be reunited with her daughter. This is the Mitzrayim, or Narrow Place, that Gisella must pass through in order to be reunited with Gabby and do her service to God.
You can find more of Jillian’s work on the New Play Exchange: https://newplayexchange.org/users/72695/jillian-blevins
Opening music credit – “Lounge” by Ehrling https://soundcloud.com/ehrling/ehrling-lounge
Closing music credit – “Everything” by Kids & Explosions https://on.soundcloud.com/45nBRwFXF59ESqhG9
This is the inaugural episode of Fresh Ink, featuring playwright Jillian Blevins and her play, MERE WATERS.
Content Warning: Holocaust, abortion, infant loss.
Mere Waters is a Jewish abortion play by Jillian Blevins. Jewish gynecologist, Gisella Perl, finds herself made camp doctor at Auschwitz. Her daughter, Gabby, is somewhere in the camp but Gisella doesn’t know where. The SS promise her that if she plays her role of camp doctor well, she will be reunited with her daughter. Left to tend to her patients with nothing but some dirty rags and a sharp rock, she is told that there exists another doctor, an SS doctor, Dr. M., who can take the more “interesting” cases and provide them a higher standard of care. Pregnant women, Gisella is told, should be referred to Dr. M.
Desperate to be reunited with Gabby and duty-bound to save lives where lives might be saved, Gisella labors as a doctor for many months. During this time, she sends several pregnant women to Dr. M. for a higher standard of care. Finally, it is revealed to her through the divine intervention of two Biblical prophetesses that are also the embodiment of every Jewish tante, or aunt—Hannah and Abigail—that the women she sends to Dr. M. are not in fact receiving a higher standard of care. Spurred on by divine encouragement, she confronts the guard, demands the truth, and discovers the unimaginable: the women she thought she was saving are in fact being tortured and experimented upon. None of them, and none of their children, will survive.
And so Gisella has a new charge, one with divine importance: to perform illicit abortions in secret on the pregnant women in the camp. She is told by the prophetesses that if she does this, not one of them will die, and she will one day be reunited with her daughter. This is the Mitzrayim, or Narrow Place, that Gisella must pass through in order to be reunited with Gabby and do her service to God.
You can find more of Jillian’s work on the New Play Exchange: https://newplayexchange.org/users/72695/jillian-blevins
Opening music credit – “Lounge” by Ehrling https://soundcloud.com/ehrling/ehrling-lounge
Closing music credit – “Everything” by Kids & Explosions https://on.soundcloud.com/45nBRwFXF59ESqhG9