Arts & Culture

What: Hypothetical Baby
Where: Factory Theatre, Mainspace, 125 Bathurst St.
When: Now, until Sat., March 8
Highlight: The history of abortion, feminist politics and intersectional identities blended into the show
Rating: NNNN (out of 5)
Why you should go: Poignant depiction of what it’s like to be a woman in Canada in this political moment

DO YOU HAVE a uterus? What kind of birth control do you use? Have you ever had an abortion? And … did these questions make you uncomfortable? Performer and writer Rachel Cairns has decided to answer these publicly for her audiences and turn her abortion, a typically intensely private affair, into art.

Hypothetical Baby, a Nightwood Theatre production in association with The Howland Company, cracks open a world of socio-economic, personal and grander political questions about abortion in Canada and beyond. After its successful indie run in 2023, in this tight 90-minute show, Cairns tells the real-life story of her own unexpected IUD pregnancy in 2019 while working as an artist (and shoe shiner) in Downtown Toronto.
This solo show is charming, honest and nimbly high-energy. Words tumble out of Cairns’s mouth at lightning speed, from spiraling thoughts to actual statistics about public health in Canada. From several doctor’s visits to conversations with her loved ones, her story unfolds in a poignant way that will resonate with anyone who’s ever been or could be in a similar situation. She is phenomenal at retelling her story through a performance that invites the audience to glimpse the naked truth of her ever-changing world.

Direction by Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster expertly fuses lights, sound and performer through time, space and the different facets of her abortion. This show is relentless and an exquisitely challenging experience for audiences as they’re forced to confront conversations that are often relegated to the sidelines. Cairns is an exquisite performer, blending sheer honesty with undeniable charm. Playing herself and several other characters, she switches in and out of personalities and places with ease, never once tripping over her words as she continues at a nimble pace. Sound design and composition by Cosette “Ettie” Pin reverberate tenderly but smoothly, helping shift and focus the audience’s attention.

Cairns is deliciously relatable, even including her late-night Googling spirals, as she begins to dig deeper and deeper into the information surrounding pregnancy. Projections by Julia Howman (also lights and production designer) pop up on the screen as she delves into the corners of the Internet late into the night. Searches range from aspects of reproductive health never taught in schools all the way into spirals about pro-life ideology and larger-scope political conversations about the morality and necessity of abortion.

Cairns blends into the text of the show a history of abortion, feminist politics and intersectional identities in a way that is confrontational but never preachy. It begins when her mom recounts that her first abortion in the 1970s was illegal, sparking a historical thirst for knowledge in Cairns as she reflects how only generations ago, basic female health care was unavailable in Canada. While this show could tilt toward a particular white-Western view on women’s rights, an episode in the show forces her to confront a more intersectional lens that ultimately connects right back to a Canadian past, present and future concerning the precarious state of access to health care for Indigenous people.

Hypothetical Baby dives deep into the way abortion reverberates through all aspects of one’s life. What is choice? What is fault? What is the perfect time to have a child, if at all? Carin is phenomenal at sharing a potentially taboo personal story while acknowledging and challenging the systems that surround it. Cairns gets into the nitty-gritty of what it’s like being a woman in Toronto in this particular political moment and, as a young woman, I can attest that it resonates deeply.