A Magazine Article

Who am I? ISTOCK On stage as in real life, adoption dramas won’t let go BY JULIE YORK COPPENS JULY 26, 1972, was a good day for me: told anyone they’d had a child that I was born. summer and given her up for adop- But for a young couple in Cincin- tion—not their own families, not their nati, living in an uncle’s basement, closest friends, not the sons they trying to get through college while subsequently raised together (my two scratching together enough for a younger brothers), not the partners place of their own, it was not a good they married later after finally splitting day. Kathy and Larry weren’t ready up. They never talked about it, even to be parents—and even if they between themselves. I was an abso- were, this six-pound stork express lute secret. arrived way too soon after the wed- Until I found them. ding. Back then, especially for good What happened next was pure Catholic girls, pregnancy before mar- theatre. riage was an unspeakable sin (unless you were the Virgin Mary), a public Land of the lost shame families did everything they Adoptees today make up fewer than could to avoid. It was a time when a 3 percent of the U.S. population, ac- lot of young people were having sex, cording to estimates by the Depart- but not a lot of them were getting ment of Health and Human Services. science-based sex education, birth (Reliable adoption statistics are hard control, or the kind of support from to come by, but it’s clear our numbers parents that most American teens have tumbled since the mid-1970s and twentysomethings today take for despite all the international adop- granted. This was also before Roe v. tions, placements out of foster care, Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court deci- and other trends.) However, among sion that made abortion legal, though mythical figures, religious patriarchs, not necessarily available or affordable, theatrical icons, literary protagonists, in all fifty states. So each year, thou- and comic book superheroes/vil- sands of women and girls hid away or lains—not to mention notable Hob- were sent to maternity homes to have bits, Jedis, and Hogwarts alumni—the their babies and hand them over to rate of sons and daughters who were families that, the unwed mothers were raised by someone other than their told, would take better care of them. birth parents is more like 90 percent. Give them rich, respectable lives their Seriously, if you want your life to be birth parents could not. Starting with dramatized, better start by being or- a new and improved birth certificate. phaned, abandoned, or unwillingly For forty-three years, Kathy and surrendered. ISTOCK Larry were the only people who Adoption stories are love stories. knew my true history. They never They’re tragedies. Sometimes they’re SEPTEMBER 2016 • DRAMATICS 37 comedies, as in my own Chapter Two: adoption reunion short titled Found, My adoptive parents waited so long to although so far he hasn’t launched get me after having their first two chil- a search for his own birth parents. Adoption on stage dren the usual way, they wound up When I asked Bushman to consider being surprised by a third, my brother other ways in which being adopted Oedipus Rex Guy. They decided to stop there—but might have influenced his career path, somehow Catholic Social Services nev- he shared a theory similar to one put The Comedy of Errors, Pericles, er got the memo, so four years after forth in The Primal Wound: Under- Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale that, my parents suddenly got a call standing the Adopted Child, a book The Importance of Being Earnest from the agency congratulating them by Nancy Newton Verrier that’s been and instructing them to come pick up something of a hot potato. “When I Annie their new infant at noon the next day. was adopted, I was ‘abandoned’ by Les Misérables My dad’s reaction, according to family the one person who is supposed to lore: “Shit, Joan!” to which my mom love me unconditionally,” Bushman The Secret Garden could only shrug and say, “How do wrote in an email. “Even though I Be My Baby, by Amanda Whittington you cancel a baby?” So yeah, I was an was raised in a loving household by accident twice. wonderful adoptive parents... I was Memory House, by Kathleen Tolan Adoption stories are mysteries, constantly seeking approval, from The Baby Dance, by Jane Anderson full of paper chases and search-and- striving to get straight A’s to play- discovery subplots worthy of Nancy ing the trumpet”—an odd choice of And Baby Makes Two: An Adoption Drew or The Da Vinci Code. They’re instrument, he pointed out, for an Tale, by Nanci Christopher epics spanning generations, covering introvert like himself. “What happens Splinters, by Meg Bradley vast distances, interweaving religion, in a live setting as soon as any musi- law, politics, biology (chiefly our cian finishes a solo? Applause. And The Call, by Tanya Barfield evolving understanding of genetics), that applause is a form of acceptance, Chosen Child, by Monica Bauer family life, and the very essence of which I think really helped me handle who and why we are. Adoption sto- any feelings of abandonment.” Luna Gale, by Rebecca Gilman ries run deep. And when you’re ad- For further insight, I dusted off The Best Thing, by Vamos Mask Theatre opted yourself—especially if you also my Bible, where there are a surpris- happen to write about theatre for a ing number of adoption tales amidst living—you see them everywhere. all those begats: the infant Moses, of Over the past year, since locat- course, threatened by an Egyptian de- ing my birth family thanks to a new cree, sent adrift in a basket, plucked records-access law in Ohio, I’ve talked from the reeds by Pharaoh’s daughter, DON CORATHERS DON with a number of artists who are put- then handed to his own mother for ting their own adoption stories on nursing. And how do we know King stage or screen. I’ve watched or read Solomon was so wise? Because he fig- or re-read stacks of plays about adop- ured out what to do with a baby who tion, everything from Shakespearean was desperately wanted by two differ- twins separated at birth to a memo- ent mothers. rable Thespian Playworks finalist from 2010 called Splinters, by Meg Bradley, Case studies in which a pregnant seventeen-year- When I wasn’t immersed in one of old smashes her prized violin before these adoption sagas, I was living my giving up her baby. I’ve read books own. Sometimes the experiences col- and followed blogs by adoption- lided: this spring I watched Rebecca activist creative types, of whom there Gilman’s acclaimed drama Luna Gale are many, and no wonder: living with at Cleveland Play House with Kathy, Cypress Staelin as a teenaged birth mother in Splinters, a 2010 Thespian adoption can be a powerful exercise during our first birth mother-daughter Playworks winner by Meg Bradley, who in Let’s Pretend, and I mean that in road trip. In the play’s opening scene, is still writing plays. the best possible way. I’ve watched Karlie and Peter, a pair of loving but films—did you know that the most methamphetamine-addicted nineteen- controversial movie in the adoption year-olds, bring their infant daughter community right now is Finding Dory? to the hospital, unable to tell the doc- One of independent filmmaker An- tors how long she’s been sick. Enter thony Bushman’s first projects was an The System. 38 DRAMATICS • SEPTEMBER 2016 “In my family, we adopted a boy— MASTROIANNI ROGER my younger brother, who’s twelve now,” actor Megan King, who played Karlie, told me over coffee between shows. “His mother was thirteen years old, and she came from a family of meth addicts. So, working on this play, I felt like I was on the opposite side of the table. But I actually didn’t think of it, until it hit me one day during rehearsal. It made Karlie so lov- able to me. There’s so much pain in the thought of losing a child.… When I remembered my own brother’s history, and how much we love him now—it made me much more sympa- thetic toward her.” Gilman keeps our sympathies in a tug-of-war. At first it’s obvious that Luna would be better off living with her grandmother, but the more time we spend with the family, and with the overburdened social worker Caro- line, the less sure we become. Con- flicting motives, long-held hurts, prac- tical realities, and unknown variables clutter the picture like an overloaded Jeremiah Clapp and Megan King as teen parents struggling with addiction in Rebecca Gil- Pack ’n Play, but in the end, we can man’s Luna Gale at Cleveland Play House. see a more hopeful future for Luna and her well-meaning guardians. “This play does such a good job against the emotional cataclysm that best thing that had ever happened to showing both perspectives,” said meeting one’s birth family in mid-life her. Growing up in a nice, conserva- King, giving director Austin Pendleton might trigger. Maybe I’m writing this tive family in Pennsylvania Dutch credit as well: “He constantly remind- 4,000-word magazine article merely to country, Sarah had always felt loved, ed us to trust these characters as real deflect the painful truths I’ve discov- but she never quite fit in.

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