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— ROGER MASTROIANNI 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 dur- ing 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 his- tory, 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. Maybe people trying to do their best.” ered about my origins. To avoid the it was her habit of dressing like a That’s a recurring theme, I found, sometimes treacherous navigations gypsy fortune-teller in a town where even in TV sitcoms. Compare Diff’rent between the multiple, caring families everyone else wore the J.C. Penney Strokes (1978-86), in which a wealthy that now claim me as their own. To catalogue. Maybe it was the way she white businessman adopts two sons postpone the realization that despite turned every scene of her life, how- orphaned by the death of his African- solving this identity mystery that’s ever mundane, into a kickass produc- American housekeeper, to today’s dominated my imagination forever, tion number with herself as the star. Modern Family, which features a I’m still asking, who am I? (As a girl, knowing she’d been ad- white gay couple who have one ad- Or maybe it’s the rough draft of a opted, Greer thought her birth mother opted daughter of Asian ancestry, and play. must have been Carol Burnett, Barbra later attempt to adopt a child from Bear with me. Streisand, or… Barry Manilow. For Mexico. Both series play on cultural me, it was Liza Minnelli.) So when stereotypes, laughing off much of the ‘The tree found me’ Greer met her birth family, a noisy tragedy inherent in adoption, though When Sarah Elizabeth Greer was a Greek-American clan just as eccentric Modern Family shows how far atti- twenty-one-year-old theatre major and over-the-top as she was, it was tudes have shifted—and that it hasn’t at Mount Holyoke College, the birth heaven. And then it was hell. gotten any easier deciding what’s best mother who gave her up in high Greer already had a family, one for the baby. school tracked her down, called her that had cherished her all her life, Maybe all this “theatre research” up, and left an insane-sounding voice given her every opportunity, come to was, for me, an elaborate coping message. Soon thereafter, they met, all of her shows, even the bad ones. mechanism, an intellectual’s defense and at first, Greer thought it was the How could she turn to them and SEPTEMBER 2016 • DRAMATICS 39 say, “I have another family now”? myth, reality, and theatre. In an early Who was she? Where did she really version of the show, Greer’s mom belong? Why did her bio-mom initi- and birth mom actually appeared Adoption in film ate contact, only to pull away when together on stage with her, donning Greer needed her most? None of it sparkly togas, linking arms and sing- The Divided Heart, 1954 made sense until she remembered ing “Together Wherever We Go” the story of Demeter and Zeus and from the musical Gypsy as a happy The Jerk, 1979 (an early cinematic their beautiful daughter, stolen away trio; that act, though, was hard for representation of interracial adoption, by Hades to the Underworld and everyone to keep up, Greer says, so played for laughs) consigned to a deadly semiannual she now performs alone, using props Mommie Dearest, 1981 commute that regulates our seasons. and projections to represent the sup- Secrets and Lies, 1996 “Oh my god—that’s me!” Greer porting cast. remembers exclaiming to herself, a Elf, 2004 young adult adoptee torn in two by The bare facts Then She Found Me, 2007 guilt and existential angst, battered Both Bio-Hazard and another one- by rejection, crushed by obligations woman show, Suzanne Bachner’s Juno, 2007 she never asked for and couldn’t The Good Adoptee, were presented A Shine of Rainbows, 2009 possibly fulfill. “I’m Persephone!” at a conference last March hosted by Greer channeled her mythic Adoption Network Cleveland, a ser- The Kids Are All Right, 2010 musings, along with the outra- vice organization that fought for the The Odd Life of Timothy Green, 2012 geous sense of humor that’s clearly records change in Ohio and is lobby- Philomena, 2013 in her genes, into Bio-Hazard: A ing for similar measures elsewhere. Relative Comedy, one of several solo Right now more than half of the Earth to Echo, 2014 shows on adoption themes mak- states deny adult adoptees access to Finding Dory, 2016 (not about adop- ing the rounds. A hit of New York’s their original birth certificates; New tion per se, but many adoptees relate United Solo Festival and featured York, where Bachner was born, is to Dory’s search for her parents) this summer at United Solo Europe one of them, so much of The Good in Warsaw, Greer’s piece explores Adoptee chronicles Bachner’s cloak- The documentaries Adopted: for the the peaks and pitfalls of a bio-mom and-dagger attempts to get her hands life of me and A Simple Piece of Paper, reunion. on her own files. Actor Anna Bridg- by independent filmmaker/author First comes the fairy tale, the meet forth performs the piece, impersonat- (and adult adoptee) Jean Strauss, cute, the honeymoon phase, the con- ing not only Bachner herself but also aired on PBS and can be ordered on fetti of clichés come to life: “I had al- the many colorful characters who as- DVD, along with Strauss’s other short ways resented the adage, ‘The apple sist or impede her quest. films and books, from her website, doesn’t fall far from the tree.’ But for “You may be disappointed or jeanstrauss.com. the first time... I was the apple! And I even hurt by what you find,” one had finally found my tree. Well... the private investigator warns in a comi- tree found me.” An old home movie cal deadpan. “We all know the story plays on a big screen, showing Greer of the guy who found his biological PHOTOFEST and her bio family partying to that parents and they rejected him and disco-era classic “We Are Family” by he ended up killing twelve people.” Sister Sledge. “Everyone’s crying, ev- (She’s talking about serial shooter eryone’s dancing, everyone’s laugh- David Berkowitz, a.k.a. the Son of ing, everyone’s NUTS!” Greer yells. “I Sam.) Considering the risks, Bachner AM HOME.” compares her dilemma to another Then the music cuts out. Greek myth: Pandora’s Box. Dare “And that’s when I realized my life she open it? Maybe it’s better not to was ruined,” Greer says. know. But then it wouldn’t be much For years Greer struggled with her of a play. double life—in fact, she’s still tying “I’ve wanted to tell this story for a up the loose ends of her identity, a long time,” Bachner told the Cleve- task of everyone’s adulthood wheth- land audience. “This is a space, in Jennifer Garner and Ellen Page in the er we’re adopted or not. Creating theatre, where adoption stories are 2007 film Juno. Bio-Hazard, she says, has been an valued and supported to a great ex- important part that process, but it’s tent, and I don’t think there’s any not easy to live at this intersection of better way to tell stories than a live,

40 DRAMATICS • SEPTEMBER 2015 personal, in-the-flesh performance.” with his mother, Oedipus sensibly own eyes in penance for his crimes. Some adoption performances are runs away from home, only to wind Extreme? Yes. To an adoptee of the fleshier than others. up in the very place of his birth, present day, though, several passages At the Cincinnati Fringe Fest in where he strikes down a stranger in in the Robert Fagles translation (Vi- June, I caught Baby Mama: One self-defense and marries the widowed king Penguin, 1982) stand out. Here’s Woman’s Quest to Give Her Child to queen. These people are, of course, how Oedipus recalls his first suspi- Gay People, written and performed by his birth parents; by trying to escape cion that he was adopted: Mariah MacCarthy. Not a lot of birth the horrific prophecy, he has fulfilled mothers are out there telling their sto- it. Oedipus relentlessly pursues this “Some man at a banquet who had ries, and MacCarthy does it in a par- truth, driving his mother/wife Jocasta drunk too much ticularly brave way, revealing unsa- to suicide and finally gouging out his shouted out—he was far gone, mind vory personal details (“There was this orgy…”) while pointing to some hard adoption realties: “Most birth moth- ers,” she says, “if they could afford to raise their babies themselves, they would.” She captures the unbearable loneliness of the birth mother’s plight, despite a stalwart circle of friends and a sweet delivery-room nurse named Vanessa, who coached MacCarthy through her contractions—“You’re do- ing so good, mommy!”—and worked two hours past the end of her shift so she could welcome MacCarthy’s baby into the world. At the climax of Baby Mama, Mac- Carthy re-enacts a burlesque routine she first performed while hugely pregnant. Stripped down to pant- ies and pasties, MacCarthy hides her post-partum torso behind a series of placards bearing a letter to her ad- opted son, Leo. “You are really, REALLY cute.” “You look EXACTLY like me.” “Your Dads are everything I ever wanted for you.” “I will always, always, always, al- ways, ALWAYS love you.”

Seeing truth through bitter tears Any discussion of adoption in drama must go back to Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, the undisputed masterpiece of Greek tragedy and proof that even in the fifth century B.C.E., people under- stood the perils of not knowing who you came from. It’s a short play, you should read it if you haven’t already, but here’s a quick summary: Oedipus grew up a prince in Corinth, unaware that the nobles who raised him there were not his biological parents. When the god Apollo predicts that he will someday murder his father and sleep

SEPTEMBER 2016 • DRAMATICS 41 ISTOCK

A few famous real-life adoptees

The prophet Muhammad Moses Aristotle Edgar Allan Poe Eleanor Roosevelt Nelson Mandela Marilyn Monroe Malcolm X Jesse Jackson Bill Clinton Kristin Chenowith The moment of truth: Oedipus and Teiresias, illustration by Asmus Jacob Carstens. Melissa Gilbert ethnicities, basic medical histories, My suffering is enough. Frances McDormand some explanation as to why we were oedipus: Courage! Ray Liotta placed for adoption—enough to sat- Even if my mother turns out to be a Scott Hamilton isfy our curiosity for a time. But most slave, of us hunger to know more, a yearning and I a slave, three generations back, Greg Louganis that’s often difficult for our adoptive you would not seem common. Steve Jobs families to accept. jocasta: Oh no, Edward Albee Here’s a bit from the scene where a listen to me, I beg you, don’t do this. messenger tells Oedipus that Polybus oedipus: Listen to you? No more, I isn’t his father by blood: must know all, must see the truth at last. oedipus: Then why did he call me his jocasta: No, please— you— son? for your sake—I want the best for that I am not my father’s son. Fighting messenger: You were a gift, you! words! years ago—know for a fact he took you I barely restrained myself that day from my hands. Hear that? Three millennia later, but early the next I went to mother oedipus: No, from another’s hands? we’re still there. and father, Then how could he love me so? He In his introduction to the play, questioned them closely, and they loved me, deeply… the late Harvard professor Bernard were enraged messenger: True, and his early years Knox makes Oedipus a champion for at the accusation and the fool who let without a child adoptees’ rights like the records law it fly. made him love you all the more. recently enacted in Ohio: So as for my parents I was satisfied, “One freedom is allowed him: the but still this thing kept gnawing at Finally, here’s how Oedipus reacts freedom to search for the truth.… me, when Jocasta tells him to put the mes- And of this freedom he makes full The slander spread—I had to make senger’s story out of his mind: use. Against the advice and appeals my move.” of others, he pushes on.… This free- oedipus: What—give up now, with a dom to search, and the heroic way in All but a few adoptees these days clue like this? which Oedipus uses it, make the play grow up in the knowledge that we’re Fail to solve the mystery of my birth? not a picture of man’s utter feebleness adopted. Sometimes we’re given what Not for all the world! caught in the toils of fate, but on the agencies call non-identifying informa- jocasta: Stop—in the name of god, contrary, a heroic example of man’s tion—our parents’ ages and circum- if you love your own life, call off this dedication to the search for truth, the stances at the time of our birth, their search! truth about himself. This is perhaps 42 DRAMATICS • SEPTEMBER 2016 the only human freedom, the play brides. I’m crying again now, replay- the subject. But it’s been an extraor- seems to say, but there could be none ing that beautiful day surrounded by dinary year, tuning in to the Adop- more noble.” people who’ve loved me since the tion Channel 24/7 while getting used day I was born. It was like the finale to the fact that I know all the people Life imitates art of Les Misérables, only better: my who made me me. I know why I’m Since Ohio Senate Bill 23 went into birth mother was alive. a reader, a writer, why I have this effect in March 2015, thousands of Having at last written this article, funky dimple in my right cheek and adoptees born in my home state maybe I’ll get over my adoption am freakishly skilled at building sand between 1964 and 1996—the previ- fixation; I’m sure my friends and col- castles. I understand why the first ous “blackout” period, some 400,000 leagues are ready for me to change character I ever played on stage, in closed-records adoptions in all—have seen their unaltered birth certificates for the first time. Hundreds have lo- cated our birth parents and are now busy reuniting with relatives we never knew we had. Some searches have ended in disappointment or sadness. One adoptee I know learned she was the product of rape, while another found birth parents who wanted noth- ing to do with him. A woman I met in an adoption support group in Cin- cinnati found her birth father just as he was dying in the hospital. The ex- tended family she encountered there, devastated by loss, suddenly wel- comed her with joy. “We found you!” they cried, hugging her and thanking her for bringing life into their moment of grief. My own reunion scenes have been tear-jerkers, too—but a lot more Life- time movie than Greek tragedy, be- cause all the players in my story have been utterly courageous, open-heart- ed, and kind. I met Kathy in a park on the banks of the Ohio River, drift- ing back into her life like Moses in 23 YEARS OF MUSICAL THEATRE TRAINING IN NYC his little basket. She held my face in Apply today to get the training you need for her hands and took a long, long look. We embraced. I hadn’t planned what a career in the performing arts to say, but suddenly the words came out: “I’ve missed you.” A few months 2-Year Professional Musical Theatre Program later I stood on the Santa Monica pier, Summer Professional & High School Programs posing for a picture under the Route 66 sign with Larry, his daughter (my Molloy College BFA Program half-sister), and my own daughter, Over 150 Alumni on Broadway and Counting... both girls in their tweens with the same androgynous style and geeky obsessions. When I remarried last fall, my Mom shared her place of honor with Kathy, and my older siblings celebrated both women with toasts, thanking Kathy for the gift of me. CAP21.org [email protected] 212.807.0202 x 21 Yes, I was one of those crying SEPTEMBER 2016 • DRAMATICS 43 my third-grade talent show, was An- held her own birth records in her Of the endless trains of the faith- nie, and that her adoption by a Man- hands, I have my Chapter One. The less—of cities fill’d with the foolish; hattan millionaire was nothing com- rest will play out, as every drama Of myself forever reproaching my- pared to my luck in being taken in must. First, though, I’ll adopt some self, (for who more foolish than I, as a baby by the Cincinnati Yorks. I poetry that speaks to where we’ve and who more faithless?) could spend the next forty-four years landed here, from Walt Whitman’s Of eyes that vainly crave the light— trying to pay back these karmic debts, Leaves of Grass (1892): of the objects mean—of the struggle and I’d barely make a dent. ever renew’d; At least now, as one of my Ohio O ME! O life!... of the questions of Of the poor results of all—of the adoptee friends said when she finally these recurring; plodding and sordid crowds I see around me; Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me inter- twined; Broadway on the Elbe The question, O me! so sad, recur- ring—What good amid these, O me, A six-week summer program O life? in musical theater in Answer. Magdeburg, Germany! That you are here—that life exists, and identity; Applications are being accepted for That the powerful play goes on, and programs in 2017 and 2018. you will contribute a verse. t

Recommended books Lost and Found: The Adoption Ex- perience, by Betty Jean Lifton Reading Adoption: Family and Dif- ference in Fiction and Drama, by Marianne Novy The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Sur- rendered Children for Adoption in OADW R AY the Decades Before Roe v. Wade, B By Ann Fessler

Journeys After Adoption: Under- standing Lifelong Issues, by Jayne Schooler and Betsie Norris O E N B Birthright: The Guide to Search and EL THE Reunion for Adoptees, Birthparents, and Adoptive Parents, by Jean A. S. Visit our Web-page for details and periodic updates. Strauss www.MagdeburgPrep.org The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child, by Nancy New- ton Verrier

44 DRAMATICS • SEPTEMBER 2016 Leave a Legacy at the Educational Theatre Association

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