Contraception scientist pens lesbian comedy with Doctor Who star
The man who invented the Contraceptive Pill is now embracing more family planning issues by writing a lesbian comedy.
Carl Djerassi, is one of the world’s most famous scientists and is credited with starting a social revolution in the 1960s. The play, Taboos, explores the consequences of becoming a biological and legal parent, and covers controversial issues such as sperm and embryo donation.
Set in culturally opposite areas of San Francisco and the Deep South of America, the play stars Doctor Who actress Nicola Bryant. It tells the story of Sally and Harriet, a lesbian couple in San Francisco who each have a child using sperm from their partner’s brother, while one of the brothers uses an egg from his sister¹s partner to help his wife get pregnant
Mr Djerassi said: “Assumptions that marriage must be heterosexual and that a child cannot have two parents of the same sex were never even considered assumptions, because they were beyond questioning. All of these terms have become destabilised, their meanings blurred, their range extended.”
“Some would blame technology during the past three decades for these developments, but in actual fact major social and cultural changes were even more responsible for the monumental shift that has caused so much fear and antagonism, especially among the ever increasingly strident fundamentalists in the USA. So why not write a play about a situation where family and parent have assumed disturbingly fuzzy meanings.”
The production takes place at the New End Theatre in Hampstead until April 2.
