This project seeks to raise awareness of the crisis surrounding undocumented women’s and teen’s reproductive rights and crisis pregnancy centers, highlighting the intersection of abortion access and immigration under the current administration’s policies.
In 2018, a 17 year-old pregnant immigrant who was blocked from getting an abortion by the Trump administration, and was forced to sue the government for a determination by a federal judge that she was legally entitled to get one. There are numerous other known cases (and an untold number of unknown cases) with less satisfying results. Moreover, the Office of Refugee Resettlement continues to delay and deny, by forcing pregnant teens to go to so-called “crisis pregnancy centers”– nonmedical, religious organizations whose stated agenda is to stop pregnant woman from having abortions using a variety of psychological tactics (including disseminating guilt and misinformation.) The rights of such centers to exclude factual information about abortion in their propaganda as an exercise of religious freedom under the first amendment was just upheld by the Supreme Court in NFLA v. Becerra (June 26, 2018).
3GT’s Investigates was part of the 2018 New Works Festival! Our long-time partner, NARAL Pro-Choice America, led a panel discussion with activists in the field about what’s being done to counter the attacks of the current administration’s war on the reproductive rights of undocumented girls in our country.
Jennifer Lynne Roberts – Head writer/program director for 3GT Investigates: Birth Rights.
Jennifer Lynne Roberts holds an MFA from California College of Arts. She’s co-founder/producer of Ex Nihilo Theater and ReproRights! Theater, and past member of the writer’s pool for Playground. Her play, THE KILLING JAR, a finalist for Dayton Playhouse’s FutureFest 2014, is slated for production with Spare Stage 2019. Short plays include: LUNCH HOUR and THE LAST DANCE OF THE SUGAR PLUM FAIRY, Playground 2106/ 2017; MARS ONE PROJECT and MEET CLAUDIA, Wily West Productions 2014; PHOTO DYNAMIC THERAPY, Wily West/PCSF 2014; CHYROSOMELIDAE CRY NO MORE, Wily West/PCSF 2013. MARS ONE PROJECT won San Francisco Theater Pub’s Excellence in Theater Award for Best Short Play and was part of the Navigators Theater Company’s Lift-Off New Play Series and Otherworld Theatre’s PARAGON Science Fiction and Fantasy Play Festival. Commissions include San Francisco Olympians Festival V and VI; All Terrain Theater’s Women in Solodarity; REPRO RIGHTS! WOMEN@RISK in collaboration with 3Girls Theatre Company; and COWBOY NOIR: TALL TALES OF THE UNNATURAL for Pacific Play Company, Seattle. Jennifer was Head Writer for Wily West Productions summer shows, ZERO HOUR: THE MARS EXPERIMENT and I SAW IT. Currently, she’s developing the full-length play, ACCOMMODATIONS, through Quantum Dragon Theatre’s The Forge and BLISS POINT during residency at The Farm.
Lisa Marie Rollins – Director for 3GT Investigates: Birth Rights.
Lisa Marie Rollins is a freelance director, writer and new play developer. She is a Directors Lab West member and a Sundance Institute Theatre Lab Fellow (Directing). She has been a writing fellow with San Francisco Writers Grotto, CALLALOO London, VONA, Just Theater Play Lab and the Joshua Tree Highlands Artist Residency. Regional directing and dramaturg work includes Crowded Fire Theater, Playwright Foundation, TheatreFirst, Berkeley Repertory Theater/ Ground Floor, Shotgun Players, Custom Made Theatre, Magic Theatre, San Francisco Playhouse and new plays by Lauren Gunderson, Geetha Reddy, Idris Goodwin, Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm, and creative collaborations with comedic artists W. Kamau Bell and Zahra Noorbakash. She holds graduate degrees from Claremont Graduate University and University of California, Berkeley and is Distinguished Guest Artist Faculty at St Mary’s College in Performance Studies. She is currently a Resident Artist with Crowded Fire Theater and Artist-in-Residence at BRAVA Theater for Women in San Francisco. Her new book of poems, “Other Words for Grief” is newly released from Finishing Line Press (2018). She is currently developing her new play “TOKEN”. lisamarierollins.wordpress.com
Nia Fairweather is an award-winning Actress (The Roe Effect, Paralysis), Writer and Producer of OORDEEL, the viral filmic adaptation of her acclaimed monologue of the same name whose work has been featured at the Festival de Cannes, American Black Film Festival; on HBO, Nickelodeon, Cinemax and CBS to name a few. Nia employs awareness, empathy and vision to write and perform impactful stories that take audiences on poignant journeys through critical social issues; from prostitution in Thailand in ‘My Thai’, the scars of childhood abandonment in ‘Mommie Dearest’ and homelessness in ‘Sparrow’. Currently, Nia is developing NEW AMSTERDAM, the feature film adaptation of OORDEEL and gearing up for the launch of Untitled, a mix-medis short story series. You can connect (@NiaFairweather) and learn more about her work at www.niafairweather.com
Linda Maria Girón. Guatemalan-American actor and playwright from Los Angeles, CA, Linda currently resides in the Bay Area where she obtained a BA in Theater and Performance Studies at UC Berkeley. During her time at Cal, Linda was awarded both the Roselyn Schneider Eisner Prize for Acting and Playwriting and Michael Mansfield and Randy Sweringen Social Justice Award for her play Memoria del Silencio en el País de la Eterna Primavera. Her second play, white iris, premiered at Pianofight’s Shortlived VI and is currently being developed into a full-length. Post-graduation, Linda has worked with a number of Bay Area theaters including NCTC, SFBATCO, Brava Theater Center, Utopia Theatre, FaultLine Theater and Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts where she is currently a playwright in residence.
Applications for the writing team for Birth Rights are now closed. If you are interested in proposing a future 3GT Investigates project, please contact aj@3girlstheatre.org.
NARAL Pro-Choice California is the leading grassroots pro-choice advocacy organization in our state, and we believe that every woman should be able to make personal decisions about the full range of reproductive health options. NARAL Pro-Choice California works to protect every woman’s right to access the full range of reproductive health options, including preventing unintended pregnancy, bearing healthy children, and choosing legal abortion. NARAL Pro-Choice California is the state affiliate of NARAL Pro-Choice America.
Our NARAL collaborators are:
Amy Everitt, State Director for NARAL Pro-Choice California, has been an innovative advocate for reproductive freedom for women and families throughout California. Under her leadership, California became the only state to successfully regulate anti-choice crisis pregnancy centers and require them to share information about reproductive health options. Amy’s background in campaigns and elections, grassroots and grasstops organizing and coalition building has positioned NARAL as one of the top advocacy organizations for reproductive freedom in the state. She is regularly quoted in the press and has been published in the Sacramento Bee, San Francisco Chronicle and Huffington Post.
Allie Lahey, Program Manager, NARAL Pro-Choice California.Allie is a loud and unapologetic feminist activist, social media nerd and organizer. At NARAL, she engages members and volunteers to help push forward innovative campaigns in California. Before joining NARAL in 2017, she was the Ohio State Organizer with URGE: Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity, where she kickstarted their first integrated voter engagement program, training and mobilizing thousands of young Ohioans for reproductive justice issues, such as overturning the Hyde Amendment and stopping abortion bans. A Bay Area transplant, she is a 2014 Bowling Green State University alum, where she studied Human Development and Family Studies, Popular Culture and Sexuality Studies and lead campaigns for accessible menstrual products and stronger sexual assault services.She is also an active alum with Young People For, a national youth fellowship program, and is dedicated to mentoring fellow young progressive activists. She has worked previously as an advocate at a domestic violence shelter, and with Tech Trek, a STEM camp for girls.
