<i>Roe</i>: Can a Play Influence the Abortion Debate?
Lisa Loomer's production about the legendary Supreme Court case opens during a time of renewed uncertainty over a woman’s right to choose.
Roe, which opened at Washington, D.C.’s Arena Stage just days before the inauguration of President Donald Trump, is a modern kind of history play, a production that considers a crucial issue in American politics. But its playwright, Lisa Loomer, didn’t expect the timing of Roe to be quite so pointed, coinciding with the arrival of a new president opposed to abortion rights and a vacancy on the Supreme Court. “It’s daunting,” Loomer says. “I feel like the play has become accidentally urgent.”
But isn’t a particularly polemical play, or a deliberate attempt to advocate for one side or another. It frames its story around the two women at the center of , the 1971 case that enshrined the legal
