Nikki Brake-Sillá
REWOMBED asks the provocative question: in a world where nothing is believed until it is replicated, when did science lose its faith? What roles science, risk, and faith play in personal decisions recur over several office visits between an uterine transplant candidate and her OBGYN in this compelling new drama.
The first reading of REWOMBED by Nikki Brake-Sillá will occur as part of the 2023 EST/Sloan First Light Festival on Thursday, May 18 at 3:00 PM. The reading is free but reservations are encouraged.
Learn more about REWOMBED in the following exchanges with Nikki.
(Interview by Rich Kelley)
How did you come to write REWOMBED?
I wrote REWOMBED in 2020 after I read an announcement in PENN Medicine News that talked about the birth of Baby Benjamin, the first birth from the Uterus Transplantation for Uterine Factor Infertility (UNTIL) trial that started in 2017 at the University of Pennsylvania. I was immediately torn. It felt like doctors were playing God in a way that made me uncomfortable. Which got me thinking, WHY was I uncomfortable? I have two beautiful daughters, so it’s easy for me to sit in my seat of privilege and judge and question. What would it mean if the woman deciding to participate in this trial was someone who is deeply religious and believes, “For all those things My hand has made, And all those things exist,” Says the Lord. Isaiah 66:2 NKJV
What kind of research did you do to create the play? Did you speak with couples going through IVF? Did you interview doctors who work in this area?
Penn Medicine announcement of successful transplant (Photo credit: Penn Medicine)
I did extensive research before writing. I read journal and newspaper articles and watched a short film about Baby Benjamin. I have spoken to couples who have gone through the IVF process and am excited to interview doctors familiar with this procedure to answer more of my process-based questions.
Your main character Rachel is intensely religious. In fact, she is a pastor. She preaches and leads her congregation in prayer during the play. Why was it important to incorporate faith in God into the play?
There is so much faith in Science. Every day you put your faith in something. Just because you don’t name it capital ‘G’ God doesn’t mean it’s not divine. I find there is no room for scientists who believe in a higher power. I’m Christian, I’m a scientist and I believe in evolution. It’s not an either-or for me, yet some people have highjacked Christianity and their warped interpretations of it leave no room for grace, love, faith, or science.
Is religion important to you? Do you see a conflict between science and religion?
Artwork for ReWombed
Religion is important to me. I grew up in the church in North Carolina. That church was all hell and brimstone and fear. I read the Bible front to back three times before I graduated from high school. Because I wanted to be able to question and have discussions from a place of knowledge. As I got older, and through the help of my village, I now see God as someone whom I need to help me weather the storms I experience. That’s why it’s important to me that Rachel is a woman of unwavering faith. A dear friend said, faith is a verb, and it will be tested. That’s my mantra throughout this play.
As we watch Rachel and her husband Isaiah go through the lengthy and stressful transplant and IVF process, we see the toll it can take on a relationship. How did you get such hard-won knowledge of what they experience?
As a playwright, I am constantly gleaning information from my surroundings and relationships. I have also been married for almost 15 years, so there is a certain familiarity between couples who have that type of history. And I have a vivid imagination and am curious about how characters would handle situations that I find untenable. They are my very own What if?
When I google Nikki Brake-Sillá the first line that keeps coming up to describe you is “Nikki Brake-Sillá is a Black playwright and filmmaker with an invisible disability, who tried to check out of the hospital with her infant, A.M.A.”
You wrote a monologue called A.M.A. Against Medical Advice. Is this monologue about your own experience of medical bias? Did that experience influence the writing of REWOMBED? Care to say anything about your “invisible disability”? Do the characters in REWOMBED have this disability?
AHHHHH, good ol’ google. I did write A.M.A. from my first-hand experience after the birth of my second child. The way I was treated during both of my fourth trimesters has shaped all my subsequent work. The trauma that I faced during that process, me, a highly educated Black woman who is a strong self-advocate is the reason I write plays that deal with inherent medical bias and medical racism. My invisible disability is rheumatoid arthritis and interstitial lung disease. Autoimmune diseases love to buddy up. Because of my lung condition whenever I exert, I must use a portable oxygen concentrator. Without it, I become hypoxic, and can’t stop coughing, which isn’t a great look in these still COVID streets. Rachel’s invisible disability is Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH syndrome) which means she was born without a uterus.
What’s next for Nikki Brake-Sillá?
Artwork for Say It Ain’t So
What’s next? Well, I’m so glad you asked. Say it Ain’t So, the full-length play I’m co-producing with Revolution Shakespeare, will run from July 20 – 23, 2023 at Neighborhood House in Philadelphia. Say it Ain’t So weaves a tale of Sandra, an affluent Black mother, on the lam with her Deaf sister, Renny, after Sandra kills her husband. This familial play asks, “What do you pass on, and what should not be inherited?” Christina D. Eskridge is directing the play with Patrice Creamer as Director of Artistic Sign Language (DASL).
A.M.A. – Against Medical Advice was the impetus for The Fourth Trimester, an ARTisPHL/Knight Foundation-funded work that will provide six weeks of free group psychotherapy, devised theater workshop, childcare, and transportation for Black women and birthing parents, a program that will begin in September 2023.
And lots of naps.
Anyone can keep up with everything I do by subscribing to my newsletter.
REWOMBED is one of seven readings of new plays in development as part of the EST/Sloan Project in this year’s First Light Festival, which runs until June 22. All readings are free, but reservations are encouraged.
