HeyReprotech is on spring hiatus — but here is a play you should watch if you can

For a Christmas gift, my daughter bought me tickets for a play at The Coal Mine Theatre, our local favourite. The play was called Yerma, which, I'm embarrassed to say, I'd never heard of. Because I like to know as little as possible about a performance before I see it, I walked into the venue with no inkling that it would be about assisted reproduction.

It turns our Yerma was originally written in 1934 by Federico Garcia Lorca, a Spanish playwright. It is the story of a young married woman who desperately wants children but cannot conceive.

In 2016, the play was updated. Simon Stone, an Australian playwright, kept the spirit of the earlier work, but now the busy olive farmer is a jet-setting entrepreneur, and Yerma turns to, and becomes obsessed with, IVF. The updated version played to critical acclaim in London and then New York. I saw the Toronto play in preview and it had already completely sold out.

What I discovered the next day, however, is that a London performance of Yerma was filmed and has been made available through many libraries around the world — the Toronto Public Library among them. I immediately sat down and watched the entire play through again.

Many of you will want to watch it too. It is stunning.

Check your local library's online listing.

Or rent it, if you can, from NT at home.

Weeks later, I'm still thinking about it.

Federico Garcia Lorca. Yerma: A Tragic Poem in Three Acts and Six Scenes. 1934.

Simon Stone, after Federico Garcia Lorca. Yerma. 2018.

Yerma at The Coal Mine Theatre.

Online performance of Yerma via NT at home streaming.