“JUST DON’T LIE DOWN AND NO CHILD WILL COME.”

It’s Ottawa in the 1920s, pre-legalized birth control. Sophie (Bronwyn Henderson), a young working-class girl, falls madly in love with and marries a stable-hand named Jonny (Michael Briganti). After two difficult childbirths, doctors tell Sophie she shouldn’t have any more children, but don’t tell her how to prevent it. When Sophie inevitably becomes pregnant again, she faces a grim dilemma. Inspired by real stories of mothers during the Canadian birth-control movement of the early twentieth century, one of Canada’s most celebrated playwrights vividly recreates a couple’s struggles with reproduction.

Halifax’s 2b Theatre premiered What a Young Wife Ought to Know at Neptune Theatre in 2015 and toured nationally to critical acclaim. Excavation Theatre’s production will be playing in the final weeks of Women’s History Month, exactly one hundred years after Canada’s first birth-control advocacy group was formed in Vancouver, and fresh off the landmark
announcement that birth control prescriptions will be free in BC starting April 1, 2023. This will be the play’s first BC production, directed by Jessica Anne Nelson.