In February 2020, ABC removed an ad from airing during the annual televised Academy Awards. The ad featured a woman postpartum, walking gingerly to the bathroom to use personal care products from the company Frida. Her crying baby is unseen; instead the camera follows her wincing and waddling, her struggle and exhaustion. A similar ad allowed to air during the 2021 Golden Globes demonstrates the struggle and pain of breastfeeding, reminiscent of comedian Ali Wong’s raunchy standup revelation: “your body is a cafeteria now.”

The story of Mary Toft–the woman from Godalming in Surrey who in 1726, with the assistance of her husband, neighbors and mother-in-law, fooled doctors locally and in London into believing she birthed animal parts and baby rabbits–is at the heart of cunnicularii. But Mary’s postpartum journey in Sophie McIntosh’s play resonates with our current cultural revision of what it means to be a new mother in all its complexity: excitement, yes, but also ambivalence, anxiety, depression, grief, restlessness, pain. Even trauma and horror!

This fear surrounding all that we can’t control in pregnant and postpartum bodies–from blood to bunnies–manifests in the shared folklore of our culture, emerging like Rosemary’s Baby from unexpected places: Frankensteinian monster movies, pristine nativities in mangers, tabloid obsessions with celebrity bodies “snapping back,” and matter-of-fact commercials banned from primetime. It trickles down into our real lives and beliefs, shaming parents out of speaking honestly and asking for help during what is now considered the fourth trimester.

Yet 10% of the reproductive-age population is pregnant every year. Only recently has medical science recognized the transition to becoming a parent as “matrescence”–a stage of life with permanent physiological and neurological changes akin to adolescence, that requires its own specialized treatment alongside neonatal care. As research and understanding continue to develop, our long-held beliefs will necessarily be challenged. cunnicularii brings us together to mark this shift and lead us in a ritual recognition of what is human and true: when things we don't understand scare us, self-love community support give us the confidence to cope.

-Mo Holmes, production dramaturg