“You know the story,” says Laurel Turk at the beginning of her fearless new play Breastless. “A woman is living her life, finds the lump, and suddenly she is riding a bullet train of doctor visits, treatments and fear. But the story I want to tell you is the story of the body.
“My body,” she says simply, “has no breasts.”
The story she tells is largely composed of things that aren’t usually included in the breast-cancer “story” – “flesh and scars and wounds … curves and flatness … sensation … loss … sex.”
Written by Turk and performed by her and a lively three-woman ensemble, Breastless plays through this weekend in Ashfield’s First Congregational Church. (Last weekend’s performances were more than sold out, so the show has been moved into the spacious sanctuary with seating for all.)
You might expect Turk’s first-person narrative of her experience before and after a radical bilateral mastectomy (that is, both breasts entirely removed) to be even sadder and more depressing than other accounts, because it is so frank and unadorned. But quite the contrary. And “unadorned” is quite the wrong term. The 70-minute performance, adroitly staged by Jeannine Haas, is spiced with songs and leavened with laugher.
Not that the show makes light of the life-altering changes that every woman in this situation goes through. I almost said “every woman this happens to,” but no. The core of Turk’s story is that she didn’t let the prognosis and outcome “happen to her,” but made clear-eyed decisions and dealt with them thoughtfully, courageously and creatively.
The key decision she made was to forego breast reconstruction surgery, partly because of the rather gruesome procedures involved – apparently taking flesh and muscle from the abdomen and/or (I wasn’t quite clear on this part) inserting silicon implants. She looks over an informational brochure that describes everything except what a reconstructed breast feels like to its wearer.
“You’d think they’d mention that,” she remarks wryly, and the scene segués into a song, “Tits and Abs,” a parody of the number from A Chorus Line, complete with spangly top hats. When Turk contemplates undergarment prostheses, there’s a delicious but affectionate send-up of that well-known “Madame of Bogus Bosoms” and her popular Northampton brassiere emporium.
To this observer, writing and especially performing this piece represents an act of courage just as great as what it took to go through what the play enacts. She’s brutally – and often humorously – honest when examining her own roller-coaster feelings about her relationship with her transformed body and with her lover. Onstage, all the women wear a basic outfit of tank top and pants, with costume overlays. Seeing Turk’s unapologetically flat chest is just as moving as anything she says.
She’s not an actor – nor, until now, a playwright, though you wouldn’t know it. Her forthright style, ironic humor and smart, strong presence make an effective and affecting performance. She’s more than ably abetted by Emily Bloch, Emily Fox and Dorian Gregory, who deftly take on a variety of characters while acting as a kind of supportive chorus.
The show is about breast cancer and its aftermath, but it’s one that will resonate, as the publicity puts it, for “anyone with a body.”
Jan. 21-23 at 7:30, Jan. 24 at 2:00, First Congregational Church, 429 Main Street, Ashfield. $20 in advance (brownpapertickets.com), $5 more at the door (cash/check).
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