Dr. Womb and Dr. Tomb Make Their Debut

Dr. Womb and Dr. Tomb took center stage to heal women and the nation last night at Stage Center Theatre on the Northeastern Illinois University campus. The 50-minute biting satire had the audience laughing, thinking, and participating. Thanks to our Kickstarter donors, we were able to offer our treatments and cures with flash and flare. Following the show, the audience and the good doctors had a rousing discussion about how the show came about (look out for a blog posting on that very subject later this week!).

Victoria Pettersen Lantz (Dr. Womb)      Angela Sweigart-Gallagher (Dr. Tomb)

Victoria teaches in both the English and Theatre departments at Sam Houston State University in Texas.

Angela is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at Northeastern Illinois University.  She teaches a range of courses from Introduction to Theatre, Acting, and Political Theatre.

Together, they co-created The Wandering Uterus Project and the theatre piece Dr. Womb & Dr. Tomb's Wondrous Wandering Ward of Cures, Clarifications, Correctives, & Creams for all that Ails & Avails the Utilitarian and Utterly Unreliable Uterus.

Stacie Hauenstein (Drs.' Assistant)
Since coming to Chicago Stacie has worked with companies such as Right Brain Project, The State, Strangeloop, Point of Contention, Dream Theatre, and Theatre-Hikes. In May of 2008, she graduated from the 2-year conservatory program at Act One Studios, where she could be seen in productions such as American Devine, Laramie Project, and Cherrywood. She also has a BA in theatre from UW-Madison.

Dr. Womb encourages Dr. Tomb to look into her heart and offer the audience a generous discount on their cures and treatments.

Dr. Womb and Dr. Tomb administer the final treatment in the CURE-ALL Cure.

The good Drs.'s assistant readies herself to receive the soaking she requires.

Ready, set, spread your seed!

Here is a brief clip from the show...

World Premiere of...

The premiere takes place on March 8th at 7:30pm 

in the Stage Center Theatre 

of Northeastern Illinois University!

Admission is Free and open to the public!

Binders of Women

Did we just hear that?  

Yes.  I guess we did.  In a nationally televised debate a presidential candidate (aka Mitt Romney) just admitted that when he was the governor of Massachusetts that he: 1) knew so few "qualified" women he had to go on a quest to find one to be part of his cabinet, and 2) his team brought him "binders full of women" in order to find a woman worthy of the post.

Yes, poor choice of words, perhaps.  Yet so revealing.  

Let's not forget that he added to this poor choice of words, by suggesting his approach to helpfully managing female employees was to ensure that their schedules were flexible enough to get home and make dinner for their families. 

Gulp.  

This man wants to be our President.  The lens through which he views women is clearly limited.  It is clearly an outdated notion of women, their roles at work and at home.  It struck us as right out of the 40s and 50s and with that in mind, we issued this pictorial response.

Operation Wanda Drop in Full Swing

Isn't Wanda looking lovely?  She's all dressed up and ready to send Mr. Ryan a powerful message that rejects his anti-women voting record and policies.

Get in on the action and send your own message.

All you need is a stamp!

Operation Wanda Drop...Let's send Paul Ryan a message!

Mitt Romney's new running mate, Paul Ryan, is a right-wing ideologue whose policies are anti-woman and anti-choice. Ryan voted for the "Sanctity of Human Life Act," which states that life begins at "fertilization," paving the way for additional anti-choice legislation.  Ryan voted to de-fund Planned Parenthood Ryan has proposed draconian cuts to Medicaid that would affect access to affordable care by low-income women. Ryan co-sponsored legislation that makes it possible for employers to deny their female employees access to birth control on "religious" grounds.

Let's welcome Congressman Paul Ryan to VP race with Operation Wanda Drop!

Send Paul Ryan a postcard from you and Wanda every day for the rest of the 2012 election cycle. Send him the message that you REJECT his anti-woman, anti-choice rhetoric and policies. We've pre-addressed the card, and included a message. All you need to do is sign your name (Feel free to leave your own message as well) and put on the stamp. The postcard features Wanda, our favorite wandering uterus, on the front...

and on the back it features the following message:

Contact us at thewanderinguterus@gmail.com to receive a printable copy today. 

Please specify if you would like to receive the card addressed to Paul Ryan's office in Janesville, WI or his national office in Washington, DC. **Feel free to include your own message to Paul Ryan. We encourage honesty and humor, but request that all messages sent as part of Operation Wanda Drop remain civil and nonviolent.**

What's Wanda Reading?

Wanda gets around....the library.  She wanders the stacks.  Nothing sums it up more than this selection.  

Travel can definitely be a political act.  Travel is a refusal to be bounded, a desire to roam, and a willingness to leave the familiar for the unknown. 

 Wanda appreciates anyone who celebrates the power and beauty of the feminine.  

Here Wanda reads aloud to some girls in the library.  

Oh, the things you can think, ladies, if you refuse to be constrained by fear and a lack of imagination.

Dr. Womb & Dr. Tomb

So, we've been spending the last few weeks working on a script for a live performance that would serve as a response to the political discussion about women, their bodies, and, if some in our local, state, and federal government had their way, their inability to control their own bodies and what happens to them. In thinking about the current political situation and our performance we began asking ourselves, where did this notion that women can't or shouldn't have a say over their own bodies begin? Since the dawn of time, you say. Well, you aren't too far off. Obviously, we knew about the theory of the "wandering uterus," once deemed a cause of hysteria in women...after all we named this project after the theory, but we knew there was more to it than just a rationale for when women came down with a case of the crazies. As it turns out, that pesky uterus Vicky and I have been carting around for these 30+ years is just a ticking time bomb. According to Hippocrates, Pliny, and Plato, the uterus (wandering or not) was deemed to cause a host of medical maladies, and that dear folks is where we are headed with our performance piece. We will be introducing Dr. Womb and Dr. Tomb, two travelling doctors well studied in the medical treatments of yesteryear. They are determined to cure all that ails and avails the uterus, and in doing so, healing all that ails and avails womankind, their families, and the nation. They and their emporium of elixirs, potions, and lotions will hopefully be making the rounds beginning this fall--just in time for November.

Stay tuned for more updates about this project as the show evolves.