NATIVITY, an audio celebration of childbirth in myth and reality has been released by The Independent Eye, a Northern California theatre & media ensemble.  

Eye producers Elizabeth Fuller and Conrad Bishop conducted interviews with 26 women about their pregnancies, birth-givings, losses and growings, and wove them into a collage of voices reflecting the diverse experiences at each stage of the process.  They also interspersed fragments of “divine birth” stories from Egyptian, Greek, Melanesian, Asian, and Native American traditions, as well as the Biblical Nativity, underpinned by Fuller’s music.

“The idea first came out of facing the onslaught of Christmas,” Fuller explains, “and wanting to say, hey, this is about birth, so let’s make it real.  And then, as we continued the interviews, we felt very strongly that we had to frame every birth as something sacred.”

“Sacred doesn’t necessarily mean sweet and lovely,” Bishop adds.  “The women frequently echo one another, and yet each experience is as personal as fingerprints.  For one it’s transcendent, for another it’s hell.  But what we hope emerges is a common sense that it’s life-changing and pretty heroic.”

Listeners have responded strongly:

“Amazing.  Powerful.  It cost me a few tears.  I want my mom to hear it.  Thanks for doing this magical work.”

“What a great show... made me think and remember and long to hug my kids again and again.”

“I found myself getting chills all over, crying, laughing, and feeling so moved!  It was a spiritual experience.  It brought back the birth experience so vividly and made me feel connected to the other mothers and the web of life.”

“NATIVITY features potent interviews with women on the joy and pain of pregnancy, birth and new parenting.  Narrators Conrad Bishop and Elizabeth Fuller dramatically frame snippets of dialogue with haunting music and mythical stories about birth.  This is a gem of a recording.”  * Melissa Chianta, Mothering Magazine

“Nativity” was first broadcast as part of Bishop & Fuller’s public radio series Hitchhiking Off the Map, a public radio series on Pacifica’s KPFA and other Northern California stations that ran for three and a half years.  The series combined documentary and drama about personal journeys of change.

Bishop & Fuller have toured nationally, performing their own dramatic work, for the past 31 years, in addition to production of their plays at such theatres as Actors Theatre of Louisville, New York’s Circle Repertory and Jean Cocteau Rep, Mark Taper Forum, and many others.  Their public radio work has won major prizes, and the series was funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.  They have two children, aged 30 and 32.  Their website is www.independenteye.org.

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