Last night, I saw the play Hatched at the Toronto Free Gallery.  I had been waiting eagerly for the play to open, ever since first being contacted by the playwright, Claire Burns, reading a draft of the script, and then attending at and speaking at a fundraiser. 

Hatched is a play about egg donation.  It asks important questions: what makes a family? How important is biology? How much of a person is nature vs. nurture? Should parents tell a child born through the use of donor gametes about their conception, and if so, when? What role should a donor play in the life of the child conceived through the use of the donated gametes? Hatched goes a step further, though.  It asks questions about the emotional experience of the egg donor.  What does the experience mean to an egg donor? Is the donor curious about children born through the use of the donated ova? It explores the emotions of a woman who had donated her eggs in her youth and later ends up suffering from infertility; the only child with a biological link to her that will exist is the child who was conceived with the use of her donated eggs.

Because Hatched is a play and is therefore not required to be true to life, there are parts that are a little bit fanciful.  An intended parent being able to steal the medical records of an anonymous egg donor seems unlikely.  Even more unlikely is the egg donor being the guidance counsellor of the child conceived with the use of the donor eggs.  Regardless, I think it's important to explore the issues surrounding egg donation (and other third party reproductive technologies) from all perspectives, and theatre and art are excellent forums for this.  My one caveat, though, is that the audience must remember that this is a play, and not the actual experience of the donor. If we look back to Margaret Atwood's The Handmaids Tale, for example, when it comes to reproductive technologies, sometimes fiction has taken the place of reality in making policy which is a dangerous thing.

Hatched is playing through the 17th of November.  Tickets can be purchased here.