←Recommendations of Egypt (monologue)

The slow reveal over the course of this monologue as to what happened to our narrator, the fetus, leaves the reader/audience with haunting lines. I also appreciated that the character spoke about how they were wanted and loved vs. people who may deal with unwanted pregnancies: this is all the more important in our post-Roe world. It makes it all the more visceral and disturbing that Egypt's and their mother's life was cut so short by such horrific violence. Featuring this in some scripts literary magazine Issue 5 was a privilege.

A devastating monologue, and the Housebound Series performance for Mind The Gap Theatre is easily findable on YouTube. Check it out. What stays with me most is the sense of utter isolation that O'Grady expresses through the protagonist. It is both visceral and poetic.

This haunting monologue shifts us to a place we rarely think about: a womb carrying an unborn child. The glimpse she has garnered of the world to date is a sad one although she knows she is loved. And she is no more. She has lived all the life she was granted - and was old beyond her days. Haunting.

EGYPT reaches unheard of depths of narrative intimacy as its narrator Intuits and reveals the fate of her surroundings, namely the body of the mother carrying her.

We live in a country – nay, a world – where women are treated as disposable. Where the violence wrought against them is tolerated, fetishized, and encouraged. O’Grady puts the reader/listener in the middle of that terror, elegantly – even dispassionately –bridging the gap between two victims of the same crime.

EGYPT and Egypt will live on within us. Our hearts and minds are her sarcophagus. She will not be forgotten.

Heart-breaking and powerful, Jennifer O'Grady takes us on the journey of Egypt, an unborn child as she must passively wait to be born to her premature end at the hands of someone she never meets. This is an emotional punch to the gut. I was moved by this piece. I was also struck by the choice to have Egypt played by an adult rather than a child. While a younger actress may have elicited sympathy, the choice to have Egypt played by an adult lent the play extra gravitas, showing a life already lived despite not having been born yet.