SILHOUETTES

Book by Jordan Ealey
Music & Lyrics by Ari Afsar

A month following the fall of Roe v. Wade, Silhouettes was born out of Jordan and Ari’s desire to capture this meaningful historical moment and what it meant for the shared political and communal future. The two-hander, 75 minute musical, tells the story of two women of different identities, ages, and experiences grappling with the decision to get an abortion. These two womens’ lives would have never crossed paths if it weren’t this choice they both decided to make, especially for the fact they exist in two different time periods. Naima, a Black woman in her thirties, is getting an abortion through the Janes Collective (an underground network of abortion providers) in the 1960s and Ashley, an Asian American woman just beginning college, is dangerously traveling from her home state of Georgia to receive an abortion following Roe’s end in 2022. In Silhouettes, Naima and Ashley share a brief moment in time, where they reveal their own secrets, struggles with parenthood and family, what it’s like to face multiple forms of oppression, and the reality that choice is not always accessible. However, the “secret” of the musical is not revealed until the end: Naima and Ashley not being in the same historical moment, though they are in the same place.