SOURCE: DeShazer, Mary K. “Fractured Borders: Women's Cancer and Feminist Theatre.” NWSA Journal 15, no. 2 (summer 2003): 1-26.

In the following essay, DeShazer analyzes four plays containing women's cancer as the primary thematic element, contending that performance theater allows for a different examination of feminist explorations of the female body.

I have stage four metastatic ovarian cancer. There is no stage five. Oh, and I have to be very tough. It appears to be a matter, as the saying goes, of life and death.

—Margaret Edson, Wit (1999, 12)

I am a One-Breasted, Menopausal, Jewish Bisexual Lesbian Mom and I am the topic of our times. I am the hot issue. I am the cover of Newsweek, the editorial in the paper. I am a best-seller. And I am coming soon to a theatre near you.

—Susan Miller, My Left Breast (1995, 219)

The women's cancer movement is indeed the “topic of our times...