Las Borinqueñas Ensemble Studio Theatre Valerie Terranova Photography
Birth control helps give half the world’s population a life outside the home. But the women who made it possible in the 1950s were never told they were subjects in the pill’s first large human trial.
Las Boriqueñas by Nelson Diaz-Marcano, on at the Ensemble Studio Theatre, New York, tells the story of five Puerto Rican women in the trial. They gossip and dream, but are restricted by limited family planning options: undependable partners, potentially deadly abortion or sterilisation.
The pill is a game-changer, but has severe side effects (the…
