Irene Foley-Chort on Jessica Farber

Dear Jessica,

I found your show to be a charming, imaginative, and wonderfully quirky take on what we might imagine goes on inside the womb as a person is developing. I especially loved the metaphor of the “baggage”—all those generational experiences, memories, emotions, and pieces of family history that somehow filter through and become part of the child yet to be born. It made me think about how much of who we are may already be traveling with us before we ever take our first breath. There was something very poignant underneath all the humor and absurdity.

And there was plenty of wonderful absurdity! The music. The ironing—because apparently even fetuses have chores! The telephone! Hello! The birthday party! And the costume was genius. Each of those choices helped create this strange little world inside the womb where the ridiculous somehow made perfect sense.

And then, of course, there was Placenta. BFF!!! Who knew that placentas ate cornflakes?

I loved that you gave Placenta a personality and a relationship with the developing child instead of treating it simply as part of the setting. It was funny, unexpected, and oddly touching. You took something biological and turned it into a character and companion.

What stayed with me most was the contrast between the playfulness of the world you created and the deeper idea underneath it. We enter life carrying things we didn’t choose. Family history. Expectations. Experiences that happened before us. “Baggage” that may not even belong to us originally, yet somehow becomes part of the journey. At the same time, you never let those ideas make the piece feel heavy. The humor gave us permission to laugh while still thinking about what was underneath it all.

I came away feeling that I had witnessed something delightfully strange, funny, imaginative, and very human—a birthday party unlike any other!

Thank you for inviting us into your wonderfully peculiar womb-world. I’m pretty sure I’ll never look at a bowl of cornflakes—or a placenta—the same way again.

With love,

Irene

Irene Foley-Chort is the creator / performer of Who Do You Think You Are? 

Jessica Farber is the creator/ performer of The Fetus Show.