February 12, 2019
Inspired by the true story of young women using “practice babies” to learn about child-rearing, “Borrowed Babies” will debut February 15 at 7:30 p.m. in Strother Theatre on the Ball State University campus. Other performances are February 16, 19-23 at 7:30 p.m. and February 17 at 2:30 p.m.
Playwright and Ball State theater professor Jennifer Blackmer has woven themes of feminism, women in the workforce, and the work/motherhood balance in her brand new play, featuring seven theater majors and one professor. Blackmer was inspired by the nonfiction book “Borrowed Babies: Apprenticing for Motherhood” by Jill Christman, a Ball State English professor.
Blackmer also loosely based the play on “practice houses” in Ball State’s former Department of Home Economics (later Family and Consumer Sciences). Until the 1960s, practice houses across the country placed female students in simulated homes in order to learn the skills of motherhood and running a household.
“Women in the ’50s and the ’80s were dealing with the questions we are still dealing with now,” said the play’s director, theater professor Karen Kessler. “The play is entertaining and heart-rending all at the same time.”
The play takes place in two distinct eras: First in the 1950s, when a home economics program works with children borrowed from orphanages to help students learn to be better mothers — then in the 1980s, when unexpected repercussions from the program arise in the lives of the professors.
Tickets for the general public are $15 and $12 for students, faculty, staff, and seniors. Tickets are available by calling or visiting the Theatre and Dance Box Office, located directly across the main entrance to Bracken Library, and open Noon - 5p.m., and one hour before performances. For further information, call 765-285-8749 or visit
bsu.edu/theatre.