BOLD Locations

Bozeman, Montana

Marianne Donch, our BOLD coordinator in Bozeman, Montana, brought the play to her small town. This was a first for Bozeman, Montana. Marianne reports:

WE DID IT! The cast and audience had a great time and were very, very excited about the play. Some women from the cast  and audience have indicated that they would like to do it again next year - could there be a more positive statement?

It has been a lot of work over the past month to put  BOLD together. Especially challenging were the search for a location as well as casting.  It took everything I could muster to get 7 women together to do it. I had two drop out for personal reasons, and we had absolutely NO backup. We all were there, which was a miracle. One of my cast members has a 3 week  (!) old baby, and as a birth doula I was on call for a mom who was already a week past due. We rehearsed twot imes, the maximum I could ask for from all "my" busy moms. Clearly we were not  professional actresses but did make up for it with enthusiasm and  tremenduous support for each other.

I spent many many hours publicising and promoting  BOLD in the community.  I applied for and received donated ad space in the local paper; I copied 50 posters and had two moms help me put them up all over town;  I mailed a personal invitation to  all the OB's and Family Doctors who deliver at our local Hospital, as well as to the local midwives offering home birth services, not only inviting them to come to attend the BOLD performance but also asking them to sit on a panel for the public talkback that was  scheduled to follow the reading of the play. To my great disappointment, not a single maternity care provider attended the play let alone offered to sit on the talkback panel. Thus the talkback happened between the audience and the cast.

After all the publicity I did our turnout was 20-30 people, actually not bad for our conservative community, but still I would have liked to see at least two or three times as many people.  Since I expected a small turnout I decided from the start that we would make this an event free of charge and open to anyone interested. My main aim was for as many people as possible to show up - just getting the BOLD message out was my goal. Voluntary donations were accepted and ended up covering about 10 % of our actual expenses.

Had donations exceeded expenses,we had decided that any money raised would have gone to the  BIRTHING WITH CHILD Resource Center, a no cost Lending Library to the public with  over 200 books and videos on all aspects of pregnancy, birth, babies, and breastfeeding.  Information on the  purpose and the inventory of the Resource Center can be found under www.BirthingWithChild.org.