You’ve probably heard of speed dating but how about speed dating for sperm donors? Such is the title of Calgarian Natalie Meisner’s new one-act play at Lunchbox Theatre which is based on her own experiences trying to start a family.
Though Meisner is a playwright whose works have been produced across the country she says Speed Dating for Sperm Donors stems from a particularly personal — and difficult — project: a non-fiction work titled Double Pregnant: Two Lesbians Make a Family (Fernwood Publishing). The book which was published last May documented the experiences she and her wife had while trying to get pregnant including sourcing a father for their children.
“I had never written non-fiction before. I didn’t know it would be something I would publish. I thought it would be something I would write for myself” says Meisner.
During the process of writing Double Pregnant she found herself shelving humorous scenarios that wouldn’t fit the non-fiction model. “Once you take the non-fiction oath you can’t make it funny or tweak a situation” she explains adding she realized the ideas she was accumulating would make for an “amazing knee-slapping comedy.”
That’s how the play Speed Dating for Sperm Donors was born though the story actually started in 2009 when Meisner and Viviën Beerends got married. Shortly thereafter they decided they wanted to start a family.
While Meisner says the “easiest” route would have been to opt for an anonymous sperm donor Beerends’ childhood experiences diverted the couple from that path. “My wife is a woman of colour and she was adopted into a white family in Holland. She always carried that question about ‘Who is my biological family?’” says Meisner.
The pair decided to look for another solution that wouldn’t produce that same uncertainty — and so began the search for someone who would be willing to help them create a child.
The couple first went to a friend to ask for sperm and they were turned down. “I found out that the struggle with infertility is a hidden struggle” says Meisner adding her friend later revealed the reason for his refusal was that he and his wife were trying to have their own child.
So Meisner and Beerends embarked on what became a one-and-a-half-year quest to find a sperm donor who didn’t want to be a full-on parent but would be willing to make an appearance in his biological child’s life.
“This is when it started to get funny” says Meisner adding that the profiles they wrote for websites on which they were advertising for sperm donors read like dating profiles.
Meisner estimates she and her wife exchanged emails with some 30 to 40 men and actually met about 20 of them. Along the way they had many odd encounters. In one case a guy who was looking “to get lucky” tried to talk them out of artificial insemination in favour of a more direct method of sperm delivery. In another a European physicist expressed interest in the prospect of fathering a child if Meisner’s and Beerends’ IQs measured up. “We just wanted to have babies not über babies” says Meisner laughing.
The couple’s adventures eventually led them to a satisfactory donor in British Columbia who Meisner says participated “out of a sense of altruism.”
Meisner and Beerends both decided to try and get pregnant and carry a baby in case only one could conceive. Instead both became pregnant within two months of one another. “It was a happy accident the double pregnancy” says Meisner.
Her “hope and dream” is that the couple’s two boys who are now nearing four years old can foster a great relationship with their biological father. She adds that she hasn’t heard of many other couples who have taken a similar approach to creating a family which is something she attributes at least in part to shaky donor laws.
Meisner wants Speed Dating for Sperm Donors to stretch beyond comedy and serve as a conversation starter. “The play and the book have brought these issues into the light. Now there’s a space to talk about it and by venturing into the space of humour people think the topic is approachable. This is not frivolous laughter — I’m interested in perspective-shifting laughter” she says.
Speed Dating for Sperm Donors runs until February 21 at Lunchbox Theatre.
