Art generally doesn’t shy from controversy. So it’s curious to me that abortion, one of the most controversial and polarizing of issues, is so rarely taken up as a theme. And in our confessional culture, it’s odd, too, that the experience of having an abortion is so rarely discussed. One in Three, which previewed last night and opens tonight at Project X Theatre, aims to change that.

It’s set in an abortion clinic and the set extends to the street outside the theater. As I parked last night, a handful of “protestors” waved signs and shouted at me, while two “clinic escorts” greeted me as I got out of my car, and walked me up to the theater.

The play is a collage of very short vignettes, each a different woman with a different story of how she arrived at this point. Writers Gretchen Dyer, Victoria Loe Hicks and Merritt Tierce say they want to move from political debates about abortion “to the deep, private places where real women make complex choices.”

Project X, a fairly new company with a very new theater, aims to mingle arts genres – incorporating dance into theater, for example – and this performance is enhanced with film and multi-media directed by Julia Dyer. I’m not going to say much more than this, since Jerome’s working on a piece about the play. But I do wish I were going to be at tonight’s opening, which features a talkback after the performance.

Really interested to hear about the discussion the play generates. If you see it, let us know what you think.