CAMBRIDGE — For nearly a half century, women had the right to an abortion under national law.
Then, in 2022, the landmark Supreme Court decision that allowed for that choice, Roe v. Wade, was overturned. It was one of the only times that the highest court in the country revoked a fundamental, constitutional right. The reversal also fueled the fire behind a songwriting and production team with deep Island roots to create “1972,” a rock opera about reproductive rights and the women who fought on the frontlines to secure them.
“There’s a place for resistance art and music that speaks to human rights and empathy and collective humanity,” Chadwick Stokes, the show’s writer, creator, and lead performer, told The Times. “Music just has a way of taking us with it.”
The show features songs Stokes had been writing for a decade, with the storyline based on a theatrical book by Stokes and Jessie Nelson, who directs the stage performance.
Having opened on Nov. 1, the show runs until Dec. 6 at the American Repertory Theater (ART) and Harvard University’s Farkas Theater in Cambridge.
Though “1972” is headlining in theaters in Boston, the Island connections are endless. Sybil Gallagher, Stokes’ wife, drove the project forward and produced it with Laurie David, who is an Island resident as well as an environmental activist and Academy Award-winning producer. The show also features Vineyard musician Darby Patterson, who performs one of the lead roles. And dozens of Islanders have traveled to Boston to see the rock opera, which includes songs written in Stokes and Gallagher’s Vineyard home.
“Martha’s Vineyard has always been this beautiful place, like this sanctuary of creativity and peace and complexity and nature,” Gallagher said. “And when those people show up in this theater during this process, it just feels like medicine.”
The Times traveled to Cambridge on Saturday night to see the rock opera, which is set in Chicago, Ill., a few months before the original Roe v. Wade decision. From interlaced harmonies that wove through the theater to a booming standing ovation at the close, Saturday’s performance of “1972” was a testament to the power of music, which can give indescribable suffering a melodic voice and hold the attention of those who might look away.
At its core, the rock opera is a story of women’s empowerment. It follows the protagonist, Hannah, a pregnant 19-year-old fleeing domestic abuse, played by Gracie McGraw.
“I think I spoke too late,” she sings at the show’s opening, a deep blue bruise covering her upper cheek and her hand resting on her midriff. “I fear I’ll disappear forever.”
A wall behind her is being punched through by a steady fist as she grapples with the question of leaving. Her hands are shaking, she sings, too much to open the door.
Hannah’s journey in song takes the audience through her decision to leave, homelessness, train-hopping and finding community, a dangerous near-abortion by a mob boss, and finally, a flyer with a number to call for an abortion; all the caller had to do was ask for “Jane.”
Jane references the Jane Collective, often referred to as just “the Janes,” an underground feminist network of young women in Chicago who performed an estimated 11,000 illegal and safe abortions between 1969 and 1973.
The Janes grew to include more than 100 women, spurred by the civil rights and feminist movements in Chicago during the late 1960s. The collective was founded by Heather Booth, who, in 1965, heard of a young woman who wanted an abortion, and used her contacts in the medical arm of the civil rights movement to connect that woman with a doctor willing to perform it.
After Booth had helped one woman, the calls didn’t stop coming, and Booth and several other Janes learned to perform safe abortions themselves and provided education and resources to those in need.
In “1972,” that true story is highlighted through the fictional character of Hannah, who is helped by the Janes when she has no other options, and ends up joining the collective later.
Hannah is also assisted by Stokes’ character, Depot, a freight-train jumper and father who hasn’t seen his daughter in decades. As Depot navigates his personal unrest, he finds a brief purpose assisting Hannah.
The emotional range of the male characters in the show intentionally mirrors those of the time, with some supportive of women, some putting them in harm’s way, and others acting as distant helpers.
The rock opera doesn’t shy away from those depictions and the gravity of Hannah’s situation, which apparently deeply affected some of the men in the audience of “1972.” Gallagher said she was struck, and pleasantly surprised, by the intense emotional reactions of several men to Hannah’s story.
Producer David said she heard the same from men who approached her after seeing the performance. “I think we’ve got something really special, and so needed in this time when you have all these crazy things happening, with the Cornell Seven and the Epstein files and the president of the United States and everything else. If we can impact men with a story about women like this, then this is important.”
Gallagher and Stokes discussed Hannah’s story and the show’s impact in an interview with The Times on Monday. They said that since 2022, the illegality of abortion in many states has made the landscape of women’s healthcare unsafe again. Laws against abortions don’t stop people from having them, research shows, and the illegality only pushes women into potentially life-threatening situations instead of hospital rooms.
The overturning of Roe v. Wade was the catalyst for “1972.” Stokes said he knew at that moment the story that needed to be told. He had been writing songs that fit into the narrative for nearly 10 years, but “wasn’t quite sure what story I was telling. I just knew I wanted to write a large-scale piece that took 25 songs to get through,” he told The Times.
The reality women and pregnant people were facing again “galvanized” his songwriting around the imminent danger and resilience of those fighting for their right to choose.
It was not a new fight for Stokes and Gallagher, who have advocated for the rights of women and marginalized communities for decades. The couple founded a nonprofit in 2008 called Calling All Crows, which connects music to activism and social justice through campaigns, advocacy, and programming. The nonprofit is currently pausing operations to revisit financing efforts, according to their website.
Stokes is a founding vocalist and guitarist of the indie-rock bands Dispatch and State Radio. Both bands and Stokes are known for social justice shows and fundraisers, such as a Madison Square Garden show Dispatch played in 2007 that raised thousands of dollars for charities in Zimbabwe addressing famine, social injustice, and HIV/AIDS.
The pair have organized music as civil action on the Vineyard, too. A longer version of the rock opera “1972” ran on the Island in 2024 at the Union Chapel and Whaling Church.
Stokes and Gallagher also invited women on the Island in 2022 to sing an arrangement of “I Won’t Back Down” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. More than 100 women showed up to sing the song — nearly a visual representation of the number of Janes in the historic collective.
A music video of the song featured solos by Island musicians Kate Taylor and Laura Jordan-Decker and was edited with archived footage of civil and feminist rights movements by Liz Witham. One of the women who performed in the chorus was Patterson, which is how Stokes and Gallagher met the local singer. Five years later, Patterson is sharing the stage with Stokes for “1972” and playing one of the Janes.
“This cast is coming together to tell an incredible story that is one of thousands,” Patterson said of her involvement. She said the significance of the show to her is “autonomy” paired with the resilience of not just one woman but many who fought together.
Stokes and Gallagher said the turnout from Islanders has been heartwarming. From James Taylor, who attended a dress rehearsal, to their neighbors and longtime friends, Martha’s Vineyard was well-represented in the Cambridge theater seats.
The Times heard from two Vineyard attendees who work in women’s health and traveled off-Island to see “1972.” Both said the rock opera was timely and timeless and stoked the fire of inspiration and advocacy for women in each of them.
“As an acupuncturist and healthcare practitioner, the timeliness of this piece resonated deeply with me. This portrayal of what life was like before Roe v. Wade, and the circumstances that led to women fighting for the right to safe abortion care, is incredibly important,” Jodie Treloar Sampson, musician and holistic practitioner, stated in a text to The Times. “I was moved to tears intermittently from beginning to end.”
Reproductive rights advocate Nancy Kramer felt similarly. She invested in the rock opera several years ago to drive the message of women’s rights forward, and said, “I feel a tremendous amount of emotion whenever I’ve seen it.”
A founder of a digital marketing firm that she sold to IBM in the mid-2000s, Kramer said she was shown a new perspective on women’s health access when she was one of only a few women in business at the time. In 2013, she did a TEDx talk titled “Free the Tampons,” stating that women should have access to sanitary products. Kramer continued that advocacy and started a national movement putting sanitary products in women’s bathrooms. In 2023, she co-chaired a campaign of doctors to protect abortion rights and enshrine women’s rights into the Ohio constitution.
Kramer said she’d seen the show multiple times, and added, “I feel like I could watch it every night.”
Islanders weren’t the only ones who enjoyed the show. David told The Times that members of the original Jane Collective attended the show at a preview in New York and in Cambridge. The group of women even participated in a talkback, a discussion with audience members and actors post-show. “They were so inspiring, and [are] still doing work today,” Stokes said.
Coincidentally, The Times saw the show just days after a “blue wave” hit the midterm elections. In some states, Democrats were elected to seats for the first time in decades.
Many of the Democrats elected have spoken out about abortion rights, including in Illinois, where the rock opera is set. On Nov. 3, current Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, D., was elected to the open Senate seat in the state.
“We are facing a future rife with needless death, despite 61 percent of Americans believing abortion should be legal,” Stratton said at a hearing addressing a post-Roe v. Wade America in 2022. “The overturning of Roe v. Wade has sent us down a dark, agonizing path … I say this not just as the lieutenant governor of Illinois, but as the mother of four daughters — my daughters, who now have fewer rights than I had.”
For attendee Priscilla Douglas, a board member for the ART and former seasonal Vineyard resident, the show featured an important part of an unfinished history on abortion rights. It was a reminder to keep moving forward but look back when necessary to acknowledge those who fought for civil rights and freedoms in the past.
“People forget about what these women did,” she said as she leaned forward in a red theater chair on Saturday. “And how courageous they were, the chances they were taking.”
She also noted that the recent political context was profound. When President Donald Trump was reelected in 2024, Douglas said she walked around feeling an indescribable and existential burden. “It was a heavy weight that has no language,” she said.
But when the warm lights beamed onto the stage on Saturday night, there was a clear message that when words fail, music speaks. Through Stokes’ lyrics calling for fair treatment of women and layered, resonant harmonies, the audience was reminded of that.
