If youâve known someone caught in the degrading grind of infertilityâwhether in adoption, in vitro fertilization (IVF), or surrogacyâyouâll immediately recognize the steaming locomotive of baby fever that propels the characters in Samsara forward.
For its 2024-25 season, Profile Theatre is focusing on the works of celebrated playwright Lauren Yee (Cambodian Rock Band, The Great Leap). In the fall, the company presented several sold-out readings of Yee's works. Samsara, the season's first staged production, is an elegant, early piece by Yee that explores the perspectives and costs for those hurtling metaphorically down the tracks of the desire to have a child.

We meet Craig (Benjamin Tissell) and Katie (Jerilyn Armstrong) copulating on schedule (vigorously but unsuccessfully), hoping for a pregnancy, saving for years to afford a surrogacy in India, and finally, enduring humiliating interviews to match with a surrogate.
At first, Craig seems a bit passive, caught in the gears of Katieâs desire for a child. But he dutifully trundles off to Indiaâalone, curiouslyâto meet Suraiya (Veda Baldota), their hugely pregnant surrogate. Her nose buried in medical textbooks, Suraiya is driven by a different desire and somewhat indifferent to the circumstances of her large belly.Â
At home, Katie embarks on hilarious, possibly imaginary, erotic adventures with a suave Frenchman (Jonathan Cullen), which are interrupted by incessant international calls with Craig.
Suraiya develops long, similarly-invented conversations with her fetus (Abrar Haque). Since she is his source of food, and he is an annoying presence to her, they dub one another Microwave and Shithead, respectively. Those conversations become the heart of the playâs reflection on the consequence of desire, and samsaraâan idea that comes from Buddhism and Hinduism that describes the cycle of birth, suffering, and death all beings endure.Â


Suraiya has the most at stake of these five people. With multiple past traumas to heal, a burning desire to satisfy, and imminent loss of a child to endure, she shows us the full cycle of samsara. Baldota plays her with great restraint and a wry worldliness, as though she has bigger fish to fry.Â
Craig is not as well developed, but Benjamin Tissell portrays his passivity perfectlyâflummoxed at trying to cross a street in India, or giving a second-hand description of a cityscape to Katie, while she reads the same booklet. When tension comes to a boil between them, the motivation isnât quite as sharp.
The pair are finally reunited as Suraiya's pregnancy concludes. Shithead assumes his proper name. Suraiya moves on to the next stage of her suffering, and Katie and Craig are granted a small dose of enlightenment. Though the fetus speaks disapprovingly of "reproductive imperialism" in one imaginary conversation, Samasara doesn't come off as a treatise or polemic against transnational surrogacy or adoption. Yee's play contains issues of race, economic class, and citizenship, but like Suraiya, the playwright seems to have bigger fish to fry.
The clichĂ© rings true: Lifeâs two sorrows are not getting what you want, and getting what you want.Â
Profile Theatre presents Samsara at Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison, Thurs-Sun through Sun Feb 9, $45, tickets and showtimes here.