72 Hours From Tuesday : a radio play

72 Hours from Tuesday reimagines Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” through a modern lens, setting the narrative in post-Roe v. Wade United States. The radio play follows a teenager’s quest to have an abortion after an affair with her married professor results in a pregnancy. The current legislation in the United States forces the university student to cross state lines to safely and legally terminate her pregnancy, with the help of her older sister. The script focuses on power-dynamics, access to healthcare, bodily autonomy, sex education, and sisterhood. The parallels between the poem and the radio play tether together fantasy, drama, and comedy genres while drawing comparisons between the radical feminist piece from the Victorian age and the modern-day United States. It applies the relevant themes explored by Rossetti to modern-day feminism and social issues. While “Goblin Market,” which was written in 1859, was intended and viewed as a progressive piece of work, some of the themes may appear outdated by today’s standards. Nonetheless, 72 Hours from Tuesday re-interprets and converts the more antiquated arguments within Rossetti’s poem to better comply with the modern zeitgeist. As an American living in Scotland, I wanted to focus on the duality of the two countries. Therefore, the characters’ waking life is set in the United States, but their dream sequences, the fictional Goblin world, take place in Scotland. During the latter sequences, the characters assume Scottish accents. It also employs an audio device to help the listener determine whether the scenarios are happening in a waking or dream state, to compensate for the absence of physical visuals.