Emotions are running high backstage at an off-brand bilingual tour of the Rodgers & Hammerstein classic Oklahoma! In Christin Eve Cato’s wild, frank new play O.K.! (at New York City’s INTAR Theatre May 10-June 8), Melinda, an actor, finds out she’s pregnant and has doubts about going through with it. Her castmates—young, salty Elena and soulful, jaded Jolie—have plenty of opinions to share, as do a few supernatural visitors. The stakes-raising catch: This production of Oklahoma! is on a tour stop in its title state, which has just enacted the nation’s strictest abortion ban.

In the summer of 2022, the Dobbs decision struck down Roe v. Wade, but Oklahoma lawmakers had actually beaten it to the punch, fully outlawing abortion in the state a month before. As Cato recalled, “I’m watching the news, and the Oklahoma governor is televising this event like it’s some major accomplishment, signing this abortion ban, and people are celebrating. It rubbed me in such a wrong way.”

That by itself might not have inspired a play, but then Cato noticed an odd coincidence: that the tour of Daniel Fish’s stripped-down revival of Oklahoma! was getting “some mixed reviews” on the road. She thought back to her rendition of Ado Annie’s signature song, “I Cain’t Say No,” at LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts. As Ali Stroker and others have shown, the song can be a kind of sex-positive anthem, but that’s not how it felt to 15-year-old Cato. “I remember thinking, ‘This is such a terrible song. I can either play this as a victim, or I can own my sexuality’—which I didn’t even have yet,” she said. “So I just played it up like I was a slut.”

Cato doesn’t want O.K.! to preach to audiences, though she does have a takeaway in mind. “The message of the play is not, ‘We must all be pro-choice,’ or that you’re either pro-choice or you’re pro-life,” she said. “No—you just have to be pro-liberation.”

Rob Weinert-Kendt (he/him) is editor-in-chief of American Theatre.