By some estimates, as many as 20 percent of North American women are suffering from a disease that many people have never even heard of. With endometriosis, tissue that normally lines the inside of the uterus appears elsewhere in the body, including the abdominal organs. It can cause severe pain, internal bleeding and infertility. 

Local director and choreographer Cathy Quigley is combatting the ignorance with her original show, "Female Trouble." The piece premiered at the 2011 Fringe Festival and is now coming to Philadelphia's University of the Sciences for a special performance on September 25. Quigley spoke with Flying Kite about developing the piece. 

Flying Kite: Tell us about the show. 
Cathy Quigley:  It's a performance art piece that utilizes dance, theater and multimedia images to both raise awareness about endometriosis and to question thinking and taboos surrounding women's health in general, especially pelvic health.

Why did you develop it?
Back when I was in college, I had a bizarre array of different symptoms. Nobody could figure out what was wrong with me. Someone mentioned the possibility of endometriosis. I had never heard of that.

I started looking into it and was shocked to find out that it's estimated that about 15 percent of women have endometriosis. Even though it wasn't my disease, I still felt very compelled to say something about the ignorance surrounding that issue. 

Why is there such a taboo around it?
One [problem] is the issue of gender roles in general, and the question of fertility and infertility. Endometriosis does not always have infertility as a symptom. [Up to 40 percent of women with the disease do experience infertility.] So, I started thinking of the whole question of ways societies across different cultures, different religions, different creeds view…this ultimate role of woman as mother, and I started thinking that anything that could compromise reproductive health has a taboo and a stigma around it. So thinking about those issues drove me into coming up with the artistic expression of the piece. 

Was it a challenge to book the show at a college campus?
I've had some people say, "Oh, this sounds great," and when you tell them [it will cost] $5,000 [for a cast and crew of 18 to mount the show], they're like, "Oh, we don't have a budget for that." When you find out that Snooki gets $40,000 to appear on campus, it's like, there's money at a college! If they can book things like that, they certainly have a budget. 

I guess I shouldn't be surprised, because if society at large has been keeping women's issues lagging behind for centuries, why would I expect it to be any different for a show about women's issues?

Why is University of the Sciences a good place for your show?
The nice thing about University of the Sciences [is that] my show can have a double purpose. The first would be obviously that it raises awareness, so that anyone who's in attendance who has any of these issues that are so hard to talk about when you're young…It might help them if they were unknowingly suffering from [endometriosis]. 

But the other thing is that it's a science-based school, and everyone there is trying to go into some field of medicine. [There's a section of the show] about how doctors have dismissed women, made women feel like they're crazy, and mocked them. Somebody sitting there and thinking about being a doctor could realize that their words are important and they shouldn't jump to any hasty conclusions. 

"Female Trouble" is coming to the Recreation Gym at the Athletic Recreation Center at the University of the Sciences, 8 p.m. Wednesday, September 25. The show is free for students and the general public. To support Cathy Quigley's quest to share the show, visit her Indiegogo campaign, which runs until October 3.

ALAINA MABASO, a Philadelphia-based freelance journalist, has landed squarely in what people tell her is the worst possible career of the twenty-first century. So she makes Pennsylvania her classroom, covering everything from business to theater to toad migrations. After her editors go to bed, she blogs at http://alainamabaso.wordpress.com/. Find her on Twitter @AlainaMabaso.