Off-Broadway Play 'PREDICTOR' Tells Story of First At-Home Pregnancy Test

On a gray afternoon in New York City, Caitlin Kinnunen, 34, sat at her kitchen table with a marked-up script that had become its own small universe. The Tony-nominated actor, best known for her radiant breakout in “The Prom,” is now preparing for one of the most impactful roles of her career: playing Meg Crane, the little-known woman who invented the world’s first at-home pregnancy test, and changed the arc of women’s autonomy forever.

“I’m offstage for maybe three pages total,” Kinnunen said with a laugh, equal parts exhilarated and terrified. “It’s 141 pages, and Meg is everywhere in it. It feels like stepping into the mind of someone brilliant, ordinary, and quietly revolutionary all at once.”

That mind—and that revolution—are at the center of “PREDICTOR,” a smart, sharp new off-Broadway play opening December 14 at the AMT Theater in New York City. Part workplace dramedy, part feminist origin story, it’s the kind of production that catches early city buzz. It’s whip-smart, unexpectedly funny, historically resonant (especially today), and anchored by a cast that includes Kinnunen, Lauren Molina (from “Sweeney Todd”), and Eric Tabach (from “Dexter: Resurrection”).

Beneath the wit and theatrical electricity is a story many women, even those who’ve used the invention itself, have never actually heard. To set the stage, it was 1968, long before Roe v. Wade and even longer before conversations about reproductive health became mainstream. At the time, the young graphic designer named Meg Crane created a prototype for what would become the modern at-home pregnancy test.

Her idea was not welcomed.

Crane remembers the moment she first saw the lab setup that sparked the idea. “I noticed a group of test tubes suspended over a mirrored surface,” she has said. “I was told they were pregnancy tests the company did for doctors, and I immediately thought it might be possible to put them into some form that a woman could use to test herself.” It was a simple observation, followed by a radical question that would upend an entire medical hierarchy.

A Quiet Revolution in a Lab Full of ‘No’

Crane has shared her story many times over the years, with recollections that remain vividly detailed. In the late 1960s, she was working in the Organon pharmaceuticals lab when she noticed a set of test tubes suspended over a mirrored surface. They weren’t labeled.

She learned they were pregnancy tests that the company performed for doctors.

That revelation sparked the idea that would consume her. If the process was this straightforward, why couldn’t a woman test herself?

She became “obsessed” (her words). She fashioned early prototypes on her own time before presenting the concept to the executive who hired her. The response was swift and unequivocal: the company would never produce a consumer-facing test. It would threaten their doctor business, after all.

Others in the company raised objections that today read like artifacts of a bygone era, and yet are still unsettlingly familiar. They thought…

Women wouldn’t be capable of doing the test correctly.

It was immoral.

It belonged under the purview of (mostly male) physicians.

Only women seeking abortions would use it.

It would be prohibitively expensive.

The word “autonomy,” Crane has pointed out, wasn’t even part of the vocabulary then. This was the pre-Roe era. The birth control pill was still restricted. And for many women, access to information about their own bodies depended entirely on gatekeepers.

Crane knew better. She understood what was at stake. Women seeking abortions and needing information quickly. Women applying for jobs that might be legally—but not actually—open to pregnant applicants. Women with medical conditions trying to protect wanted pregnancies. It was loaded.

In her telling, she simply kept going, not as an act of defiance, but out of a belief that women needed this. When she developed the idea for the first at-home pregnancy test, she was 26.

Reflecting on that moment now, Crane has said she didn’t think in terms of politics or “feminism” at all, only necessity. “The word ‘autonomy’ never came to mind,” she wrote. “I knew this test would be needed for women facing the prospect of abortion, but it also mattered for women starting new jobs or managing medical conditions. Time was important to them.”

Why Caitlin Kinnunen Said Yes

For Kinnunen, the role is both an artistic challenge and a personal reckoning.

“I had used the invention,” she told me. “But I didn’t know who created it. I didn’t know it was a woman. I didn’t know the story behind it. And I thought, why don’t we talk about this? Why don’t we talk more about women inventors and the things created by women for women?”

There is a line in Act II that Kinnunen points to. She read the monologue aloud to me during our conversation. It gave her chills the first time she read it, as it did me when she spoke. “This isn’t a game,” she says as Crane. “You’re so consumed with appearances and positions and motives and politics. This isn’t a game. It’s women’s lives. It’s knowing anything about our own bodies. It’s giving us at least some say in the things that happen to us.”

“This isn’t a game,” she says as Crane. “You’re so consumed with appearances and positions and motives and politics. This isn’t a game. It’s women’s lives. It’s knowing anything about our own bodies. It’s giving us at least some say in the things that happen to us.”

“It’s wild how relevant it feels,” Kinnunen said. “The parallels to today are uncanny. I read those lines and think: I say this in real life. Many of us do. And yet this was decades ago.”

Beyond the political resonance, the role challenges her artistically, and emotionally.

“My impostor syndrome shows up almost every single day,” she admitted. “But how cool that a role like this exists. And how cool that I get to remind myself every day: No. I can do this.” 

The Resonance for Today’s Girls and Their Mothers

Like Crane, Kinnunen knows what it means to push forward despite doubt; what it means to hear “no” and keep going anyway. And for many mothers, especially those raising teens right now, that journey feels painfully familiar. Our readers are watching their kids confront pressure, perfectionism, and a culture that rarely gives young people the space to grow at a human pace. But they’re also carrying their own versions of that weight, and the constant negotiation between wanting to protect their children and wanting to show them what resilience looks like.

Kinnunen understands that duality. She knows that Crane’s story isn’t just a blueprint for young women discovering their voices. It’s a quiet love letter to the mothers who are trying to model courage, even when they don’t always feel it themselves. 

When I asked Kinnunen what she might say to a teenager struggling with self-doubt, her answer felt both tender and sage, a message that mothers might also need to hear. “Nothing is as dire as you think it is in that moment,” she said. “You still have so much life ahead of you. Explore who you are. Explore your voice. You’re supposed to make mistakes. Adults don’t have it all together either.”

If Crane’s story teaches us anything, it’s that ordinary women can shift culture simply by trusting their own instincts.

Plus, sometimes humor helps. Kinnunen described the play’s unexpected levity with affection: Meg stumbling over her own words, veering into her daydreams, imagining scenarios inspired by the television and pop culture of the 1960s.

“It’s real,” she said. “It’s human. It’s funny. And those moments make the serious parts hit even harder.”

Meg Crane Today: Still Designing the Future

Crane remains keenly aware of the landscape of women’s health today. She often points younger innovators toward “Designing Motherhood,” the exhibit and book that trace the history of reproductive design and the many everyday tools of pregnancy and parenting.

“Many of the items on display are waiting to be improved,” she said.

She also notes that the modern “wand” pregnancy test is a far cry from her original prototype, and that further innovation is already underway.

What worries her, however, is the current political landscape.

“I don’t know of any product that will help women caught in the maelstrom of our government’s outrageous anti-women policies,” she wrote.

It’s a stark reminder that the story told in “PREDICTOR” isn’t a relic. It’s a loop—one we are still caught in.

A Story We Should Have Known All Along

As our conversation wrapped, Kinnunen returned to something simple. She pointed out to me the privilege of telling a story that should never have faded into obscurity.

“I look at Meg and think, if one person can do it, others can too,” she said. “If someone comes to this play and leaves with more courage than they walked in with… that’s the whole point.”

Crane may not be one to brag about her legacy, but her impact is unmistakable. The ability to know one’s own body and to answer a question as life-altering as, “Am I pregnant?” privately, quickly, and without gatekeeping was not given to women. It was fought for, pieced together at a lab bench by a young woman who believed we deserved better. And now, audiences will finally get to meet her.