First-time parents Colby and Nick quizzically examine an ultrasound photograph of their unborn child, and can’t make heads or tails out of it. In fact, they can’t make out arms, legs, or any other discernable features, either; the image looks less like a fetus than a smudge. The world premiere of Rachel Axler’s funny, daring new dark comedy explores some big issues: the definition of life, the division between humans and beasts, and the limits of love, all explored through the prism of a young couple who give birth to the titular Smudge.

What would you do if your horribly misshapen child existed in a pram replete with gurgling feeding tubes and beeping heart monitors (think Rosemary’s Baby, as interpreted by a computer-era Doctor Frankenstein). Actually, “horribly misshapen” doesn’t do Colby and Nick’s offspring justice – the baby lacks all bodily appendages (except for a tiny stump of a leg), has a grotesquely swollen head, and one enormous eye in the most disturbing, astonishing shade of blue.

If you’re like the good-humored Nick (well-played by Greg Keller), you might try to make the best of the situation and jovially attempt to entertain your infant with a smiley toy carrot, while slowly letting the rest of your life unravel as you delve into arcane philosophic tomes and cagily refuse to send your mother photos of her new grandchild. Meanwhile, Colby sardonically snips off the legs from baby clothes (a marvelously barbed touch from playwright Axler). She sews those legs together to create a monstrous stuffed toy to taunt “it” (as she calls her spawn), as the life support equipment mocks her with discordant beeps, buzzes and flashes of light. As Colby, Cassie Beck does a superb job navigating a difficult role, portraying a mother trapped by her child and eventually recognizing (or imagining) faint specks of humanity in it. Rounding out the cast as Greg’s smarmy brother and co-worker at the census bureau is Brian Sgambati, whose oily delivery of Axler’s comic lines provides the play with some much-needed levity.

Playwright Rachel Axler is best-known for her television work, including NBC’s “Parks and Recreation”, as well as an Emmy Award-winning stint on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” where she was the only woman on the otherwise all-guy writing crew. No stranger to the stage, she’s held fellowships at The Dramatists Guild and The Lark Play Development Center, and is now finally making her Off-Broadway debut with Smudge, courtesy of The Women’s Project, a not-for-profit theatre devoted to female playwrights and directors, the largest and oldest institution of its kind in America.

Inexplicably, the Women’s Project recent lost their funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, despite several recent critical successes for the company, and despite increased funds allocated to the NEA. This denial is especially galling in light of a 2009 study that contends that female playwrights face gender bias in terms of getting their work produced, and thus may be less likely to continue writing and submitting their work to theatres. This study supports a similar 2002 report on woman directors and playwrights by the New York State Council on the Arts that noted that in 2001-2002 only 17% of plays produced across America were written by women, and only 16% of all productions were staged by women.

Exemplary playwrights like Axler deserve to have their plays produced, and plays like Smudge, which is receiving a spare, elegantly moving production from Pam MacKinnon, deserve to be seen. If not for the essential Women’s Project, which has championed the female perspective since 1978, there is the very real danger that similarly brilliant voices may not be heard.

Performances of Smudge, run now through February 7 at The Women's Project/Julia Miles Theatre (424 West 55th Street): Mondays and Tuesdays at 7pm, Thursdays to Saturdays at 8pm, and Sundays at 3pm. There will be an added public performance on Saturday 2/6/10 at 2pm. Tickets are $52, and are available by calling 212-239-6200 or by visiting www.telecharge.com.