A Zoom Performance About Transnational Surrogacy
Produced by our longtime German collaborators
Flinn Works and
SOPHIENSÆLE during the pandemic in 2021,
Global Belly is a
Zoom performance.
The unfulfilled desire to have children drives couples from Germany and Switzerland abroad. They entrust surrogates in India, the US and Ukraine to deliver their children. These ‘intending parents’ duck legal boundaries and enter unknown moral ground.
Flinn Works has undertaken research in all five countries in order to gain a deeper understanding of gestational surrogacy. Is it a blessing of modern medicine or a neocolonial act? Is bearing the child of a stranger work or charity? How do we compensate this ‘labour of love’? Since transnational surrogacy became illegal in countries such as India and Thailand, follicles, embryos and surrogates are being flown around the globe. Where the desire for a child meets biotechnology, children will find a way into the world. So they exist and they need passports. But which ones?
Global Belly_Zoom portrays people embroiled in the surrogacy industry. Professional agents meet content surrogates and argumentative feminists encounter loving fathers-to-be. With its ethical complexity and emotional polarisation, its legal grey zones and its medical realities the industry comes alive on the Zoom stage.
Flinn Works is an award-winning independent theatre company from Berlin, Germany. With a focus on feminist and postcolonial topics, Flinn Works performances and installations are research based and devised with a team of international artists.
Credits:
Performance: Anne Hoffmann, Matthias Renger, Sonata, Crystal Travis, Jennifer Lynn Tune, Lea Whitcher
Direction: Sophia Stepf
Research & Text: Team Global Belly
Consultation: Dr. Anika König
Costume Design: Philine Rinnert
Music: Jörg-Martin Wagner
Video Design: Marc Jungreithmeier
Zoom Host: Konradin Kunze
Production Assistant: Alice Harrison
Production Management: Marit Buchmeier, Lisanne Grotz / xplusdrei Produktionsbüro
Language: English
Duration: 90 min.
The 2022 shows are funded by Fonds Darstellende Künste as part of Neustart Kultur using funds from the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
Limited seats available.
Register to book your seat.
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