Global Belly

A performance about transnational surrogacy

The unfulfilled desire to have children drives couples from Germany and Switzerland abroad. They entrust surrogates in India, the USA and Ukraine to deliver their children. These intending parents dodge legal borders 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 delivering 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 get flown around the globe. Where the desire for a child meets biotechnology, children will find a way into the world. Now they exist and they need passports. But which ones? With its ethical complexity and emotional polarization, its legal grey areas and its medical realities, this booming industry unfolds upon the stage. In an installation-performance, breezy agents meet content surrogates, arguing feminists encounter loving intended fathers. Global Belly portrays people entangled in the surrogacy business. This performance shifts between borderless desire, finely balanced intimacy, heated debate and the cool logic of the market.

A Flinn Works Production

Created by Anne Hoffmann, Matthias Renger, Sonata, Lea Whitcher (performance), Crystal Travis (video performance), Team Global Belly & Lisa Stepf (text and research), Sophia Stepf (direction), Dr. Anika König (consultation), Philine Rinnert (stage and costume design), Jörg-Martin Wagner (music), Elisabeth Lindig (assistant director), Alice Harrison (production assistant), Cornelia Dörr (performance), ehrliche arbeit – freies Kulturbüro (production management)

Funded by Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe, Fonds Darstellende Künste, Hessian Ministry for Science and Art, Cultural Office of the City of Kassel, Gerhard-Fieserer-Foundation and MMB Goethe-Institute Mumbai. The performance at CREA Amsterdam was supported by Goethe-Institute Netherlands.

In co-operation with Sophiensæle Berlin and Theater Tuchlaube Aarau

Events

Sophiensæle Berlin: October 12 (Premiere) - 15, 2017 / Dock 4 Kassel: October 25 - 28, 2017 / Theater Tuchlaube Aarau: November 1 - 4, 2017 / CREA Amsterdam: December 7, 2017 / Performing Arts Festival Berlin @ Sophiensæle Berlin: June 6 & 8, 2018 / Impulse Theaterfestival: June 15 - 17, 2018 / IETM Meeting Munich: November 1, 2018 / LICHTHOF Theater Hamburg: October 11 & 12, 2019

Press

Global Belly by Flinn Works is about the “gap” between wealthy white Europeans who want to have children and the poverty of Indian or Ukrainian women who are able to give birth. But because the group led by sisters Sophia and Lisa Stepf is clever, Cornelia Dörr, Matthias Renger, Lea Whitcher and a performer of Indian origin called Sonata guide their visitors through an installation where they themselves slip into the roles of friends of a gay couple, are showered with the busy appreciation of a caregiver as surrogate mothers or listen to the emotional eruptions of a lawyer specializing in illegal adoptions as parents-to-be. Global Belly spares no detail of this business of longing, no matter how unpleasant, while at the same time building up to a well-founded indignation. You feel and think along with it and can't decide until the end where the line is drawn between female self-determination and the enslavement of someone else's or your own body. Great!

Süddeutsche, 5.11.2018

Somehow contradictions can coexist, just as an audience member can be transformed from a surrogate mother into a gay father (...) With Global Belly, Flinn Works have created a sensational, clever and complex work, which deals with a topic that is as emotionally and existentially charged like few others - and therefore appears made for the theater. But it also examines the much larger context: the global distribution of privileges is subtly illuminated on the basis of fertility industry, as is the rapid shifting of ethical boundaries in society.

theater heute, 08/18

The play Global Belly by the group Flinn Works in the Sophiensæle is also impressive. It sheds light on the phenomenon of surrogacy in the form of a performance parcours, in all its contradictions and on the basis of excellent research.

Tagesspiegel

Flinn Works has researched transnational surrogacy in five countries and this diligence is evident in the production. It has depth because it pits different perspectives and arguments against each other. Nevertheless, the performance never wags its index finger. On the contrary: it is playful and entertaining, and there is also plenty to laugh about. Global Belly is an entertaining, enlightening evening that raises many questions about morality, ethics, self-determination and a new form of colonization.

RBB Radio Kultur

Global Belly not only confronts visitors with feminist debates between liberalism and materialism. It also puts the concept of motherhood in the past and future up for discussion. Open questions remain: Is (surrogate) motherhood work or charity? And how does transnational surrogacy fit into a post-colonial economic system?

taz, 18.10.2017

The theater performance shows in an impressive and innovative way the field of tension in which all those involved, from childless couples to surrogate mothers and doctors to the intermediaries, find themselves. Particular intensity and emotional credibility. A captivating play that brings a political topic up for discussion with entertaining ease.

Hessische/Niedersächsische Allgemeine (HNA)
 

Flinn Work's latest creation Global Belly questions the legality of surrogacy, the complexity of the business, the pain of childlessness and the use of women's bodies in this capitalist world. But it never tries to give an answer. Instead the interaction with the audience is almost like a therapy, where you will search and find the answers, also to your deepest desires, to your own hidden queries.

Deutsche Welle, Bengali Blog

Opinions of experts on surrogacy

"I was deeply impressed with how you managed to pose a range of views, ideas and positions on the topic in a non-threatening interactive way. The play takes us 'behind the scenes' and engages with the topic of surrogacy in a nuanced way, highlighting the complex interrelationships, needs, desires and realities of international surrogacy. Bravo!"
Prof. Andrea Whittacker, Anthropologist, Monash University Melbourne

"Watching and being involved in Global Belly was a unique experience for me. The performance touched on many themes that we - social science researchers - discussed during our Surrogacy Workshop in Amsterdam. It did so in a considerate way, addressing the perspectives of various people involved. While normally I dislike to be involved in interactive theatre, I really appreciated the subtle way interaction with the audience was encouraged in Global Belly. Great actors!"
Dr. Trudie Gerrits, Anthropologist, University of Amsterdam

"Global Belly is a thought-provoking theater experience. As a sociologist who has studied surrogacy for the last decade, I appreciated the ways in which the show presented the complexity of actors and situations involved in these social and medical arrangements."
Prof. Heather Jacobson, Author of “Labor of Love: Gestational Surrogacy and the Work of Making Babies”