Flinn Works:
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 polarisation, 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 fathers-to-be. 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.

Performance Anne Hoffmann, Matthias Renger, Sonata, Lea Whitcher SPECIAL GUEST ON VIDEO Crystal Travis Research Flinn Works Director Sophia Stepf Dramaturg Lisa Stepf Consultant Dr. Anika König Stage + Costume Designer Philine Rinnert Music Support Jörg-Martin Wagner Assistant Director Elisabeth Lindig Assistant Stage Design Alice Harrison Production ehrliche arbeit - freies Kulturbüro   A production by Flinn Works in cooperation with Tuchlaube Aarau and SOPHIENSÆLE. Funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe, the Fonds Darstellende Künste, the Hessian Ministry for Science and the Arts, the Cultural Department of the City of Kassel, the Gerhard-Fieserer Foundation and Goethe Institute Mumbai. The Revival is funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe. Media partner: Jungle World, taz.die tageszeitung