I begin by crafting the best picture of Indian surrogacy available to me while marking some worries I have about discursive colonialism and epistemic honesty. Made In India (A Performance Lecture) will run for one night only at the Theatre Arts Admin Collective in Observatory, Cape Town on 18th November 2016 at 7pm, admission is R50.My project here is to argue for situating moral judgments about Indian surrogacy in the context of Reproductive Justice. The performance’s set design is by Filippa Berglund. It premiered at the University of Copenhagen and has since been staged, amongst other places, at the 2016 United Nations Women Deliver Global Conference. In 2015, Made In India went through a last transformation to become a performance lecture. In 20 the performance played at several venues in Denmark. Made In India opened in Stockholm in 2012 and toured all over Sweden. It became the documentary performance Made In India – Notes from a Baby Farm. Pande and Bjerg decided to create a theatre performance about the invisible stories of the surrogate mothers. In 2010, stage director Ditte Maria Bjerg met Amrita Pande who wrote a book, Wombs in Labour (published in 2014), about surrogacy in India based on a decade of field research. Made in India started off as a co-production between Riksteatern (Sweden), Odense Teate (Denmark) and Global Stories, a Danish organisation that produces research-based performing arts that explores the socio-political realities of our new “flat world”.

As a part of the performance Amrita will answer questions from the audience. The narrative follows them from the ‘ordering‘ of a child, to the fertilization, pregnancy and the birth via caesarean.

Here the story focuses on two Indian surrogate mothers, one client and the owner of the clinic, Dr. Made In India invites the audience on a fascinating journey to Doctor Patel’s baby farm in the Indian town of Anand. This raises many questions such as ‘Is it a win-win situation?’, ‘Does it evidence global capitalism?’ and ‘Does it exploit poor women of the Third World?’ At the same time, couples from all over the world have their dream of parenthood fulfilled.

They do it to improve their lives, to gain independence and to be able to send their children to school. Poor women can gain up to a five year salary in nine months. Surrogacy is a rapidly growing industry in India. Indian sociologist and actor, Amrita Pande, is the sole performer in this aesthetic interpretation of her research in the field, under the direction of Danish director, Ditte Maria Bjerg. Made In India is a performance lecture exploring the issue of commercial surrogacy.

Amrita pande surrogacy