E-baby

e-baby
Written by	Jane Cafarella
Characters	Catherine Nellie
Date premiered	March 2015
Place premiered	Chapel Off Chapel, Melbourne
Original language	English
Subject	Gestational surrogacy, infertility
Genre	Comedy, drama
Setting	London, New York City, Boston 2015–2016

e-baby is a two-hander play written by Jane Cafarella which was premiered at Chapel Off Chapel in Melbourne in 2015. It is set over a 16 month period in 2015–16 and deals with two women going through gestational surrogacy, the genetic mother of the embryo created by in vitro fertilisation, and the woman carrying the child. It has been described by Patricia Tobin as a "quietly feminist play that asserts a heartfelt approach towards matters of infertility, adoption and motherhood."

Catherine is an ex-patriate Australian lawyer living in London with her architect husband. Aged in her mid-40s and having been through 18 cycles of in vitro fertilisation treatments over 11 years, Catherine is desperate for a child and gestational surrogacy is her last chance. Nellie is a 28-year old Catholic woman living in Boston, Massachusetts, (where surrogacy is legal), with two children. As a lawyer, Catherine ensures that the contract formed covers various topics which Nellie had not considered. Nellie sees herself as altruistic, able to help Catherine's dearest wish for a child come true, but with different backgrounds, values, and wealth, some degree of conflict is inevitable. Once Nellie has become pregnant, Catherine's controlling nature causes friction and Nellie gradually asserts herself – most notably when the contentious issue of selective reduction becomes relevant – and as it becomes clear that Catherine resents the experiences of pregnancy and child birth which she is missing. Nellie's maintenance of a sometimes too-honest vlog is also a source of tension. As seen in the images below, the relationship comes to involve substantial conflict and tension with each displaying their worst selves, to the point where Nellie shouts at one point "I’m the one who’s carrying this baby!" eliciting the cold reply "Yes. And I’m the one who's paying," from Catherine. In a play where money is generally not the issue, we are still reminded that surrogacy does raise issues of the commodification of human life and that differences in socioeconomic status cannot be entirely set aside.

Scenes take place either in person in New York, or through electronic media (Skype, text messages, phone calls) with Catherine in London and Nellie in Massachusetts. In one production, this was achieved by having the two actors on stage, sitting at computers and looking into tripod-mounted video cameras, with the images being projected onto the wall behind the stage (illustrated at left). These enlarged images provide "magnified clarities for the audience to engage and learn from" and was described as an ingenious production approach as it has the effect of "[a]mplifying emotional moments for the audience" by allowing the audience "to see close-ups of their faces and be a fly on the wall for tough conversations." The reviewer for Stage Whispers expressed concerns that this use of projections and technology-facilitated communications would be a distraction, but praised its simple execution as seeming "entirely natural" and as adding to the experience by achieving a closeness to the actors that is rare, even in very intimate theatres.

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