FATHER AND SON FALL OUTSIDE THE LAW
Anthony Kinahan’s one-man show delves into the legal and personal impacts of surrogacy
B‘Stephen and his non-biological surrogate son are in a precarious position’
y coincidence, while I was interviewing Anthony Kinahan about his touring one-man play Unguarded – about the legal and personal implications of surrogacy – there was an article in our sister paper The Irish Daily Mail by a woman born through surrogacy, who wanted surrogacy banned because of her own disturbing mental and physical experience of it.
The point of Kinahan’s show, however, is that whether we like it or not, there are loving families existing through unorthodox methods, including IVF and surrogacy, that the law needs to take account of, and that all families should be protected – that a child has a right to a parent and a parent has a right to the child, assuming that the surrogacies are done ethically and responsibly.
The play does not go into the rights or wrongs of surrogacy, dealing only with the legal and emotional aspects.
It gets its name from the fact that families created through surrogacy are not legally protected or regulated in Ireland.
Kinahan insists that no family should have to endure that situation. The play is simply stating the case for those families living without rights in the eyes of the law.
Stephen, the father in the play, is going through the painful recent loss of a partner and he has to endure a legal battle to keep custody of his son Tadhg. (Descriptions can become a bit tricky at this stage.)
‘In the play, Tadhg is Stephen’s non-biological surrogate son. The family was created through a surrogacy, that took place 12 or 13 years before the events of the play.
‘Tadhg’s biological father, has died. This leaves Stephen and young Tadhg in a precarious position legally, because of the lack of regulation in the law. Obviously that’s an integral part of the show.
‘The actual surrogacy process is not, in itself, part of the story, but the fact that Stephen is the nonbiological father is important.’
Kinahan, a gay man and a single parent, is not a surrogate parent himself.
‘I don’t feel that’s important to the story I’m telling, other than the fact that I have the experience of being a single parent, just like Stephen in the play, and during the writing I’ve drawn on some of my own experience of people involved in the situation and can empathise with the characters.’
Kinahan is not preaching for or against surrogacy, just trying to change or inform attitudes and showing what could happen to such a family. He’s enjoying the physical challenge of writing and performing a one-man show himself, something he’s never done before. There are some voice-overs, but he plays all the parts himself.
‘There’s a lot of me in the characters’, Kinahan says, ‘but it’s not autobiographical.’
He and director Anna Simpson, from Quintessence Theatre, are portraying everything in theatrical terms and there’s mime, dance of sorts, and some humour in it.
‘I don’t try to pretend that we’re giving a realistic show, as if it were
‘There’s a lot of me in the characters but it’s not autobiographical’
a naturalistic piece.’ Kinahan uses only a few props, particularly to highlight the burden of the legal challenge. There’s a scene that has a phone voice-mail, but every voice you hear is his, and it’s not just spoken words. He sings extracts from musicals, including Consider Yourself and Where Is Love? from Oliver!, songs that are very relevant to the play.
‘There’s a dramatic resonance in those songs for somebody who has lost a parent,’ he explains.
But Kinahan’s main object in the show is to record, as a fact of life, that families already formed need protection in the eyes of the law.