The National Theater in Subotica started rehearsals for the play “Poor Mileva from Bosnia in our Civilization in 1878” by a woman writer Albina Podgradska. The play is directed by Anđelka Nikolić, and the premiere is scheduled for March 14 at the Jadran stage. Serbian, Hungarian, Roma and Slovak languages are used in the play.
Eighteen Romane children will appear on the stage of the Sliven puppet theater in the performance “The Bird of Happiness”. Evelina Kösovska, who directed and dramatized the play, said this at a press conference today. The children, who are fourth-graders from the “Miladinovi Brothers” and “Yuri Gagarin” elementary schools, in addition to being actors, participated in the creation of the show based on Romany fairy tales and legends.
A representation today in North Macedonia.
From Bucharest to Budapest via Rome, these are the three placves where the International Roma Theatre Festival which opened on 8 September in the Romanian capital took place and will take place. The Roman stop was on October 2 to 8. The tour will end in Budapest from 3 to 14 December . The intent is the “dissemination of innovative and unprecedented knowledge of the Roma Community”.
The premiere of Oleksandr Gavros’s comedy “Chirikli” (Gypsy Mother) will take place in Kalush. The charity performance is aimed at supporting the affected districts of Kherson region and Mykolaiv region. They play recently won an award in Ukraine.
The one-man play “Chirikli” about Transcarpathian Roma won the All-Ukrainian Theatre Day competition
The Oleksandr Gavros’ monodrama was originally staged in 2021 by the Transcarpathian Music Drama Theatre based on the works of the Roma writer from the Vynohrady region, Mykola Burmek-Dury.
An interview with the theatre actress Dominika Badžová, a Romni from the Košice region. She comes from a poor family with a single mother, and while she studied acting, she could not find a job, being a Romni. She was fortunately discovered and her talent rewarded.
A project, “Educational theatre, a tool for improved awareness of the art and culture of the Roma ethnic group in Bulgaria” did a casting for candidate actors. The goal is to develop skills through culture and art, and for theatre to be a path to education. And to stimulate greater social cohesion and mutual understanding between the majority and minority cultures with a focus on the Roma.
The President of the Slovene Republic, Nataša Pirc Musar, recently held a consultation with representatives of the Roma community, which was also attended by the State Secretary from the Prime Minister’s Office, Dr. Anton Grizold. The latter is the head of the working group for dealing with the Roma “issue”, which met for the first time almost half a year ago. At the meeting, Grizold said that the task force will tackle the challenges in a two-pronged manner – with an action plan for the most pressing problems and with systemic solutions.
The area of particular concern is the region of Novo Mesto where the police intervene hundreds of times a year in the Roma settlement Žabjak.
Jana Pierová, a Romni, founded a theatre club in 2016 after she became a classroom teacher at Podsadok Primary School in Stara Ľubovna, Slovakia. “I attracted the children to the activity, they were probably oversaturated with dancing and singing. They welcomed it, thanks to the theatre they could express their emotions,” she recalls
“We try to use art to break down prejudices so that the majority perceives us differently,” she explains. Among other things, theatre helps children process difficult topics, such as the Roma Holocaust.
During this year’s celebrations of International Roma Day, D21 theater visitors presented a new theater production Pal e marikľi? Actors Michal Žolták and DAMU student Nikolas Ferenc played the roles of two bakers, Michal and Hynk. A fairy tale based on the motifs of three Romani fairy tales brings the situation from the life of the Roma people closer, which bear many features and characters of the present day.
The three sisters Snezana (Simonida Selimović), Tanja (Jasmin Behnawa) and Melisa (Zeynep Alan) travel to their mother’s Serbian home village and thus begin to confront their own identity. Jelena, the mother of the siblings, who could hardly be more different, went to Boljevac to celebrate Bibijako Dive (“Aunt’s Day”) and died shortly afterwards. The festival is celebrated every year on January 31st, the same day on which the play in WERK X was first performed in Vienna.
In “Bibi Sara Kali” the confrontation with the alienated Roma culture and its customs is brought to the stage in a self-deprecating, humorous and authentic way.
“It’s always wonderful to see the audience so enthusiastic. Being able to tell our stories is of course something special,” says director Simonida Selimović in an interview with KURIER. She herself was born in Serbia, but came to Vienna at the age of seven. Growing up in two cultures, I can identify with my siblings’ struggle for identity.
The premiere of Sara Bibi Kali in Vienna.
A theatre piece is being played in Brooklyn by the Berlin company DorkyPark on Roma.
Hungary’s only Roma arts festival, TeatRom, closed with a deficit of about HUF two million. However, the series of cultural events – aimed at the Roma communities living in the segregated communities in Cserehát, a region in Northeastern Hungary close to the Slovak border – lasted only three days instead of the planned eight.
It took place in the village of Csenyéte, a village at the end or a desolate road. Life in Csenyeté is a dead end in many ways. There is nothing there. No shop, no clinic, no school, no pub, no bank, no post office. Even the mayor comes here only to go home after his work is done. Five hundred and fifty people live here today, almost exclusively Roma. Sixty percent of them are children.
Whether a festival in such a place, and whether the “romantic” view of Roma it presents are a good idea remain to be seen. But the problem of these isolated god-forsaken Roma communities in the poorest region of Hungary remains.
The fifth Roma Heroes Theatre Festival is taking place in Budapest.
Interview with two of the star actors of the Maxim Gorki Theatre in Berlin.
The theater association “Romano Svato” was founded ten years ago by Simonida and Sandra Selimović. Since then, the sisters have become icons of the theatre world.
The latest piece from Alina Serban, a Romani actress.
Bravo!
Interview with the activists and actresses of Romano Svato, the company behind the show Roma Armee Fraction.
– Austria: Romani Artists Telling Stories of Resistance, Not Victimhood. In: Romea. 02.06.2018. http://www.romea.cz/en/news/world/austria-romani-artists-telling-stories-of-resistance-not-victimhood [link-preview url=”http://www.romea.cz/en/news/world/austria-romani-artists-telling-stories-of-resistance-not-victimhood”]
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