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About us


Independent Theater's team members are Roma and non-Roma youngsters, theater creators and trainers.




Top row, from left to right: Edina Dömök (actress, trainer), Tamás Szegedi (actor, director, drama instructor, trainer), Eszter Bernáth (co-trainer), Rodrigó Balogh (art director), Vivien Balogh (trainer).
Bottom line, from left to right Tamás Boros (actor, drama instructor, trainer), Judit Macher (trainer, head of research in educational programs), Márton Illés (program director), Angéla Szabó (trainer) and Máté Lajhó (co-trainer). Photo by Alina Vincze



We work with the means of art and education so that the more people can:



get objective informations and learn about different point of views concerning the social issues that affect us all;



get inspired through Roma dramas and Roma heroes;



revise their attitudes about Roma communities and the relation between the majority and the minority.



By forming their own opinion and making their own decisions, they could be active citizens who take responsibility while also respect other’s point of view.



To realize those purposes, in summer of 2017 we organized the "Roma Heroes" First International Roma Storytelling Festival, where the plays Alina Serban: I declare at my own risk, Richard O'Neill: The Hardest Word, Dijana Pavlovic: Speak, my life, and Mihaela Dragan: Del Duma - she speaks were performed and  recorded on video.



Based on the performances and the videos, we made an educational material with the creators and the experts’ of our theatre.
With the help of this methodology, we are going to run workshops in autumn 2017, where we analyze the plays with the youngsters and support them to work with and perform their own stories about their own Roma heroes in creative ways.



Independent Theater is not a registered organisation.
For their artistic and educational activities since 2004, Independent Theater has received several awards among others by the UN Refugee Agency’s prize, Ibsen Award, and Social Marie Award.



The legal and financial representative of the theater is Women for the Future Association.

Megjegyzések

Népszerű bejegyzések ezen a blogon

We Are Unstoppable

What does family, parents and siblings mean to us? What do we do for our family members and what does the family do for us? How can we help each other in life? My story is about my younger brother, I consider him a hero in my life. Gábor is a simple man with a huge heart who is very honest and enduring. His endurance in work makes him a real hero. He works 16 hours five days a week as a cook; he gets up every morning and goes to work because that’s his job. He was 18 when he got a great opportunity to work abroad as a chef, naturally making much more money than here, at home. Had he accepted it, his life would have changed radically, but he didn’t want to leave me and our mom alone. It is just the three of us and we would never leave each other. He has superhuman strength. He moved in with Mom who had to be cared for because of her health, but we never felt that is a burden; we are one and everyone does their bit without complaint – Gábor works, Mom takes care of the household, I s...

If you can’t find a book, write it yourself! – Richard R. O’Neill in conversation

The Hungarian premier of the play ‘ The Hardest Word’ by the British writer and storyteller took place at Roma Heroes Festival. The story is about a Scottish woman who gets it into her head to force the first minister to apologise for the centuries-long discrimination of Scottish travellers. His other play, ‘ The Management Reserves the Right’ focuses on the everyday practice of Scottish barmen not letting Traveller guests enter the pub. The heroes of his plays, just as Richard himself, turn to other people as equal partners with smiling firmness – no matter whether the other is the first minister or the barman. Richard believes that  –  even in hard times  –  it is indispensable to keep our sense of humour and respect each other: that is how we can get on. Books and writing have outstanding importance in Roma and Gypsy communities: the world will get to know our point of view, our children will find plays or even tales portraying their own culture only if we ...

Be better than the others! – Dijana Pavlovic in conversation

The actress, now living in Italy but coming from the former Jugoslavia, had given up socio-political activism for a while as she had experienced too many losses because of her activism. She wanted to be ‘just’ an actress. However, she couldn’t turn a blind eye to the injustice both in her homeland and in the country of her choice, to the communities left alone, to the stories never told. Her play presented at the festival,  Speak, my life!, shows the decades-long genocide of Jenish people in Switzerland, which was surrounded by dead silence, through the eyes of the author Mariella Mehr, who herself was one of the victims. As an activist, Dijana fights against the discrimination that Roma communities face and strives to establish and put into action the European Roma Institute, the goal of which is to promote the creation and dissemination of works by Roma artists. In all her life, Dijana have found it important to fight instead of pitying herself whenever she faced any challe...