Staging Strife: Lessons from Performing Ethnography with Polish Roma Women 9780773581203

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Maps of Poland and Elbląg
Introduction: The Fortune-Tellers
1 A Theatre Anthropologist’s Baggage
2 The Roma Women’s Lives
3 Forming the Theatre Company
4 Rehearsals I: The Theatre Process
5 Rehearsals II: The Human Process
6 Opening Night
Conclusion: In Leaving
Appendix A: Script: Hope
Appendix B: Roma Family Tree
Notes
Bibliography
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
Y
Z

Citation preview

Staging Strife

Lessons from Performing Ethnography with Polish Roma Women

Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston

•

London

•

Ithaca

© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2010

isbn 978-0-7735-3749-1 Legal deposit third quarter 2010 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (bpidp) for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Kazubowski-Houston, Magdalena, 1971– Staging strife : performing ethnography with Polish Roma / Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-7735-3749-1 1. Hope (Play : 2003). 2. Theater–Anthropological aspects–Poland. 3. Women, Romani–Poland–Social conditions. 4. Participant observation. 5. Ethnography–Methodology. 6. Power (Social sciences). I. Title. pn2041.a57k39 2010

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c2010-901282-8

This book was designed and typeset by studio oneonone in Sabon 10.2/13.5

For my mother, Halina Kazubowska

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C on t en t s Acknowledgments ix Maps of Poland and Elbląg xi, xii Introduction: The Fortune-Tellers 3

1 A Theatre Anthropologist’s Baggage 29

2 The Roma Women’s Lives 38

3 Forming the Theatre Company 68

4 Rehearsals I: The Theatre Process 98

5 Rehearsals II: The Human Process 120

6 Opening Night 148 Conclusion: In Leaving 177 Appendix A: Script: Hope 201 Appendix B: Roma Family Tree 219 Notes 221 Bibliography 237 Index 253

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Ac k n ow l ed g men t s

As I reflect back upon the journey of my doctoral research and the writing of this book, I would like to express my gratitude to all of those who have travelled alongside me, providing support, inspiration, and encouragement. I am deeply indebted to Professor Dara Culhane for nurturing the anthropologist in me through years of mentoring and friendship. She has been a great inspiration in my life and work. I thank Professor D.D. Kugler for cultivating the artist in me, and for providing invaluable feedback and moral support. I thank Professor Jerald Zaslove for his encouragement and erudition that helped me to marry the anthropologist with the artist in challenging ways. And thanks to Professors Susan M. Cox and Jeffrey Nisker; without their generous support and encouragement, this work would not have been completed. I would also like to express my gratitude to Professors Julia Harrison and Peter Dickinson for providing me with thought-provoking questions and comments that inspired me to rethink my work anew and to imagine further directions for my research. As well, I would like to thank my editors Philip Cercone and John Zucchi, and all the staff at McGillQueen’s University Press, for their enthusiastic support and invaluable advice in the preparation of my manuscript for publication. I am also indebted to the anonymous reviewers of my original manuscript for their constructive and always helpful feedback.

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Acknowledgments

To all the research participants – the Roma women and Roma community from Elbląg, the Roma I met throughout Poland, and the student actors from the Cultural Centre – goes my heartfelt gratitude for undertaking this journey with me and teaching me so much about anthropology, art, and life. Their insights, stories, and hard work marked countless days in the field and are impressed upon every page of this book. I also thank Elbląg’s Cultural Centre for providing me with rehearsal and performance space, without which this project would have been so much more difficult to realize. I thank all my friends and family in Canada and in Poland for their love, care, and support throughout. I express my deep appreciation to my in-laws, Sandy and Dennis Houston, for all of their help and kind words, which were a source of moral support for me always. I especially wish to thank my mother, Halina Kazubowska: her unending love, strength, and determination and her loyalty to others have inspired me to speak to social injustice. My husband, Shawn, and my son, Amadeusz, have travelled with me most intimately on this journey and know all too well its joys and sorrows. Shawn’s collaboration as co-investigator on the project, and his intellectual and emotional support in every aspect of this journey, have been too generous to convey in words. I thank my little son for sharing with me his curiosity and enthusiasm for learning and his passion for wanting to “make the world a better place.” Finally, thanks to John Gilmore for his immense and inestimable editorial support. This research has been generously supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (sshrc) and by the British Columbia Arts Council.

Poland

City of Elbląg, Poland

Staging Strife

An anthropology that makes an ethnographic problem of itself offers pragmatic insight into the social worlds it examines and to which it belongs. michael herzfeld

The critical ontology of ourselves has to be considered … as an attitude, an ethos, a philosophical life in which the critique of what we are is at one and the same time the historical analysis of the limits that are imposed on us and an experiment of going beyond them. michel foucault

What has not been given sufficient consideration is that about large areas and important aspects of culture no one, not even the native, has information that can simply be called up and expressed in discursive statements. This sort of knowledge can be represented – made present – only through action, enactment, or performance. johannes fabian

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INTRODUCTION

The F or t u ne-T el l e r s

It was early May and already the sun was blistering, the air thick with smog and humidity. The summer of 2001 was promising to be a scorcher. I was back in my hometown of Elbląg in northern Poland, embarking on two months of preliminary research for my doctoral project. I wanted to study the lives of Roma women in Poland and their everyday encounters with violence. I was on my way to a government office to look for a registered Roma organization in the hope that it might lead me to suitable participants for my study. Crossing a small city park with a tramline running along one side, I spotted a group of Roma sitting on a bench: two women, a man, and three young children. As I walked past, the younger woman called out to me in Polish, offering to tell my fortune. I stopped, unsure what to do. Allowing the woman to tell my fortune might open a door for me into her community, but at that same moment, I felt fear welling up inside me. Turning to face the group, I tried to convince myself that my fear was simply resistance to the idea that anyone could presume to see into my future. Deep down, however, I knew that what I really feared was being robbed. Here I was, a thirty-one-year-old white middle-class woman wanting to undertake research with the Roma, to somehow address and challenge prejudice against them. Yet my own fears and prejudices, inculcated in me as a child, were threatening to thwart my efforts. I knew that some Roma women did indeed steal from passersby

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who stopped to have their fortunes told. Friends and relatives had been robbed in similar ways. But, I argued with myself, that did not make every Roma a thief – and opportunity was staring me in the face. I decided to take a chance. I approached the young woman already walking toward me and jokingly asked her not to tell me anything tragic, as the scorching heat was enough misfortune for one day. I hoped my awkward attempt at humour might help to break the ice and lessen the chances of being robbed. The woman regarded me with curiosity. Then she thumbed through her dog-eared deck of cards and told me that many difficulties awaited me in the near future – but she could say no more unless I was willing to pay. Fearing the worst, I quickly identified myself as an anthropologist from Canada doing research about the lives of the Roma in Poland. The woman seemed interested and related what I had just said to the older woman beside her. The man then invited me to join them on the bench, and the three proceeded to introduce themselves to me. The younger woman was Ana; I guessed she was in her forties. The older woman, her aunt, was Randia; I put her in her seventies. Both women wore black skirts and bright tops. The man, dressed head to toe in black, was Włodek, Ana’s husband, who introduced himself as a Roma rights activist for the region of Elbląg. Their three children all looked to be under ten. It didn’t take much prompting for the two women to begin telling me about the poverty, discrimination, racism, and physical violence they suffered on a daily basis. Ana explained that she lived with her husband, three children, and mentally ill mother in a small apartment, where they all “were fighting and beating each other up.” Yet she could barely afford such a “small hole.” Randia fretted that she could no longer go on living “like this,” sitting on a bench by the tramline all day long, hoping that someone would want to have their fortune told. She also said that the Roma experienced discrimination everywhere except in the church because, “after all, [the church] is the House of God [and] everyone is equal in God’s eyes.” Ana and Włodek disagreed. In their view, discrimination even resided in the church, especially when it came to baptisms. Polish priests, they said, didn’t want to baptize Roma children if the parents were not strict adherents to Catholicism’s tenets. The women told me that their children were ostracized and physically abused in Polish schools. When I asked if there were any Roma

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Tramline alongside which the Roma women told fortunes. Photo by Shawn Kazubowski-Houston

organizations in the city they could turn to for help, Włodek sarcastically replied that there were not, because to set them up one needed the cooperation of Poles. Such cooperation was impossible in Elbląg, in his view, because the local non-Roma residents wanted all of the Roma either gone or dead. Poland’s widespread unemployment, he argued, had hit the Roma particularly hard, because “if there were no jobs for Poles, who would ever hire a Roma?” He had applied for countless jobs, he said, but was always turned down. As Poles heading home from work hurried past, casting scornful glances at us, Ana, Randia, and Włodek went on to talk about their fear of skinheads. The ever-present threat of attack made them prisoners in their own homes, they said: they never went out at night. It was the Roma’s fate, they agreed, to have such difficult lives. Yet Włodek also conceded that Elbląg was not the worst city in Poland. Larger centres like Warszawa, Gdańsk, Kraków, and Olsztyn were even more dangerous. The Roma in those cities were frequent victims of home invasions, still a rare occurrence in Elbląg. According to Włodek,

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a smaller Roma community in a city meant fewer instances of hate crimes – and Elbląg only had about twelve Roma families. In the view of Ana, Randia, and Włodek, the persecution of the Roma in Poland was unjust because “Gypsies1 don’t hurt anyone, don’t kill anyone … they don’t steal!” I was disturbed by their stories. I was also ashamed of my initial fears in approaching them. Throughout our conversation, Ana, Randia, and Włodek were warm and friendly, although they observed me keenly. Perhaps they too were afraid, unsure that I could be trusted. This was particularly evident when Randia asked me in a cynical tone of voice, “And why do you want to study us?” I told them that I was born and raised in Elbląg and had lived there for twenty years before emigrating to Canada. I added that I had witnessed many incidents of violence against Roma in Poland, and that I wanted to write a book about such injustice. They asked me if I wanted to work in Elbląg. I admitted that Elbląg would be an ideal place for my research, because my mother still lived there, and I was planning to stay with her while doing the project. I told them that if they were interested in working with me, I would initially want to spend lots of time with them, observing them while they were fortunetelling and going about their daily activities, and visiting them at home, if possible. Later I would want to interview them in detail. And then I explained that I would like to develop a theatre performance with them based on their life experiences. Ana and Randia wanted to know what roles I expected them to take in the theatre project. When I said that they could contribute in any way they wanted – as playwrights, actors, directors, dramaturges, or designers – they laughed dismissively. They were “fortune-tellers, not artistic Gypsies,” they said, and could not help me produce a play. Włodek wanted to know who would read my book about them. When I said that anyone who could read English might read it, he quickly warned me not to reveal their real names or addresses: this might “bring misfortune upon our heads.” If Poles knew their whereabouts, he said, they could invade their homes. And since “not all Roma [could] be trusted these days,” he did not want other Roma in Poland to know about their participation in my research. To ease their apprehensions, I assured them that all of my research materials, interviews, and field notes would be kept confidential. Only my husband, Shawn Kazubowski-Houston, co-researcher on the project, would have

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access to the notes and recorded interviews. In my book I would use pseudonyms to ensure their anonymity. The three were not convinced. Włodek warned me that there might not be enough Roma in Elbląg to do my project. He stressed once again that although Elbląg had its share of racism, their situation was not the worst. If I really wanted learn about the hardships suffered by the Roma, I should conduct my research elsewhere. Nevertheless, as I prepared to leave, he and Ana invited me to visit their flat the following day. They gave me their address and promised to invite other Roma to come over to share their experiences with me. I thanked them and offered them twenty zloty (c$8) to compensate them for the time they had taken to talk to me. They eagerly accepted the money, and we said goodbye. On the way home I felt confused. Ana, Randia, and Włodek had been friendly but noncommittal about working with me. And they had made it clear that they were not interested in collaborating on a theatre production, which was the ultimate goal of my project. My old fears began rising again as I thought about visiting Ana and Włodek in their home. Was it safe? Were skinheads really a danger? Would I be putting Shawn or our five-year-old son, Amadeusz, or my elderly mother at risk by involving myself in the Roma community in Elbląg? Were the Roma only setting me up in the hope I would give them more money? My enthusiasm plummeted as I walked back in the afternoon heat to my mother’s flat. I realized that the amount of energy, courage, and money required to carry out this project would be greater than I had ever imagined, and I wasn’t sure I could pull it off. What had I gotten myself into? What had I dragged my family into? In my own mind I was already looking for a way out. The next day Shawn, Amadeusz, and I set out to visit Ana and Włodek. The area of town where they lived was economically depressed. We located their home in a dingy, neglected pre-war apartment block. Hesitating outside, I decided to go in alone first. I didn’t want to take my child into a situation I was not sure was safe. I headed up the stairs carrying groceries I had bought for Ana and Włodek: eggs, bread, milk, butter, cheese, and chocolate. The hallway smelled of urine. When I rang the bell, an elderly woman opened the door and informed me that “the children” had gone into the city. She introduced herself as Ana’s mother, took the groceries, and shut the door in my face. I left, disappointed. I was convinced the Roma really had no interest in me. “And

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why would you expect otherwise?” asked Shawn when I told him outside on the street what had happened. I had to concede he was right. What was in it for the Roma? Why should they wait for me instead of going out to make some money? We walked to the park where I had met the group the day before. As we approached, I could see Ana and some other Roma women sitting on the bench. Shawn and Amadeusz returned home to my mother’s, and I walked up to the group. When I told Ana that I had been to her flat, she apologized and explained that her husband had been trying to set up a meeting with other Roma, but no one had shown any interest. Then she asked if I knew any organizations in Canada that could help them. When I admitted that I didn’t, all the women looked disappointed, and their interest in me quickly waned. Soon they were conversing among themselves in Romany, a language I neither speak nor understand. I was uncertain whether to stay or go. Suddenly one of the women turned back to me and blurted out in Polish: “Lady, is that research of yours really going to help anything? Is it?” I was speechless. With a single, pointed question she had challenged my very reason for being there and put a finger on the doubts that had been plaguing me all along.

Motives and memories A belief in social justice and a commitment to working toward it has been a driving force in my life. Before beginning our work with the Roma in Elbląg, Shawn and I had been performers and theatre directors for over a decade, in both Canada and Poland. As artists, we were trying to raise awareness about social issues. My romance with political theatre began while I was growing up in Poland in the 1970s and 1980s. There I was exposed to many forms of theatre that sought to politicize audiences into resisting the totalitarianism of the Polish government.2 In my artistic work, I have been interested in the political potential of theatre, particularly in Bertolt Brecht’s notion of theatre as a medium of social critique.3 It was this notion that I was trying to marry in my artistic practice with the physical, image-based Polish avant-garde theatre traditions of Jerzy Grotowski,4 Tadeusz Kantor,5 and Jozef Szajna.6 I was introduced to their theatres by my Polish language teacher when I was a lyceum student

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Author’s lyceum (secondary school) in Elbląg. Photo by Shawn Kazubowski-Houston

in Poland. I am not sure why I became so fascinated with this kind of theatre, but perhaps I can explain it in terms of my love for visual art. My great aunt was an avid drawer and painter and inspired me to look at the world with a “painter’s eye.” After emigrating to Canada in 1992, I practised and studied theatre at the undergraduate and graduate level, but always remained committed to the aesthetic of Poland’s avant-garde theatre. Shawn – whom I met while I was an undergraduate student at the University of Manitoba – also shared my theatre interests. Although not Polish, he had studied Grotowski’s acting methodologies at the University of Winnipeg where he trained as an actor. He found Grotowski’s focus on the body more appealing than Stanislavski’s psychological realism. With our theatre company, Teatr Korzenie, we developed an acting methodology – Illustrative Performing Technique – that relied heavily on grotesque, abstract, and physical (over verbal) means of expression and aimed at politicizing the audience. Now I was back in my home country, hoping to combine my professional skills in theatre with my newly developed training as an anthropologist to help improve the lives of Roma women. Though I had left Poland at twenty and had made my life since in Canada, I was haunted by childhood memories of Roma women fortune-telling on

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the streets of my hometown, their clothing cheerful but their eyes speaking of desperation and fear. Of course I had seen poverty and homelessness in Canada, but I knew that the plight of the Roma in Eastern Europe was particularly hard and had grown worse since communism collapsed in 1989, taking with it job security, accessible housing, and free daycare. I knew from personal observation and from my reading that with the rapid transformation of the economy to capitalism and the resulting rise in unemployment and pressure on women to return to domestic roles, women and ethnic minorities had been particularly hard hit (Bartosz 1994; Bourne 1993; Crowe 1995; Gozdziak 1995; Guy 2002; Lucassen 1993, 1997; Marody and Giza-Poleszczuk 2000; Mayall 1988; Myers 1993; Ringold 2000; Sakwa and Stevens 2000; Sobotka 2001; Stewart 1997; Verdery 1996; Willems 1997; Willems and Lucassen 1998). Reflecting on my motives for wanting to work with the Roma in Poland, I realize in retrospect that one childhood memory in particular drew me to this research field. As a young girl, I set out walking one day with my older cousin. We were going to visit our grandfather’s grave in the local cemetery. Our route took up past an old building inhabited by several Roma families. Like many children in Poland, I was often warned that a Gypsy would kidnap me if I misbehaved. As my cousin and I passed the Roma settlement, a large dog ran toward us, barking fiercely. Some Roma children were laughing, egging it on. Terrified, I jumped into my cousin’s arms; caught unawares, she dropped me, and I fainted. When I came to, a Roma man was standing over me, repeating, “Wake up! Are you all right?” The memory of this incident stayed with me into adulthood and led me to want to understand the social forces that cultivated a fear of the Roma in me as a child, and compelled the Roma children to sic their dog on me. Since 1992, I have made regular trips back to Poland from Canada to visit my family and work on theatre projects. I have heard about and personally witnessed acts of discrimination and violence there against Roma people since the collapse of communism. Because all this is relatively recent history, and Poland’s economy and society are still undergoing rapid changes, there are few studies on the extent and impact of discrimination and violence against the Roma. But the studies that do exist – alongside media articles and ngo reports – point to a desperate situation for the Roma and other ethnic minorities in contemporary Poland.

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The European Roma Rights Centre (errc), in reports published in 1999, 2000, and 2002, found that many Roma in Poland were living in substandard housing and that the Polish government was refusing to remedy the situation on the grounds that the Roma didn’t deserve any better and would only destroy housing provided to them. The reports also stated that many Roma had difficulty finding work because there was no market for their skills, and few employers willing to hire them. Human Rights Watch in 1996 and the European Roma Rights Centre in 1999 and 2002 reported that the Roma suffered discrimination in education in Poland. School attendance for Roma children was very low, and they experienced harassment from peers, teachers, and administrators. It was not uncommon for Roma children to be placed in special schools for students with intellectual disabilities (Holley 1999; Puckett 2005). Such findings were confirmed by Poland’s Ministry of the Interior and Administration in 2003.7 A 2004 report from the errc noted that discrimination in Poland’s housing and health-care sectors was compromising the Roma’s health and life expectancy. Pogroms, skinhead attacks, and police brutality aimed at the Roma in Poland have also been documented. In a 1991 pogrom in Mława, after two non-Roma pedestrians were struck down by a car driven by a drunken Roma teenager, a mob of inebriated Poles retaliated by attacking and destroying Roma homes, driving many Roma families out of town (Bartosz 1994, 53). In 1994, in the town of Dębica, skinheads severely beat a thirteen-year-old boy and later destroyed Roma houses in the nearby Roma settlement (errc 1997a, 1997b). In 1996, a fifteenyear-old Roma boy was assaulted by police in the town of Wodzisław Sląski. The case was never investigated, and charges were never laid (errc 1997a). Similar attacks have occurred in recent years. In 2004 in the town of Żywiec, skinheads beat and robbed a Roma couple, but the police denied the incident was racially motivated (Polish Press Agency 2004). In 2006, skinheads attacked a group of Roma, including children, in the city of Wrocław (Polskie Radio 2007). Police brutality against the Roma, although rampant, has gone under-reported and under-investigated due to a fear of retaliation on the part of the victims, as well as a biased judiciary (Amnesty International 2004; Sobotka 2001). Despite such incidents, there was still little formal monitoring of discrimination and racism in Poland at the time I was doing my research

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(European Commission against Racism and Intolerance 2000). It is only since 2005 that the European Union and the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly have started pressuring the government of Poland to confront discrimination and violence against the Roma (Puckett 2005, 624). While economic hardships since the collapse of communism have no doubt exacerbated discrimination in Poland, anti-Roma ideology and stereotyping have existed for generations. This situation is not restricted to Poland, and can be found throughout Europe. Roma stereotypes are deeply entrenched in western legends, literature, school texts, encyclopaedias, and many scholarly sources (Strauss 1998). Some of the stereotypes can be seen as “positive,” representing the Roma as close to nature, carefree, romantic, nomadic, and musically talented (Bartosz 1994; Fonseca 1995; Krausnick 1998; Stewart 1997; Strauss 1998; Willems and Lucassen 1998). But the Roma are also often presented in negative terms as wild and uncivilized, frightening, pernicious and parasitic, thieving, lazy, greedy, promiscuous, cruel with animals, cannibalistic, child-kidnappers, brazen fortune-tellers, and passive victims who throughout history – particularly during World War II – have lacked a fighting spirit (Krausnick 1998; Novick 2000; Willems and Lucassen 1998). Roma culture has been portrayed as deficient in religious, literary, and artistic traditions. Some sources have suggested that the Roma often adopt local religious customs in order to benefit from their host country’s resources.8 It was not until the mid-1970s that some scholars recognized that the Roma possess their own religious beliefs linked to certain food practices, understandings of impurity, and reverence for trees and animals (Willems and Lucassen 1998, 45–7). Roma marital practices have been stigmatized in many western sources as incestuous, unchristian, and oppressive toward women (Willems and Lucassen 1998, 42–5). Roma women have been represented as sexually promiscuous and unhygienic, witches, terrible homemakers, negligent mothers, and obsequious servants (Haney 1999; Stewart 1997; Willems and Lucassen 1998, 101). Roma men have been portrayed as licentious and abusive to women (Stewart 1997). Inevitably, I absorbed many of these stereotypes while growing up in Poland. I was afraid of the Roma people, as were many of my friends; however, I eventually exorcized my fears, because I grew up in a family where racism was not tolerated. My mother, who had been

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deported westward by Soviet forces from Poland’s former eastern borderlands after the Soviet Union annexed the territories in 1945, was bullied at school on the grounds that she was a Kresowiak (easterner).9 This first-hand experience with prejudice led her to teach me to respect the customs and beliefs of others. This is not to say, however, that I was able to shrug off my prejudices entirely, as they were deeply embedded in my psyche. Even after years of working as an artist in the name of social justice, many of my old fears and prejudices about the Roma resurfaced during this project, and in the pages of this book I have tried to expose my struggles with such ghosts. As a theatre artist, I have always worked with stories. Thus, I did not want to go back to Poland to gather statistics or study systematic discrimination or violence on a macro scale. I knew that countless Roma – men, women, and children – were suffering, and not just in Poland but across Europe. Nevertheless, I felt that I could best help by working with a handful of individuals at the local level. And, perhaps as a woman and mother myself but also because of my long-standing interest in gender-based oppression, I felt drawn to work with Roma women. I was convinced that they were doubly victimized – first, by living in a society that openly despised the Roma, and second, as women living in poverty within a traditionally male-dominated Roma culture.10 I wanted to create a space in which they could tell their stories publicly, and performance ethnography seemed the best way to go about it. A few ethnographic studies of the Roma have been done in other countries, but none in Poland prior to my arrival (Arias 2002; Blasco 1999; Guy 2002; Lemon 2000; Okely 1983; Silverman 1981, 1986, 1988, 1995a, 1995b, 1996a, 1996b, 1996c; Stewart 1997; Sutherland, 1975; Sway 1988).11 The ethnographies in other countries have all focused on the broader issues of Roma culture, such as social organization, adaptability, gender relations, artistic practices, notions of sexuality, and marginality in non-Roma society. Some of the ethnographies have included both women’s and men’s perspectives. However, in 2001, when I started my project, not a single published ethnography had been conducted primarily with Roma women.12 I knew this kind of study would be difficult to take on because of the violence the Roma women suffered in their daily lives. The ethnographic study of violence, I believed, was complicated by the fact that certain kinds of knowledge about violence cannot always be expressed

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verbally. Some experiences, memories, and conceptions of violence are too taboo, ineffable, unacknowledged, painful, or embarrassing to be revealed directly in spoken narratives. This kind of knowledge, I believed, might require more indirect, non-discursive, metaphoric, and physical means of expression.13 This was precisely what I had been doing in my work in theatre: telling stories through a combination of spoken text and physical movement. I intuited that my brand of physical, gestural theatre might be well suited to exploring and bringing out into the open the life experiences of Roma women. I was not the first to use theatre as a means of doing ethnography, though the practice is still relatively novel. Broadly speaking, there have been two main approaches. One uses theatre performance to represent and document the ways of life of cultural “others” (Allen and Garner 1997; Mienczakowski 1992, 1994, 1995, 2000, 2001; Schechner 1985; Turner 1982). The second uses performance as a mode of ethnographic participatory observation, whereby the ethnographer addresses his or her research question by collaboratively creating a theatre performance with the participants (Conquergood 1985, 1986, 1988, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1998, 2002; Denzin 2003; Fabian 1990; Madison 1998). What both approaches have in common is their reliance on spoken text as the primary means of expression for the research participants. I was hoping to break new ground by employing physical movement as well as text as a mode of expression. The whole idea of collaboration between researcher and participant is itself a relatively new development in anthropology and the social sciences. Anthropology emerged as a distinct academic discipline in the early 1900s, with ethnography as its unique methodology. From the beginning the researcher’s role has been to study culture in order to understand and explain human diversity (Marcus and Fisher 1999, 20). This is reflected in the way that ethnographies have traditionally been written: they speak with a voice of authority (23), but the author is silent and unseen, only marginally revealed in the footnotes and preface. The research is presented as objective observation (23). It was not until the 1970s that some anthropologists began challenging the traditional approach to research, with its implied claims of objectivity. Interpretive ethnographers, led by Clifford Geertz, argued that the role of the ethnographer should not be to objectively describe culture

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but instead to interpret its multiple and shifting meanings. Interpretive ethnographies are reflexive writings that reveal the presence of their authors, their personal and cultural background, their interactions with the research participants, and their thoughts and feelings during the research process. Interpretive ethnographies also incorporate the participants’ points of view, presenting the research not as objective observation but as mutually constructed by the ethnographer and his or her research participants. In the last two decades or so, collaborative research (also called participatory research) – which arose in response to interpretive ethnography14 – has increasingly been used as a means of conducting ethnography and other research in the social sciences. Researchers working collaboratively are aware of the unequal relations of power that define interactions between ethnographer and informant.15 These researchers try to alter the fundamental relationship so that informants are no longer studied by the ethnographer but instead become participants in the research and are directly involved in the decision-making process (Chataway 1997, 750; Kennedy 1995; Marcus and Mascarenhas 2005; Robertson and Culhane 2005; Yeich 1996). “Collaborative,” “community-based,” and “participatory” have now become buzzwords in academia; to undertake research using more traditional methodologies is often perceived as politically problematic. As a graduate student during the late 1990s and early 2000s, I embraced this viewpoint. It fit comfortably into my own political views about empowering the disenfranchised, subverting traditional and often male-dominated hierarchies of power and relying on cooperation and consensus as the model for decision-making. Thus, when the time came to design my phd research project, I wholeheartedly believed that working collaboratively with my research participants was the best way to get at the heart of their experiences. And, as a theatre artist, it seemed logical for me to use theatre as my collaborative research methodology. The inherently collective nature of theatre already held the promise of a more participatory mode of ethnographic inquiry. I also believed that doing ethnography through theatre, in the context of my project, could constitute a form of consciousness-raising of both the research participants and audience members about violence – and its alternatives – as experienced by Roma women.

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Juggling power It was with that conviction that I returned to Poland to find a group of Roma women to work with. My goal was to create a theatre performance with them, one that would allow me to learn about their lives while simultaneously making it possible for them to express their strife publicly. The journey from initial groundwork to opening night was fraught with obstacles and challenges that I never anticipated at the outset. One challenge was negotiating the power relations between the various participants in the project, me included. Perhaps naively, I hadn’t expected this to be a major issue and so was not fully prepared to deal with the various incidents that arose. In the world of theatre, where I was coming from, power struggles were commonplace, but the directors, actors, designers, and technicians often shared some common background in theatre and were working together toward a common goal. This was not the case in my project. The participants had no theatre background, and were drawn to the project for various – and not always compatible – reasons. Power struggles in collaborative research are not extensively discussed in the anthropological literature. Some researchers have acknowledged that while collaborative research aims to overcome power imbalances, certain power differentials are impossible to overcome – particularly those linked to class, ethnicity/race, gender, age, and sexuality (Chataway 1997; De Soto and Dudwick 2000; Fabian 1990; Humphries and Truman 1994; Reid and Vianna 2001). Such disparities can lead to resistance to the research project by both researcher and participants (Chataway 1997), to the censoring of the researcher and the participants, and/or to the distortion and concealment of information on the part of the participants (Humphries and Truman 1994). But reading about such issues did not prepare me for the real-life problems I encountered on the ground. I discovered to my surprise and consternation that the constant shifting of power, competing personal and professional agendas, and indeed my own inability to stay above the power games became critical to the outcome of the project, even at times threatening to derail the production. In the end, the experience profoundly shook my beliefs about my academic discipline, leading me to significantly rethink collaboration as it was employed in my project, and my own role as ethnographer and artist.

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This book is an account of my ethnographic journey and my encounters with power along the way. Collaborative research by its very nature denies the researchers a hiding place. It forces us into the open, with all our insecurities, blemishes, and weaknesses. It challenges us to reveal ourselves and to reflect upon ourselves. Though self-exposure does not come easily to me, I have tried to remain faithful to the spirit of collaborative research by writing about my journey as an autoethnography. This reflexive style of anthropological writing draws upon the anthropologist’s own life story and experiences in the field and reveals his or her research methodologies (Holt 2003; Ruby 1980). Autoethnographies usually disclose the author of the text by using the pronoun “I,” incorporating dialogue, and utilizing an emotional and evocative narrative style to underscore that these stories are constructed in and shaped by particular historical and social contexts (Ellis and Bochner 2000). Thus, autoethnographers have subverted “silent authorship,” which conceals the voice of the researcher (Holt 2003, 2). More politically conscious autoethnographies also seek to destabilize power differentials by giving voice to research participants and minimizing the authority of the ethnographer (Groves and Chang 1999, 238; Wasserfall 1993). While I have questioned my authority as the ethnographer/theatre artist and sought to empower the voices of the research participants, I have also been cautious not to gloss over the relations of power that inevitably defined our interactions in the field.16 Simply put, I was a western academic working with marginalized people, and nothing could change that. In what follows, I focus on how all the participants, including myself, negotiated power in my research project. In this sense I recognize, as does Kirin Narayan (1997, 34), that fieldwork is not always about building camaraderie; rather, it is fraught with complex power dynamics that can compromise communication between project participants. The book is thus also a reflexive analysis of the power implicated in my ethnographic process. Yet I only discuss the possibilities and the limitations of my own research project; I do not seek to evaluate collaborative ethnography as a model of research in general, because I do not believe that there exists a generic approach to collaborative ethnography that could be applied and tested as a methodology. Anthropologists are challenged to continuously respond to the shifting and changing contexts in which their projects take place (Cerwonka

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and Malkki 2007, 20). In recent years anthropologists have begun to address what is sometimes called this “improvisational” aspect of fieldwork (e.g., Castaneda 2006; Cerwonka and Malkki 2007; DeFiore 2002; Deutch 2004; Henry 2003; Huisman 2008; Schneider and Wright 2006; Wolcott 2005). My book advances this emergent critique by exposing the details of my own complicated position as ethnographer, the exploitations of power in which I was compelled to take part, and the problematic moral and ethical decisions I was forced to make to salvage my project. Rather than engaging in a triumphalist discourse about an abstract practice of collaboration that idealizes ethnographerparticipant relations in the field, I try to reveal as honestly as possible all the difficult choices I had to make and all the compromises that forced me to rethink my role as ethnographer and artist. Thus, it is the lived experience of my collaboration that is at the heart of my work. I have tried to write this account of my ethnographic journey in such a way that the critical analysis of power provides a commentary on the narrative but also allows room for the reader to personally reflect (Narayan 1997, 36). By blending social analysis with participant narrative, this book gives voice to the research participants in the text, recognizing “that it is people and not theoretical puppets who populate our texts” (ibid). In its focus on the particulars of the narrative, this book needs to be understood as what Lila Abu-Lughod calls an “ethnography of the particular” – an ethnography which, by focusing on specific individuals and relationships in time and space, rejects universalist and reductionist statements about culture (1991, 154). Indeed, one of my goals has been to expose – in addition to the workings of power in the field – the ways that encounters of power in the field challenge our theoretical and methodological assumptions. As the workings of power in my field testify, culture is not homogenous, coherent, and timeless. And as Carol J. Greenhouse points out, in this lies the strength of the ethnographic method: the strength to refuse an understanding of culture that does not account for life itself, which is fragmented, unstable, and full of contradictions (2002, 28–30).

The nuances of language Once I chose to work with Roma women in Poland, issues of language and translation inevitably became central. Polish is my first language,

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and though I left the country ten years before starting the project, I return almost every year and still speak Polish fluently. English is my second language, but since settling in Canada in 1992 it has become the primary language I use at work, study, and home. My husband and co-researcher, Shawn, was born in Canada; his first language is English, but by the time we embarked on this project, he had become sufficiently fluent in Polish to participate in meetings, engage in basic conversations, and teach a workshop to young Polish actors. Shawn and I speak more English than Polish at home. We collaborate professionally as theatre artists entirely in English. Our son, Amadeusz, who was born in Canada, speaks both Polish and English. At the project’s outset, he was five years old and knew enough Polish to communicate with ease in Poland. Neither Shawn nor I speak or understand a word of Romany, the first language of our research participants. Aside from a similar alphabet, Romany bears little resemblance to Polish or English and is thought to be a close kin of northern Indian languages such as Punjabi.17 I asked the Roma women to teach me their language, but they showed no interest in doing so. I picked up a few phrases by ear in the course of our work, but my attempts to use them were never greeted with enthusiasm. I believe that this was in part a means of self-preservation for the women – a way of keeping me, a Gadjo (the Romany word for non-Roma people; plural form is Gadje), at a distance. When the Roma switched to speaking Romany in the presence of Shawn and me, we were effectively shut out of the conversation. They spoke only Polish to Shawn, our son, and me; none of the Roma participants spoke a word of English or gave any indication that they understood it. Hence, Polish was out of necessity the language in which this project unfolded – both in my initial research into the women’s life stories and the resulting theatre production. Speaking in Polish inevitably led the Roma women to express themselves differently than they would have in Romany. However, they always asserted that speaking Polish did not inhibit their communication in any way, because they were as fluent in Polish as they were in Romany, having learned both languages in childhood. They spoke Romany among themselves, they explained, because they considered it their “ethnic” language, but spoke Polish on a daily basis with non-Roma. Not only was Polish the language spoken between researchers and participants; it was also the primary language of documentation. I recorded on audiotape and later transcribed my extensive interviews18

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in Polish with the Roma women, and made audio and video recordings of our rehearsals and final theatre performance. The script of our collaborative play was written in Polish. Furthermore, while I knew I would be writing my dissertation and this book in English, I wrote all of my field notes in Polish. I did so in order to capture the nuances and cadences of the participants’ speech, as well as the specificities of Polish social realities embedded in the language. For me the act of translating this documentation from Polish into English has been more about maintaining fidelity to the original image – as communicated in a Polish word, phrase, sentence, or passage – and less about finding English metaphorical parallels. Thus, I have tried to create what Walter Benjamin refers to as a “transparent translation” (1973, 78) – one that allows the recipient language to gain new meanings from the novel arrangement of words as they appeared in the original. For example, I translated this Polish sentence, “Uwaz˙aj, bo samochód Ci zrobi z dupy garaz˙,” into English as follows: “Watch out, or a car will make a garage out of your ass!” A translation seeking a more common English idiom might sound like this: “Watch out, or you’ll get run over.” I wanted the more unusual expression to bring novel meanings into the English translation. These acts of translation, however, have not been without challenges. The most profound difficulty in translating field notes, transcriptions, and scripts was that a “transparent translation” did not always adeptly convey in English “the soul” of the Polish language. This was further complicated by the fact that I also had to communicate “the soul” of Polish as spoken by the Roma participants, with all the injected idiosyncrasies of the Romany language in terms of rhythm, tempo, inflection, and accent. Here, Shawn was particularly helpful with his insights into how this combination of Polish and Romany might sound in English. In writing this book, I have made a conscious decision to move back and forth between present and past tense, because I believe it is important for the reader to know when I am describing actions or speech that took place during my fieldwork, and when I am articulating postfieldwork reflections and analyses; the latter I have expressed in the present tense. As well, I have used the present tense in some places to evoke the dynamic ways in which theatre performance engages its spectators. The present tense stresses the dynamic act of doing, and can effectively convey the unfolding of a performance (Conquergood 1998,

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31). In using the tense, I hope to engage the reader more deeply than would be possible with a more dispassionate retelling in the past tense. However, I am acutely aware of the knotty implications of writing ethnography in either present or past tense – implications I believe one cannot entirely wish away. The use of the past tense risks revisiting anthropology’s colonial legacy of portraying non-western people as exotic, antediluvian relics of the past (Fabian 1983; Tsing 1993). The use of the present tense, as much as it acknowledges that our research participants live in the present and share the same moment in history as we do, also carries the danger of turning the people with whom we work into a “people without history” (Wolf 1982). I hope that in this book, past and present tenses will complement each other – that the past will “historicize” the present, and the present will “contemporize” the past. My English translation of the play the Roma women created is included at the end of this book. In relegating it to the appendix, I do not mean to suggest that it is auxiliary research material. On the contrary, I see the script as another means of presenting ethnographic work, with the potential to deconstruct and challenge the ethnographer’s narrative (Conquergood 1991, 190; Denzin 2003, 13). While the script here presents a world invented by the research participants and the ethnographer, it is not “fiction” in the literary sense (Geertz 1973, 15). Rather, it belongs to what Jim Mienczakowski refers to as “ethnographically acceptable fictions,” since it emerged out of fieldwork, was created in collaboration with the research participants, and was based on the participants’ experiences, memories, and understandings of the social worlds in which they live (1994; 1995; 2000, 136). As such, the script remains – like the book itself – accountable to the world beyond the narrative, to the real people whom it represents (Narayan 1999, 141–2). Finally, as I promised Włodek that day on the park bench beside the tramline, I have changed all of the names of the participants in this project to protect their privacy. Only Shawn, Amadeusz, and I have kept our real names in this book.

The whims of fortune The fortune-tellers of Elbląg had been right: troubles were indeed awaiting me. After failing to win over Ana, Randia, and the other Roma women for my project, I decided to look further afield. With Shawn

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and Amadeusz, I travelled first to Tarnów in southern Poland. There, with the help of Zbigniew, a Polish sociologist of Roma culture, I made contact with some Roma in the region. One of the people we met, and ended up staying with in Tarnów, was Marek, the head of Tarnów’s Roma Association. Marek was a Roma rights activist and was very supportive of my project. He offered to work with other Roma rights activists in Poland to arrange funding for the performance. He wanted it to be a high-profile theatre event involving Roma from the entire region. However, he was primarily interested in structural and physical violence against the Roma in general. He had no particular interest in the plight of Roma women, believing that “all Roma suffered as one … regardless if they were men or women … in Tarnów or in Gdańsk.” At the same time, I noticed that the Roma women in the community were hesitant to talk to me. They were concerned about offending Marek, widely regarded as the foremost authority on Roma issues in the region. Marek himself asserted on several occasions that only he could provide me with all of the information needed for my research. While I gained helpful insights from him and the Roma in Tarnów, and Shawn and I grew very fond of Marek and his family, in the end I realized that it would be difficult to chart my own course there. I decided to keep looking elsewhere. It was now July. I had only four weeks left to find a suitable location for my project, and my anxiety was rising. Shawn, Amadeusz, and I set off for Olsztyn in northeastern Poland. There I met several Roma women telling fortunes at the gates of the old city. They were friendly and interested in my research, but after studying train schedules and calculating the cost of a daily two-hour commute from my mother’s home in Elbląg, I realized it was neither practical nor affordable to do my project in Olsztyn. With only three weeks to go before my flight back to Canada, I finally found a Roma community to work with in Morąg, a small town in northern Poland only an hour by train from Elbląg. Like so much in life – and art – the initial contact was serendipitous. On one of my train trips back from Olsztyn to Elbląg, I struck up a conversation with a Roma woman who was standing in the corridor with her three young children. Her name was Ella, and she was a refugee from Romania. Although she had a heavy accent, she spoke Polish quite well. I told her about my research plans, and she invited me to visit her in Morąg.

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I honoured her invitation two weeks later, and she introduced me to a group of Roma living in a makeshift settlement on the outskirts of town. The community was comprised of approximately fifteen families who had emigrated from Romania after the fall of the hardline communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in December 1989.19 They had fled extreme poverty and deteriorating social conditions in Romania, seeking asylum in Poland. Now they were living in shanties with no electricity or running water, supporting themselves by selling articles of clothing door to door, and by panhandling. Ella and several other women told me about their hard lives marked by chronic hunger and illness, street violence, and police harassment. They also told me about the discrimination they endured in doctors’ offices and churches in Poland, and the violence they suffered in their own households. These families were one of the last remaining groups of Romanian Roma refugees in Poland; other groups had been deported back to Romania in the mid and late 1990s. The Morąg Roma, I quickly realized, would be excellent participants. They were interested in my research; no one seemed to be censoring what anyone else said or did; and the women were willing to talk to me. The commute to Morąg was reasonable both logistically and financially. And, most importantly, I saw people in dire need and hoped that through my research I could one day help this community improve their life circumstances. My groundwork was done. In August, Shawn and I and our son said goodbye to my mother and returned to Canada. That fall and winter I sought and received the approval of my thesis advisors to study how the Roma women in Morąg talk about their experiences of violence, as well as the various factors that might promote such violence. I held the conviction that in combination Poland’s economic instability, deeply entrenched xenophobia, and resurgence of traditional family values as well as the dominant Roma ideology of male supremacy were having profound impacts on the lives of the Roma women in Morąg. However, in order to be able to explain from a scholarly theoretical perspective why and how these factors might be affecting the Roma women’s lives on a daily basis, I needed to adopt a conception of power that would guide my research. My understanding of power was influenced by two twentiethcentury European thinkers, Antonio Gramsci (1971, 1977, 1978) and Michel Foucault (1977, 1979, 1980). I drew on these theorists because

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they suggest that all people – even those commonly regarded as powerless – have the ability to manipulate and subvert power. I believed that such notions of power would help guide my understanding of the Roma women’s encounters with power in their daily lives. For the structuralist Gramsci, power – which he refers to as hegemony – achieves and sustains structures of domination in society by means of various ideologies and practices that make a certain social order seem inevitable. The ideology and practices of the dominant group usually support hegemony and are accepted by subordinate groups as common sense. Common sense, for Gramsci, is popular knowledge shaped by prevailing philosophical and scientific ideas and accepted by ordinary people unconsciously through socialization. Gramsci believed that hegemony works through a combination of coercion, consent, and force, which assume diverse forms in diverse social contexts. According to Gramsci, people can subvert hegemony through public debate and social action that contest common sense knowledge (Crehan 2002, 101–4, 110–14, 172–4; Gramsci 1971, 12, 159–60, 244, 325–7, 330, 333, 352, 419–20).20 Foucault, a post-structuralist, sees power not as a top-down force wielded by one person or a group over others or by a state or sovereign but as a complex network of domination supported by a multitude of processes, institutions, and organizations in which we are all bound. For Foucault, hegemonic discourses in society – dominant ideologies – are truisms accepted by the majority as infallible. Finally, Foucault believes in the possibility of resistance, but for him resistance depends not only on organized acts of rebellion but also on people’s everyday acts of subversion and manipulation of power (Foucault 1979, 92–7; 1980, 92, 131–2, 142). My research methodology was to be ethnographic theatre. I wanted to develop a theatre performance with the Roma women based on their experiences of violence. I planned to stage the performance in a public venue in Morąg. I would use my skills as an artist, my training as an anthropologist, and the cachet of a phd research project to effect change in the lives of the Roma women in Morąg. What I had not counted on were the whims of fortune. The following summer, 2002, Shawn, Amadeusz, and I left our home in Canada and flew back to Poland. We left behind our jobs and townhouse; our possessions were squirreled away in long-term storage. We had a year to finish the project. After we settled in again at my

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mother’s flat in Elbląg, I set off by train one morning to Morąg, expecting to pick up where I had left off with my research. To my horror, I discovered that the Morąg Roma were gone. They had been deported during my absence. Police officers had rounded them all up one night, forced them to leave their belongings behind, and transported them back to Romania. I was devastated. I knew I would never see Ella and the other Roma from Morąg again. Not a trace of them remained. I was worried about their situation in Romania, notorious for its systematic mistreatment of the Roma, but no one had any information about their whereabouts. There was nothing I could do. Now I had to start all over again, with the clock ticking on my year abroad and my phd on the line. Tarnów and Olsztyn were not options as a research field. Shawn, however, convinced me that Elbląg could be. But before I even approached the Roma women in Elbląg, I contacted the Cultural Centre for International Cooperation in Elbląg to discuss the possibility of producing the Roma project in one of its studios. I wanted to explore my options in terms of both rehearsal and performance space as soon as possible, knowing that by September, with the theatre season in full swing, it would be too late to negotiate anything with the centre. The centre was the main cultural and artistic venue in the city. It ran numerous sections, including theatre, dance, sculpture, martial arts, fine arts, film, and photography, and organized various local, national, and international festivals and cultural events. It also offered programs for people with disabilities, such as art therapy, performance festivals, and workshops. In recent years it had opened a state-of-theart cinema. The centre’s main funding came from Poland’s Ministry of Cultural Affairs, with local businesses and individuals sponsoring various events. While under communism it was simply called the Cultural Centre, in 2002 the name was changed to reflect its broad-based, international scope. On my first meeting with the centre’s director that July, he was very enthusiastic about my research. He not only agreed to provide me with a studio for rehearsals but also hired me on as a theatre instructor and artistic director of the student theatre section for a year, starting in September. Shawn was hired as a theatre instructor for the Englishspeaking section. We were to teach courses on art and culture and acting21 and to direct student productions in the centre’s “off-mainstage” theatre studio at the end of fall, spring, and summer each semester.

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Elbląg’s Cultural Centre for International Cooperation. Photo by Amadeusz Kazubowski-Houston

The centre agreed to fund all of our productions, including the Roma project. This funding would be sufficient to cover a modest stage design and technical support. The director envisioned my upcoming Roma project as a site of “cultural exchange” between Roma and Poles and a means of familiarizing Elbląg’s citizens with the Roma culture. He was eager to help us locate funding to provide small honoraria for the Roma women and to send the project’s play to the upcoming Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2003. To top it all off, Shawn and I were both offered generous salaries; in fact, one of our part-time salaries would have been comparable to the full-time earnings of many people I knew in Poland. Likely, the director was so supportive of Shawn and me because he saw the advantages in having international artists employed at the centre. “The centre needs more international exposure,” he asserted while signing my contract. This was generally true in Poland. It was thus easier for a person educated abroad to find employment in the country. The positions of theatre instructor and artistic director are also considered quite prestigious. Generally, to be employed as such, one must have the minimum of a master’s degree, or years of equivalent experience. And while working in a cultural centre has never been as presti-

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gious as working in a state university’s drama department or a larger theatre venue, for example, an artistic position in any institution still holds a high social status, largely carried over from previous decades when the arts were highly valued, supported and funded by the state. A few days after my meeting with the centre’s director, I was knocking on Randia’s door. I visited her first because I had forgotten where Ana and Włodek lived, and I still had her address in my notebook. I remember that day clearly. I was terribly apprehensive. It had been a year since I had last spoken with Randia on that park bench. I arrived at her door carrying a bag of meats and chocolates as a courtesy. The man who answered informed me that Randia was out and that I should come back in a few hours. However, when I introduced myself as an anthropologist from Canada studying the situation of the Roma in Poland, he invited me in. He introduced himself as Robert, one of Randia’s sons, and then introduced me to another man in the house, Randia’s son-in-law, Marek. Both men, without any encouragement from me, began talking over one another about the discrimination, physical violence, and hatred they experienced on a daily basis in Elbląg. Soon Randia walked in. To my enormous relief, she immediately recognized me. She did not, however, show much enthusiasm for my presence. She was tired, she said, from a day’s fruitless efforts at fortune-telling, and headed off to the kitchen. After drinking some water and resting a moment, she returned to the main room and asked me if I still wanted to do research with them. When I said yes, she and the two men reiterated that Elbląg would not be a good location. They said the few Roma who lived in the city would not be interested in developing a theatre performance. Robert and Marek urged me to go to Olsztyn or Ostróda instead. As in the previous year, I again concluded they were not very interested in my research. When they began bombarding me with questions about my background and motives, I became convinced they did not trust me. From time to time, they spoke among themselves in Romany, excluding me completely from the conversation. I felt discouraged, but determined to give myself enough time; I had to gain their trust. To my surprise, as I was preparing to leave, Randia and her sons invited me to return another day. They offered to talk to me about anything I wanted to know about their lives. It might have been only

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a polite invitation; in Poland it is generally considered a courtesy to invite one’s guests back. Perhaps they hoped I would bring them more food. I decided to take it as a sincere invitation. I really had no other choice. Not wanting to put Randia on the spot, I suggested that I drop by the park and visit her there the following day. She seemed pleased with the idea. The return invitation to her home was left up in the air. Instead, I began spending time with her while she was fortune-telling by the tramline. She introduced me to other Roma women who gathered there with her. Initially, I tried to talk to them about my project, but nobody showed much interest. Even when I suggested that I might be able to pay them each a stipend for participating in the play, they were indifferent. They said that they couldn’t spare the time and that they lacked the necessary education. Nevertheless, I continued visiting the women by the tramline every day, rain or shine. They were always happy to see me, and we usually hung out there together from 10:00 in the morning until 2:00 in the afternoon. Ana and her mother were often there too. Randia was particularly friendly, and spoke in favourable terms about me to the other women. As I stood hour after hour with the women in the park, the trams rattling by a few metres away, I noticed they warmed to me more when I stopped mentioning my project and put my notebook away. Instead, we took to chatting, woman to woman, discussing our children, our lives, and the latest gossip. They were curious about me and increasingly bold in their questions. They were proving to be astute and persistent researchers in their own right. “Don’t think you’re the only one who can ask questions!” Ana taunted me once. Her jibe, often repeated, became a humorous refrain as the weeks passed, and I found myself revealing more and more about my life to them.

CHAPTER

1

A T h ea t r e Ant hrop ol og ist ’ s B a g g ag e

The Roma women wanted to hear about my life because they were curious why I was interested in their lives. Randia once asked me to tell her about my past, as she pondered whether it was my own “personal baggage” that might have prompted my interest in the plight of the Roma. In many ways she was right. When I arrived in Poland in July 2002 to undertake my phd research, I was hauling along with me baggage bursting at the seams with thirty-one years of my life haphazardly compartmentalized. Simply put, I carried my life experiences, interests, and biases that, in one way or another, led to my commitment to social justice research and problems of violence. My interest in violence was influenced by my life experiences in socialist Poland, where I had spent my first twenty years. The Poland of my youth was a country where people talked about, wrote about, and experienced violence on an everyday basis. In Poland, the social memory of violence was and still is widespread. People continue to talk and write about the country’s turbulent and violent past. As a child, I regularly heard about the atrocities committed by both the Nazis and the Soviets during the Second World War. Members of my family endured the horrors of the war, fighting against fascism and Stalinism. My grandpa and his sister nearly lost their lives at the hands of Soviet partisans. My grandma, mother, and uncle lived in extreme poverty during the war, and one of my great-uncles died of starvation.

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The violence of the war left an indelible footprint across Poland. An entire section of Elbląg, the city in which I had been born and grew up, remained in ruins throughout my childhood. I heard stories about the Soviet gulags where two of my relatives had perished. The legacy of the war was an integral component of the school curricula. In primary and secondary school, I learned about the war in almost every class, including Polish language, theatre, history – even physical education, where we were often ridiculed for not marching evenly like “good Polish soldiers.” The threat of nuclear holocaust perpetually hovered above our heads as our school held periodic nuclear attack drills. Field trips to the Nazi concentration camp museum in Stuthoff also had a significant impact on how I thought about the past. I was ten years old when Wojciech Jaruzelski, first secretary of the Polish Socialist State, declared martial law on 13 December 1981. The day is vividly etched into my memory, with images of tanks and armed soldiers patrolling the streets of Elbląg. The civil disobedience of the Solidarity Movement soon followed. I remember sitting at a desk in elementary school, when tear gas was lobbed through the window of our classroom. My eyes and head burned, and I was unable to see. Our teacher, also temporarily blinded, scrambled to evacuate us. What happened next is not so clear, but I remember standing outside for hours. As the effects of the gas wore off, we were sent home. While the burning left my eyes a few days later, my memories still remain and likely have forged my way toward political theatre as a form of Brechtian social critique. My circuitous journey from political to ethnographic theatre was guided by my academic endeavours. The journey began in the Master of Fine Arts Program in Interdisciplinary Studies at Simon Fraser University where, initially inspired by Grotowski’s and Eugenio Barba’s1 cross-cultural explorations in performance,2 I began examining potential alliances between theatre and anthropology. Soon, however, my growing acquaintance with contemporary debates in anthropology concerning notions of truth, cultural relativism, performance, and power pushed me away from both Barba’s (1995; Barba and Saravese 1995) and Grotowski’s (Osinski 1991) quest for universally, cross-culturally recurring principles of performance. It was then that I came across the works of Victor Turner (1982), Richard Schechner (1985), Catherine Allen and Nathan Garner (1997), and Johannes Fabian (1990), all exploring theatre as an ethnographic research methodology.

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The approach to ethnographic theatre performance I developed in my mfa work was largely inspired by Fabian’s notion of performance ethnography. Fabian (1990) employs theatre performance as a mode of ethnographic participatory observation, wherein the ethnographer addresses research questions by collaboratively developing a theatre performance with research participants. Thus, the ethnographer – no longer an investigator – becomes a “co-performer” who co-creates ethnographic knowledge with his or her participants (7). Fabian’s approach advances a performative – as opposed to informative – form of ethnography (18). He argues that performance ethnography offers the ethnographer a means to do research “with, not of,” the people with whom he works (43).3 Fabian also believes that doing ethnography through theatre is important because certain kinds of knowledge are embodied only in performance. In his view, the ethnographer’s questions do not usually elicit informed answers about “important aspects of culture [because] no one, not even the native, has information that can be simply called up and expressed in discursive statements” (6). For him, one such aspect of culture is power. Employing theatre performance as a methodology of research, he argues, can inform us about the nature of power made “by specific persons on a specific occasion [because people who perform] relate to each other, and their society at large in terms of power” (17). My approach, implemented in two mfa ethnographic performances, Name Day, and Name Day: The Defence – which focused on women and violence in socialist and post-socialist Poland – like Fabian’s, employed theatre performance as a mode of ethnographic participatory observation. However, I extended Fabian’s work by considering audiences alongside the ethnographer and research participants as active participants in the production of ethnographic knowledge, because they also interact with, interpret, and construct meanings of ethnographic representations. Additionally, recognizing the central role that physical means of expression such as movement, gesture, and non-verbal vocalization play in the construction of ethnographic knowledge, I ensured that the participants had an opportunity to express themselves both verbally and physically. Finally, as collaborative ethnographic theatre projects, Name Day and Name Day: The Defence adopted strategies of reflexivity, polyphony, and politicization in order to challenge my authority as the ethnographer

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and theatre artist, expose the unequal power relations that defined the projects, and engage audience members in more dialogic, interactive, and critical ways. The strategy of reflexivity employed in these performances was influenced by Jay Ruby’s (1980) notion of reflexivity, which called for exposing the anthropologist’s presence, personal history, and methodologies of research as instruments of data creation. By employing both Brecht’s4 and Kantor’s5 illusion-breaking techniques, the two performances directed the audience’s attention to the conditions of the performances’ representations, namely the sundry power relations between creators, subjects, spectators, and the society at large that designated them as theatre events. The use of polyphony in the performances was inspired by Mikhail Bakhtin’s “dialogic sense of truth” – the plurality of equal, contesting voices that confront the audience with varied and shifting representations of reality (1984, 6–7). The polyphonic techniques in the performances included performers assuming double roles, presenting a collective action against a collective problem, incorporating diverse acting styles to highlight the diversity of voices, and employing Faye Ginsburg’s (1995) principle of the parallax effect6 by having the spoken and physical texts contest each other’s representations. Finally, the strategy of politicization, drawn from Brecht’s (1964) epic theatre and from Bakhtin’s notion of the grotesque in carnival – with its mockery and profanation of everyday life, and emphasis on the body and bodily processes such as eating, drinking, vomiting, defecating, and fornicating – was a means of subverting the established social order as presented by the performances (Bakhtin 1968, 11, 19–20, 34). As such, my performance ethnography could be seen as having an affinity with a school of visual anthropology that concerns itself with negotiating “the anthropological” with the “aesthetic expressive.” While there has been a significant denial of the importance of metaphoric means of communication in much of contemporary visual anthropology, Elizabeth Edwards (1997), for example, argues for the adoption of visual metaphor in ethnographic photography, because many aspects of culture require non-literal and non-realist means of expression (53–4). In Edwards’s view, employing the “aesthetic expressive” in visual anthropology can problematize the boundary between fact and fiction and consequently challenge the authority of

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the ethnographer and repudiate any claims of authenticity (55, 69). This in turn can – in the Brechtian sense – involve the viewer in a social critique of dominant worldviews (58–9). In my conceptualization and practice of performance ethnography, I sought, as Edwards does, to speak about people’s lives, cultural practices, and beliefs not in a descriptive, documentary fashion but through visual metaphor. It was in this visual metaphor that I saw – like Edwards – the potential power to politicize the viewer. And most importantly, adopting visual metaphor in ethnographic theatre performances allowed me to continue my romance with the image-based and abstract theatre tradition I loved so dearly. This was also a romance with the “ideology of modernism.” The theatre traditions of Jerzy Grotowski, Tadeusz Kantor, and Jozef Szajna, to which I was committed as an artist, carry particular histories, world views, and aesthetics that in contemporary art/social theory have been categorized under the umbrella term “ideology of modernism” (Moi 2004, 247).7 The ideology of modernism seeks “the attainment of the artistic absolute” through the autonomy of the aesthetic from culture. Thus, it rejects the ordinary and everyday and consequently realist representations (248) including realism,8 verisimilitude,9 naturalism,10 and melodrama,11 with their focus on narrative, character, plot, and mimesis (251). Generally, modernism – although it often draws from popular culture – disdains everything that falls within the limits of the popular and clearly differentiates between high art and mass culture (Huyssen 1986; Storey 1993, 156). Similarly, while fascinated with “the exotic,” it perceives the cultural/artistic practices and artworks of non-western people as folklore and artifacts of “authentic,” “pre-modern,” “savage,” or “vanishing” “ethno-culture” but not as art per se (Dimitrijevic 2003, 1; Hall 1997, 161). Despite a pronounced disdain for “bourgeois philistinism,” modernism gained access to the museum through its strong affiliation with society’s elite (Storey 1993, 156). The metaphysical-existential questioning of the theatres of Grotowski, Kantor, and Szajna, Kantor’s abstract-Dada imagery and sense of humour, and Szajna’s surrealist and expressionist angst always appealed to the Polish intelligentsia (Filipowicz 1992, 79). And like the ideology of modernism itself, which operates through universalizing metanarratives (Storey 1993, 159), their theatres also excluded the voices of “others” – women, for example – in the name of universal principles and general goals.

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In terms of a theatre aesthetic, modernism favours visual over verbal modes of expression and is concerned with “the unsayable, the unpredictable, the impossibility of meaning, absolute negativity” (Cioffi 1996; Moi 2004, 248). It also places emphasis on the impulsive and apocalyptic moment, and quite often on the grotesque, one of the most favourite strategies of the Polish avant-garde (Klossowicz et al. 1986, 110; Plesniarowicz 1994). The world view of the modernist aesthetic has been generally described as apolitical, formalistic, antitradition, and anti-religion (Filipowicz and Tymicki 1987).12 My commitment to the “ideology of modernism” in my artistic practice is most evident in the acting methodology – Illustrative Performing Technique – that Shawn and I developed with our theatre company, Teatr Korzenie. This methodology relies heavily on grotesque, abstract, and physical (over verbal) means of expression. The chief trademarks of our technique are the contrast of staccato-legato movement sequences; the use of tableaux to separate scenes and/or highlight dramatic moments on stage; the employment of facial masks13 (a performative tool in which the actor isolates, contracts, and releases facial muscles to create a desired facial expression with a highly expressive, carved-in-stone effect); and the use of metaphoric, symbolic, and poetic speech. Our theatre has also tended to repudiate conventional plot, as our performances often employed a circular and repetitious narrative structure. Both Shawn and I rejected what we once saw as mainstream theatre’s over-bloated inclusion of realistic objects on stage, and opted for the sparser scenography of Grotowski’s “poor theatre,” an economy of mise-en-scene that kindled our love for a more symbolic aesthetic. While our ideal of theatre is committed to social critique, there has been no room in it for the everyday, for the prosaic, for minutiae. Thus, our theatre, like that of Grotowski, Kantor, and Szajna, has not appealed to all. It was not uncommon for our aesthetic vision to be lauded by some theatre critics as thought-provoking and striking and at the same time criticized for its highbrow art elitism and inaccessibility to the broader public. And while early in my career I dismissed such criticism as being an issue of taste or preference, over time these criticisms began slowly but steadily to unsettle my conceptions of art – its purpose and my role as an artist. I entered the phd program under special arrangements at Simon Fraser University with the intent of further exploring the performance research methodology I had developed in my mfa project in the study

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of violence as experienced by Roma women in Poland. As mentioned in the introduction, I wanted to work with Roma women in Poland because I had witnessed many incidents of violence perpetrated against them, and because there was a dearth of ethnographic research regarding their current predicament. I believed that because my performative research methodology employs physical in addition to spoken means of expression, it would be particularly beneficial in the study of violence – an often ineffable aspect of culture. Pivotal to my conceptualization and practice of ethnographic theatre in my research was the work of Jim Mienczakowski, Dwight Conquergood, and Paul Stoller. I was intrigued by the assertion of Mienczakowski, a health researcher, that although ethno-drama is unlikely to bring about collective social change, it can effect instrumental change on an individual level by engaging audience members critically in the issues presented, and by giving voice to research participants14 (2000, 138). I found particularly astute his argument that it is people engaged in the development of ethno-drama who are most likely to become empowered (ibid.). I was also intrigued by his concept of post-performance sessions as a forum for debate in which participants and audience members can partake in critical discussions about the issues presented (127–8).15 Finally, I appreciated the attention he paid to empathy as a means to encourage social critique in both research participants and audiences (127, 133–4). Overall, Mienczakowski’s approach to ethno-drama was important to my understanding of how the politicization of ethnographic theatre might be realized. As for Conquergood – who, like Fabian, employs theatre performance as a form of participatory observation – I found his call for “emotional” and “impassioned knowledge” (2002, 149) appealing, because it asks for a more tangible and empathic involvement of the researcher in the research project (ibid.). As such, it resonates with Mienczakowski’s notion of empathy as an inciter of critique and Stoller’s (1997) “sensuous scholarship,” which calls for allowing “ethnographic things to capture us through our bodies [and senses]” (23). In Conquergood’s view, doing ethnography by means of performance is “to put culture into motion” (1998, 31; Rosaldo 1989, 91); it is about giving precedence to experiential, participatory knowledge (Conquergood 1998, 27). And much like Mienczakowski, Conquergood recognizes that performance can be an avenue for public discussion, where people can gain exposure and perform their identity

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(1991, 189). Specifically, he argues for public discussion that is dialogic, that “speaks to and with,” not “about”and for, the other16 (1985, 10). What particularly appealed to me was his assertion that the public discussion of a performance is “not always and exclusively verbal: issues and attitudes are expressed and contested in dance, music, gesture, food, ritual, artefact, symbolic action, as well as words” (1991, 189). Such was my “personal baggage,” as Randia aptly put it, that led me to Elbląg’s fortune-tellers on a park bench alongside the tramline. While I was grateful that I had managed to find a Roma community to work with, I was still very apprehensive. Although the Roma women were slowly warming up to me, the thought nagged at me that they might lose interest in the endeavour, or that they would never trust me enough to commit themselves to a year’s worth of research. As well, I still had twinges of fear over personal and familial safety. Could I trust the Roma? Did they have good intentions? My living arrangements in Elbląg were also far from ideal. Living with my mother was a welcome opportunity for all of us, but her one-bedroom apartment was too small for a family of four. I knew that an entire year spent in such cramped quarters would be trying. Finally, Shawn and I were worried about starting our new jobs as theatre instructors at Elbląg’s Cultural Centre in September. Though as a child I had spent countless hours there attending theatre workshops, plays, art exhibitions, and film festivals, by 2002 the centre’s image had tarnished. Many local people claimed that it had “gone to the dogs” in recent years because all of its efforts went into generating box office sales. It had also been widely criticized in the local press for fiscal mismanagement and corruption. While the benefits of working there were obvious, Shawn and I were hesitant about being affiliated with it in light of its reputation. We feared that we might be mistreated by the centre, or that our positions there might compromise my relationship with the Roma women. Also, while we welcomed the extra income and free access to a performance space, our busy schedules at the centre could end up interfering with my fieldwork and with Shawn’s home-schooling of Amadeusz. Shawn offered to stand in as assistant instructor in my theatre section so that he could take my classes on the days I needed to be in the field. While I would do research with the Roma women during the day, and teach at the centre at night, I knew that I might need to work with the women some evenings. Shawn was fluent enough in Polish to lead

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my studio sessions. If the need arose, and he had to teach my seminar, we would ask our English-speaking students to help translate words he did not know. We knew we had to make things work. The die was cast: we were to remain in Elbląg for the next year so I could work with the Roma women. What we had rolled, I could not yet tell: would the Roma women still want to collaborate with me on a performance at the end of it all?

CHAPTER

2

The Rom a Wom en ’s L i ve s

So here I was in Elbląg, hanging out daily with the Roma women by the tramline. Most of these women were born or raised in Elbląg. Some had spent all their lives there. Elbląg is a mid-sized city of 130,000 people and an important industrial, commercial, and cultural centre. It lies at the core of Poland’s scenic highland region, approximately eighty kilometres southeast of Gdańsk. One of the oldest cities in northern Poland, it is populated by ethnic Poles, with a small percentage of German, Ukrainian, Russian, and Roma minorities. Until the late nineteenth century, Elbląg was a central port competing with Gdańsk. Later, its significance as a port city waned, but between the two world wars it became an important hub of ground transportation. As Hitler rose to power in Germany, Elbląg’s port activities temporarily flourished once again due to the increase in production of weapons for Prussia. At the end of the war, when the Red Army penetrated the Reich’s frontlines in northeastern Prussia (Gierszewski 1978, 194), the fight for Elbląg was protracted and bloody. On 10 February 1945, the Soviet army walked into the city and it once again became Polish (198). By the end of the war, approximately 70 per cent of Elbląg had been destroyed. Reconstruction began relatively late due to a shortage of skilled labour and capital and the country’s priority of first rebuilding the capital, Warszawa (208). Postwar Elbląg was predominantly a working-

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Elbląg’s Gate to the Old City. Photo by Shawn Kazubowski-Houston

class city. Its main political parties at the time were the Polish Workers’ Party and the Polish Socialist Party (199–200). Heavy industry and commerce dominated the economic landscape (212). The city’s largest factories until the collapse of socialism included Zamech (heavy machinery/turbine plant), Plastyk (manufacturer of leather clothing), and Truso (textile manufacturer) (215). In 1975, it became the capital

Top: View of Elbląg’s Old City from gate. Bottom: Galeria El (art space in the Old City). Photos by Shawn Kazubowski-Houston

Top: Industrial park at the edge of the Old City. Photo by Shawn Kazubowski-Houston Bottom: Author and family in Olsztyn’s Old City.

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of the province of Warmia (234). During the general strikes of Solidarity, it was the scene of numerous riots. By 1989 Elbląg had become one of the most important industrial centres in Poland (216); as an artistic and cultural centre, however, it lagged far behind other Polish cities. A cinema, a small library, and the occasional artistic event barely nourished its citizens’ cultural needs (224). It was not until 1962 that the Zamech factory built Elbląg’s Cultural Centre, which included reading rooms, community clubs, a cinema, and various artistic sections, such as fine arts, dance, ballet, photography, and theatre. Another important centre of artistic activity was the Galeria El, which exhibited works of prominent artists from Poland and abroad and was home to spatial and conceptual art (231). While the restoration of the Old City commenced in the 1990s, the local government promoted Elbląg as modern and economically sound. Elbląg’s largest companies included abb Zamech Ltd, Elbrewery Co. Ltd, Elbląg Energy, Poland Post, Daewoo Cars, and Furnell. Its industries involved the production of energy and the manufacturing of machinery, consumables, textiles, and furniture. The city council actively created economic incentives to attract foreign investment. Then the collapse of state socialism left Elbląg, like other cities in Poland, with monolithic state enterprises, a smaller consumer base, and extensive debt loads. The private sector did not fully replace the services originally provided by the state. In such economically dire times, Elbląg’s rate of unemployment, as in many other regions of Poland, climbed steadily – by 2002 it was 32 per cent (Tonowicz 1997). During my year-long stay in Elbląg in 2002, sombreness generally prevailed. The euphoria of 1989, still going strong through the mid1990s, was wearing thin. The emotional landscape was similar to that of the martial law years; apathy and hopelessness were once again pervasive. Many of my friends and relatives were despondent, distrustful of the changes taking place and tired of the hardships they had to endure. With a high rate of unemployment, people who had always worked were suddenly without jobs; and prospects of returning to the job force were low. Poverty was widespread, with many people living on less than a dollar a day. A serious shortage of affordable housing continued. People barely a few years my senior were referring to themselves as the “lost generation.” Privatization was the buzzword of the day, as the government dismantled many state-subsidized enterprises. Without affordable

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childcare, many children played unattended after school; people bemoaned that television and video games were now alternatives to caregivers. I witnessed children spending hours at local Internet cafes unattended, chatting online, playing violent video games, or viewing pornographic websites. According to friends and family, violence and substance abuse had risen dramatically. Teachers I knew claimed that drug use was a problem even in the primary grades – children eight years and younger were using drugs and alcohol. In the lyceums and gymnasiums, substance abuse was rampant. I noticed that people’s attitudes toward the West had changed significantly since the early 1990s. Although many still supported a western model of liberal democracy and capitalism, some were speaking out against blindly following western models, which they saw as a poor fit for Poland. Similarly, there were deep divisions over Poland becoming a member of the European Union. There were those – frequently twenty- and thirty-somethings – who viewed eu membership as the best solution to the country’s social, political, and economic problems. They argued that Western European standards of governance would finally “bring order to Poland.” Sceptics, however, predicted unacceptable hikes in inflation and unemployment.1 The majority of ordinary Poles with whom I spoke were not sure what to think. They complained of a dearth of balanced information in the public domain and media to help them make informed decisions and suspected that the politicians were lying about what joining the eu might really entail. Many people turned to the Catholic Church for guidance, but members of the church seemed divided in their opinions on the matter. Unemployment and poverty in Elbląg appeared to be fuelling intolerance and prejudice toward “the other” more than ever. I witnessed many instances in which passersby insulted Roma women fortunetelling on the streets and in which clerks acted disdainfully toward Roma shoppers in supermarkets. In the local market, vendors were arranged according to nationality/ethnicity. Polish vendors were set up in prime high-traffic locations, while Ukrainian and Russian vendors sold their wares in sections of lower visibility. Although Poles bought from Russian and Ukrainian vendors, many complained that they sold at low prices because of black market connections. But the Roma vendors at the market were at the greatest disadvantage, as people

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simply did not want to buy from them. Some local people said they believed that “the Roma only sold stolen goods.” Roma stereotypes continued to circulate, with people referring to them as criminals, thieves, and lazy parasites. The majority of the people to whom I spoke denied there was any racism in Poland, although prejudice and discrimination against ethnic minorities were widely evident in the city. Only a small percentage admitted racism was a problem. Hard economic times had also worsened the positions of women, the elderly and disabled, and sexual minorities. Attitudes toward women had not changed significantly since the 1990s; perhaps now more than ever, the ideal of femininity was being articulated in terms of motherhood, homemaking, and sexual attractiveness. Women’s opportunities in the job market had deteriorated dramatically, and many of my female friends were now without jobs. While attitudes toward the elderly and the disabled remained unchanged, their economic circumstances had worsened significantly. Some elderly and disabled people I knew confided that they had to live off of meagre pensions or disability allowances. Lack of funding made many rehabilitation services still available under socialism now out of reach for them. “We are the forgotten burden,” one elderly woman told me. The situation of gays and lesbians had hardly improved. Despite their efforts to speak out publicly against homophobia, they continued to be perceived as “deviant,” “sinful,” or “ill,” as they had been in the 1980s and ’90s.

Building rapport After the first month of hanging out with the Roma women by the tramline, I began frequently visiting Randia (aged fifty-seven) at her home. She shared a flat in a pre-war apartment block with her daughter Zefiryna (twenty-five), her son-in-law Marek (thirty-two), and their daughter Marta (nine). The building was dilapidated, with the stairs leading to their third-floor flat full of gaping holes, patched over with scraps of linoleum. Their living space was a marginal improvement from the corridor and was heated by an old-fashioned ceramic woodstove. Randia was a widow and had eight adult children. All of her children lived in Elbląg, although two of her sons were currently in prison for robbery, vandalism, and assault. Under communism, she

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had worked as a cleaner. Before her husband died in a car accident, she had separated from him and raised her children on her own, never remarrying. Her health was poor: she suffered from heart disease and diabetes. She now lived off a government disability pension, which was almost five hundred zloty ($c200) per month. She also received foster support money from the government for raising her granddaughter, Marta. Randia became her guardian because Marta’s mother, Zefiryna, was a minor when Marta was born. Randia was also trying to supplement her income by fortune-telling, which was not very lucrative. Zefiryna and Marek had no stable sources of income. They were unable to find employment and were not eligible for welfare. Zefiryna occasionally did some petty trading that brought in a nominal amount of money, but Marek generated virtually no income for the household. Marta, an only child, attended public school, and although she was approaching ten, she was still in grade one. A family with limited resources, they had to be very creative about putting food on the table. Generally, it was Randia’s pension and meagre earnings from fortunetelling that sustained the entire family, and her resourcefulness ensured that they rarely went hungry. Meanwhile, I also began visiting another family on a regular basis. Ana (thirty-eight) lived in her mother’s flat with her third husband, Włodek (thirty-eight), a Roma rights activist for the Elbląg region; her mother, Agata (fifty-three); and her children, Kacper (twenty), Maciek (nine), Gabrysia (six), and Franek (four). Ana had applied a few years earlier for subsidized housing but had not yet received placement when I began visiting her. Her mother had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and, according to Ana, was deteriorating, in large part because she refused medical intervention. Ana’s husband was rarely home, as he travelled to other cities trading electronic equipment and cars, although officially he was unemployed. Ana had five children in all; the two oldest boys, Kacper and Sławek, had different fathers. Kacper was living with her because he had recently divorced; being unemployed, he could not afford his own flat. The block in which Ana’s family lived when I first met her was similar to Randia’s, but its condition was much worse. The interior was literally crumbling, with walls collapsing into one another. There was only a toilet in the flat, so they had to wash themselves in a basin. Ana had a strained relationship with her mother. She told me her mother,

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because of her illness, was abusive and was perpetually throwing the family out of the apartment. Ana was unemployed but was trying to earn money from petty trading in nearby villages and through fortunetelling. Włodek also contributed to the family income through his trading activities. Ana had developed a blood clot in her lungs after giving birth to her youngest son, and had since been suffering from chronic lung and heart problems. She also suffered from “nervous attacks.” She was not sending her children to school, as she believed it would be impossible for them to attend classes every day due to the frequent evictions they endured from her mother. She finally managed to rent a flat in December 2002. Although it was no improvement over her mother’s place – there was only a communal bathroom in the block, and the walls were covered in mould – Ana was grateful to be living away from her mother. She planned to send her children to school in September 2003. Randia introduced me to Nelka (twenty-eight), Ana’s sister. Nelka lived in a derelict, pre-World War II row-housing complex with her husband, Sebastian (late thirties), and her four children, Adam (twelve), Jurek (ten), Kornelia (six), and Antoś (three). The city had recently condemned the complex and would be demolishing it in the near future. Nelka was unemployed and, like other Roma women I met, engaged in petty trading and occasional fortune-telling. Her husband was not involved in any form of employment or trade. All of Nelka’s children were attending school. Her two oldest boys were in a special education school, since their former school’s psychologist diagnosed them with learning disabilities and identified addiction problems, primarily glue-sniffing. Kornelia was attending kindergarten in a regular public school. Nelka was very ill, suffering from high blood pressure, “nervous attacks,” and alcoholism. The family was under constant scrutiny from family services due to earlier charges of child abuse and negligence. Another family I frequently visited was that of Randia’s daughter Ewa (thirty-two). She lived with her husband, Antek (thirty-eight), and her three children, Paweł (thirteen), Bartek (ten), and Bolek (seven). Ewa received a disability pension for severe epilepsy and “nervous attacks.” Her husband was officially unemployed, although he sold used cars. Her children were all in regular public school, except for Bartek, who attended a special education school because of a mental

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disability. The family lived in an older but well-maintained row house on the outskirts of Elbląg. They had recently renovated it and now wanted to sell it and move out of their neighbourhood, because they thought it was racist, and because they wanted to be closer to friends and family. Other Roma from the community considered Ewa’s family to be the wealthiest Roma household in Elbląg. Randia also introduced me to Basia (forty-three), who lived with her husband, Bronek (sixty-two), her son, Radek (fifteen), and her nephew, Jacek (seventeen) in a pre-World War II flat. Basia and her husband were unemployed, but Basia was earning a small amount of money through petty trading and was also receiving foster support for her orphaned nephew, who had a mental disability. Her husband had children from a previous marriage to a non-Roma Polish woman. Outside of Radek, Basia also had a daughter (twenty-three) who lived in Suwałki, a city in northeastern Poland. I often saw Ana’s neighbour Minka (forty-three) at Ana’s flat. She lived with her granddaughter, Zuzia (twelve). Minka’s husband had passed away a year before, so she was raising her granddaughter on her own. She had two children from her first husband: her daughter, married to a German Roma man, now lived in Germany with her children; her son, the father of Minka’s granddaughter, had died in a car accident, and the mother lived with another man. Minka received a small government pension and earned occasional money from fortune-telling and the petty trading she sometimes did with Ana, her close friend. Beata (thirty-two), a non-Roma Polish woman who lived close to my block, was married to Randia’s son, Piotr (thirty). Her oldest daughter, Patrycja (ten), was the child of her first husband, who was Polish. Piotr and Beata were parents to Kalinka (three) and Kasia (eighteen months). They all lived in a room in a decaying, early twentiethcentury house. They shared a bathroom with their landlord, who also lived in the house. Beata was currently collecting maternity leave benefits, as she had had a job prior to her pregnancy. She also received a monthly child tax benefit from the government. Piotr was unemployed but sold electronic equipment such as stereos and televisions. The combined family income was inadequate, and they often had no food on the table. Beata seldom associated with people from the Roma community except for her mother-in-law, because the Roma, according

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to her, did not treat her as “one of them.” Beata’s oldest daughter was attending regular public school but likely would have to repeat grade four. Thus, within two months I was frequently visiting six Roma households, nearly all of the Roma families in Elbląg. The women to whom Randia introduced me were, I would say, the most widely known Roma women in the community because, aside from Zefiryna and Beata, they were all fortune-tellers. However, while many Roma in the community spoke favourably about their fortune-telling and admired the women’s perseverance in trying to practice the “traditional Roma trade,” Beata told me that other Roma, closely affiliated with the Catholic Church, snubbed them because of it. According to Ana, the Catholic priests disparaged fortune-telling as a “pagan practice,” and the Roma who were devout Catholics dissociated themselves from those who told fortunes. Indeed, I never saw Randia or the other fortune-telling women associate with any devout, practising Catholic Roma in the city. Though Randia introduced me to some of the more religious Roma when we encountered them on the street, I never saw her visiting their homes, and she never wanted to tell me where they lived. All the Roma in Elbląg knew each other, but not all families were in regular contact with one another. Discord over issues of money, business, friends, and family was rife within the Roma community. The Roma women squabbled over the time I allocated to them for various reasons. In the immediate sense, they appreciated the food and money I often brought to help make ends meet. With the exception of Ewa, whose husband was more successful in car sales, all the women were more or less in the same economic boat. I think they hoped I would assist them and their families in immigrating to Canada, or at least generate interest, nationally or internationally, in their plights, which might eventually improve their lot. Building rapport with the women was difficult for me because of the complex nature of my relationships with them and my feelings toward them. On the one hand, they perceived me as a friend. As a Canadian, I was a symbolic bearer of western authority (de Soto and Dudwick, 2000) and a doorway to the riches of the western market economies and liberal democracies, so often idealized by Poles and other Eastern Europeans. I believe I was to a certain extent perceived as a patron and, as such, a friend. Such romanticized perceptions of

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westerners by Eastern Europeans were an inevitable product of Cold War propaganda coming out of both the United States and the Soviet Union (Kuehnast 2000, 102). On the other hand, as a Polish Gadjo, I was a potential enemy because of the antagonisms, both current and historical, that framed Roma/non-Roma relations in Poland. The Roma women, as well as many of the other Roma with whom I had spoken in Poland, often referred to Gadje as an “inferior race.” Thus, the women might have considered me to be “racially inferior” – someone not worth associating with closely. At the outset of my research, because the women did not yet know or trust me, they might have perceived me as an enemy. In time, I believe, they began thinking of me more as a friend because of the immediate financial help I offered, because some might have hoped I could help them immigrate to Canada, and because they recognized my genuine interest in their lives. Yet even later in the research process they remained somewhat suspicious of the Polish Gadjo in me. They talked to me, joked, and called me their friend; at the same time, they chose not to teach me Romany, which allowed them to exclude me from a conversation at will. Initially I tried to convince them to teach me their language, but as time passed I decided to respect their reluctance, as I saw it as their means of self-protection. It was their right to decide what they wanted me to hear and understand. Building rapport with the Roma women was also difficult because of my suspicions, doubts, and resentment about working with them. There were times when I was uncertain why they called me a friend, and why they invited me into their homes and told me about their lives. I realized that conceiving of the relationship between the ethnographer and research participants in terms of friendship was problematic. Malcolm Crick (1992), for example, argues that power differentials between the ethnographer and research participants, as well as the various motives that bring them to participate in research, make conceptualizing their relationship in terms of friendship “odd” (176). I knew that although the women and I had started referring to one another as friends, and I was certain, for the most part, that we all believed this to be true, we were perpetually renegotiating our “friendships.” What seemed to be friendship on some occasions, such as during our exchanges of gossip, appeared at other times to be merely interactions worth maintaining because they allowed us to reach our

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personal goals and agendas (Crapanzano 1980, ix). For the women, the goals might have been financial or political gain, while for me it was the generation of material needed to complete my dissertation. There were times when I resented meeting with the Roma women altogether. I vividly remember days when I grudgingly trudged to their homes and forced myself to put on an appearance of really wanting to be there. There were four main reasons for this reluctance. First, the women smoked incessantly. As we sat around Randia’s kitchen table, Zefiryna and her sister Ewa would puff billows of smoke into my face. I had told them several times that I suffered from asthma and that cigarette smoke aggravated it, but they never considered this. Often, after having spent an entire day with them, I would have to triple my dosage of medication. Second, some of the women’s interactions with their children bothered me. While I knew they loved their children and wanted the best for them, to me they were at times abusive with them. Ana yelled and insulted her children continuously, and several times I witnessed her hitting them. Ząfira denigrated her grandsons, swore at them, or punished them severely for no apparent reason. Although Amadeusz occasionally accompanied me when I visited the women at their homes, I preferred not to take him, as I did not want him to witness the abuse and swearing or to be exposed to second-hand smoke. Third, the women often spoke unfavourably of non-Roma. Although I understood their bitterness, at times their harsh remarks directed at Poles en masse disturbed me. I felt incensed when the women nonchalantly expressed their hopes that some Polish stara baba (old woman)2 might lose her wallet on the street so they could find it. I was a Pole, after all, and I knew that for many stara baba, losing a wallet would be catastrophic, given the meagre government pensions many were receiving. Finally, I sometimes found working with the Roma women taxing because of their concerns about confidentiality. While, understandably, they did not want me to relate any information to others – including fellow Roma – about things discussed in their households, I was also not permitted to disclose with whom I had visited. This often put me in an awkward position, as I constantly had to conceal the truth about where I had been or with whom I had spoken. The exceptions to this rule were social gatherings, christenings, or funerals, which most of the Roma community attended. How could I, after being seen by a

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majority of Elbląg’s Roma at a christening party, claim I had not been there? I developed a kind of paranoia about being seen with and/or by the Roma women in public. Yet they openly talked among themselves about my visits to their homes. Perhaps in their view, sharing with others aspects of my relationships with them was acceptable if it was on their own terms. While I recognized these rules of engagement as possibly a product of incessant infighting within their community, I still found them very trying.

The life stories: Problems, hopes, coping strategies From July 2002 through March 2003, I was learning about the Roma women’s lives by engaging in participant observation, conducting interviews, and recording their life histories and stories.3 I did not yet know whether my plans for an ethnographic theatre performance with them would reach fruition. Nonetheless, I felt that the research material generated at this stage could be used later if the women did agree to participate in developing a performance.4 I visited the women and their families on an everyday basis, chatted with them, helped with their chores such as shopping, taking out garbage, and hauling wood. I accompanied them to various appointments, including visits to doctors and the welfare office, to pawnshops, to local cemeteries to pay respects to deceased relatives, or out of town for fortune-telling and trading. I also attended special occasions such as christenings and feast days. Shawn and Amadeusz took Randia’s grandchildren out regularly to play in the park or to eat pizza. When I first began visiting their households, the women, while always willing to talk informally to me about their personal lives, were not comfortable with participating in taped interviews. They preferred that I “just talked to them,” and if necessary, took notes. Perhaps they were still trying to “feel me out” before providing me with a more permanent record, which they might have feared could one day be used against them. It was not until later in the process, when the women became more comfortable with me, that they agreed to participate in taped interviews and have their life stories and histories recorded. However, they always emphasized that they wanted to remain anonymous, which meant that I was not to disclose their first names or surnames in this book. They agreed to be quoted under pseudonyms,

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requested that I keep all research materials confidential, and were aware that my observations of their daily lives and citations from our informal conversations might be included in my thesis. Initially I recorded their statements of informed consent on tape, as they did not want to “bother with signing forms.”5 When I visited, we spoke about anything and everything, just as I would with any other friend, about family, children, work, spouses, and life’s tribulations. In taped interviews, which were both unstructured and semi-structured, conducted both individually and in group settings, I would ask about problems they were dealing with at that time, such as health, finances, education, or housing, and the possible solutions to these problems. I also recorded the women’s life stories and histories. It all started with Randia, who one day asked, “So why don’t you take that recorder of yours, and sit down with us, one by one, and record everything we can tell you about our lives?” As much as the women were apprehensive at the beginning of the research, they were soon thoroughly enjoying recording their stories. Randia and Ewa eventually admitted that they liked talking to me and that they were finally getting things “off their chests.” It seemed they took pleasure in confiding in someone without having their conversations becoming grist for the rumour mill the following day. Randia, for example, conceded that she enjoyed recording her life story because for the first time she truly realized how much she had lived through and how much she had accomplished. Our discussions ranged widely. However, the women’s comments fell into two broad categories: personal problems and expressions of hope. In what follows I include examples of how they talked about each of these themes.

Their problems Most of the time the women talked about their problems, and largely in terms of violence. The meanings they attached to violence varied according to what was going on in their lives and where we were in the research process. However, for the Roma women, violence encompassed poverty, harassment, discrimination, Roma tradition, domestic violence, poor health, and emigration. Often they articulated their

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accounts of violence in terms of hopelessness. They did not believe their circumstances would improve significantly in either the immediate or the distant future. Additionally, they often compared the violence they had suffered in the past with the violence they were currently experiencing. They repeatedly described the present in more negative terms than the past.6

Poverty Poverty was one of the most pervasive forms of violence in the women’s lives. They defined it as the inability to afford the basic necessities of life, such as food, shelter, and medications. They attributed their poverty to the widespread unemployment in Poland, which they claimed had a greater impact on Roma than on non-Roma Poles, to prejudice in the work force, to the Roma’s lack of education, and to their incapacity to fortune-tell or trade. randia: It’s really difficult to live through the day. I have a pension, and I can barely survive on it … but it wasn’t like that before. Life was easier … there was not so much hatred, and we were not so poor. magda: So you are saying that it was easier under communism? randia: Much easier. magda: How about young Roma who are growing up … how do they see their prospects for the future? randia: Even worse, because, if there are no prospects, no jobs for you who are educated, then even more so there will be no jobs for us Roma who have no education … and when we phone about a job, they say the job is still available, so we go ’n see them … but when they find out that we’re Roma, then they say the job’s already taken … but we know the job is still available. nelka: I think this is the end of fortune-telling for us … everything will end for us soon. Poles think that if I tell them their fortune, I’ll rob them. They hate us. That’s why I don’t fortune-tell much … I’ve given up. I don’t have hope that things will get better … They won’t, certainly not for us … not for my children either. I tried to end it all many times because I’m so sick of it. This constant poverty! But I can’t kill myself … I can’t … I’m scared to leave the kids alone.

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Violence and harassment from non-Roma Another form of violence in the Roma women’s lives was the physical and verbal violence and harassment they experienced from nonRoma neighbours. They said it had worsened since the collapse of state socialism: randia: We have a free Poland now, but what’s it worth … we still can’t go out into the streets at night … There was an incident in Mława [the pogram described on p. 11] … there were rich Roma living there … but [Poles] killed some of them, and they burnt their houses … if a Roma did something like that, then God knows what would happen … They would find and kill all the Roma who did that. Even when you go into a store … you take a basket, and you’re looking around … and then you see a whole line of people tailing you. zefiryna: I’m hated here. Poles want us out of the country … all they want is to see us all dead. But when the queen of England wanted us all to come to England, our president, that idiot [Lech] Wałesa, said he wouldn’t let us go because we beautified the country. You’ll hear a different story on the street. And it won’t get any better, as everyone is getting poorer. magda: What problems do you have with your neighbours? Could you share some stories about your neighbours? ana: I had a neighbour … he was living in our old place, so he used to come into my house … and he was so brave that he’d come into our place, and he wanted to beat us, me and my mom. And his wife was acting like a Gypsy … she’d come to my home, when I wasn’t around, of course, because she wouldn’t do that when I was around … but she’d come to my house and ask my mom, “Auntie, can you give me a little bit of meat?” She was my mom’s friend … and Agata [Ana’s mother], screwed up in the head, would say, “Take … go ahead and take.” Then she’d come and say, “Agata, give me some vegetables … some cabbage and some potatoes.” And my mom would give it to her … and she had the nerve to run up and look into my pot … and she says, “Oh, you’re cooking chicken soup?” I told her, “Fuck off from that pot … because

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when I take the lid and smash you in the face, I’ll kill you … or I’ll pour it onto your head!” The women said that, even at school, the Roma were not free from physical violence: ewa: My children also go to school, and other kids are calling them names … They’ve had terrible experiences there. zefiryna: And a teacher hitting a child in the face … can you imagine that? Because she’s a Roma child! randia: But it wasn’t like that before, because Zefiryna was going to school before. ewa: Yes … a teacher can come up to our child and hit him in the face … So I went to the teacher and said that one shouldn’t beat a child if they’re teachers … and I showed her!

Discrimination Another significant problem the Roma women identified was discrimination, in both public and private sectors. They said discrimination was prevalent in government offices, schools, hospitals, and medical offices and among property managers. Ana and Ewa poignantly talked about the discrimination to which they were subjected in welfare offices and by social workers: ewa: I had a social worker come to my place once … she was sitting there and looking around my apartment. So I asked her, “Why’re you looking around my apartment like that? Did you come here to look at my walls … or did you come here to help me?” “But you’re living so nicely here … what do you want from me?” she asked. I said to her, “I came once to ask you to give me some money for winter jackets for my children!” She said, “I’ll give you fifty zloty [$c20].” And I said to her, “You take that fifty zloty, and go to the market and buy shoes and jackets for three children, and then bring them to me, and we’ll see if that’ll be enough.” ana: My radiator flooded … it was a week after the renovations … The heater broke, and it flooded all the floors and walls … I was living on the fourth floor … I flooded three neighbours. So I’m tryin’ to mop up all that water, and then the social worker comes

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in to have an interview with me. “Oh, what happened here?” she asked. [sarcastically] “What happened here? Water spilled here!” I tell her. So I tell her to sit down and wait for a bit ’coz I’m cleaning up the water. She said, “I can’t wait ‘til you pick up the water.” “I can’t give you an interview now,” I said. “Come here in a day or so, then we can talk.” No, she sits down and stays. I’m cleanin’ up the water, and she sits and looks around my place … scrutinizes it. So she says to me, “You know what? Your place is really nice … I don’t have a place like this.” I say, “You don’t have it like that! So where’re you working?” Because she made me so angry! “Don’t you know where?” she says. Then I said, “Well then, sign yourself into a whorehouse, so you’ll make more, and you’ll renovate your place the way you want to.” That’s what I told her. Then I told her, “Get up now, quickly, or I’ll push you down those stairs, and that’ll kill you!” She left like a storm. Discrimination in both the subsidized and the private housing sector was an ongoing issue for the Roma women. randia: I got an exchange agreement for a new place … everything was set, and I had everything packed. So I’m walking down the street, and I meet the woman that I’m exchanging my place with, and she said that there’d be no exchange. So I ask her why, and she said the tenants wrote up a petition … that they’re afraid to live near a Roma. I went crazy! And I said, “Dear lady, who should have the last word on your place, the tenants or you? How? Why are you listening to them?” So I decided, okay, and I went to Radio el [radio station], and all of Elbląg heard … I told [a news reporter], “Dear man, why shouldn’t I live in that house just because the tenants don’t want me there? Is that why? Because the tenants don’t want a Roma woman there? Am I not a human being? I am, right?” Ana also spoke about how various property owners had discriminated against her. ana: Each time I phone, they say, “Yes, the place is available,” but as soon as I go there and they see me, they realize that I’m Roma,

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and suddenly the place is already taken … I’m telling you, I’m sick of life. According to the Roma women, one of the most prevalent problems for their children in school was that non-Roma students received preferential treatment in terms of learning opportunities. As soon as Roma children fell behind in school, a psychologist referred them to a special education school where, the women complained, the children received an inferior education. magda: I wanted to ask you about school … On what basis are your children being referred to special schools? ewa: My son had to go to a special-ed school, because he had speech difficulties. He was going to School Number 7 before, and there was a psychologist who wrote an assessment that qualified my child to go into special-ed. basia: Us Roma are often told that our children don’t qualify for regular schools … only for “backward” schools … and of course, the level of education there is lower than in regular schools … than a normal child has … a Polish child. The women also complained of discrimination in hospitals and medical offices. Ana claimed that, because she was Roma, the hospital denied her adequate postnatal care, which led to haemorrhaging and a blood clot that permanently damaged both her lungs and heart. ana: They just left me there bleeding for hours … but why would they care … I was Roma, after all. They were probably hoping I would die … one less Roma! They blame us for everything that’s going wrong now … That’s why they hate us … and when we join the eu, the hospitals won’t even let the Roma in. The Roma women believed that in other western countries there was no discrimination based on race or ethnicity, while in Poland no one was interested in Roma problems, only their culture. They said that the same people who attended Roma festivals and admired Roma music and dancing also regularly insulted the Roma with racial epithets. The women also argued that the division You/Us, which in Polish

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society separates Roma from Poles and reads that “Gypsy” is synonymous with “bad,” contributes to the discrimination to which they are subjected: ana: You … us … there’s always that division. Poles always look at us with that bad eye, as though you’re human and we’re not. ewa: When they see a Gypsy, then that’s the end of everything … That’s all they see, a Gypsy … and a Gypsy equals bad, according to my neighbours. At the same time, the Roma women themselves often spoke in dichotomous terms, rigidly differentiating between Roma and Polish ways of life and frequently endowing the Roma with good qualities and Poles with bad ones. For example, according to Ana, Roma marriages are very different from Polish marriages because Roma couples are “free” to “split up” when the marriage is not working out. In a similar vein, Ewa claimed that Roma women are better hostesses than non-Roma women. Randia argued that, unlike Polish women, Roma women would never give their children away to orphanages. The women also maintained that Polish girls and women are promiscuous and unhygienic, while Roma girls and women are modest and clean. zefiryna: For you [Poles], there’s one tub … you wash your legs in it, your ass, and you peel your potatoes in it. ana: Not all Poles, because there are those who don’t do that kind of thing … but there are women who’ll use one bowl to wash the floors, and then they’ll wash meat in that same bowl. But things like that never happen in a Roma household. In a Roma household, if a fork or a knife falls into the trash bin, we’d throw [it] out.

The burden of tradition and domestic violence The women believed that Roma tradition restricts their lives in many ways and is often responsible for the violence they suffer at home. A particularly oppressive aspect of their tradition is the Roma custom of marrying off girls as young as eleven. Parents sometimes arrange marriages, or couples sometimes elope, but most often a young girl is kidnapped by her husband-to-be. Three of the five Roma women in our group – except for Zefiryna and Ewa – had been kidnapped by their first husbands. They admitted that they had not been ready for mar-

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riage at such an early age (thirteen or fourteen) and had suffered immeasurable abuse at the hands of their husbands and in-laws. Now they were trying everything in their power to protect their own daughters from such a fate. ana: When I was fourteen years old, I was kidnapped by a man and married off to him! I had my oldest son with him … I didn’t even get to see him, that husband of mine. I didn’t want him to touch me, but he raped me, so I became his wife … I couldn’t say no. But when I saw him in the morning, I started crying … I didn’t want him … he looked so ugly … looked like a frog. I said that I wouldn’t be with him, but I was stuck … I was stuck with a terrible man I hated … I felt like there was no way out for me. I was his because he took my virginity … I was also pregnant. Later on he began cheating on me with his cousin … She was also pregnant with him, and he would beat me up … my life lost its meaning then. I remember it like today … and you know what … I don’t think I got it back … It’s like something snapped in me forever. ana: I’d never allow anyone to take my daughter at such a young age … for sure not. I told myself that if someone comes here to take my daughter at a young age, I have a big knife hidden, and I’ll cut his legs off. I won’t give her away at such a young age … never! randia: Oh, God prevent! ana: If she was at least seventeen or eighteen years old, that would be different. randia: That’s right! The Roma tradition of marrying off girls at a very young age, the women maintained, is an obstacle to Roma girls’ access to education. They also argued that their tradition further restricts their lives by prescribing what to wear, whom to marry, and where one can work. magda: Do you find your tradition restrictive in any way … or tiresome … and would like to change it? ana: Yes, I’m sick of that tradition! My stomach hurts from that fucking tradition! [sarcastically] It’s so nice and so wonderful that, oh God! I’d like to change everything … What’s the worst? Well, I think the rules the [Roma] king establishes … and men like it …

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they like it because it’s convenient for them … so they tell us what we should wear, and everything else, and they guard this tradition … you can’t wear tight skirts with a slit at the back … You can’t wear pants … you can’t marry Poles … what else … zefiryna: … You can’t work as cleaners … you can’t clean toilets … Similarly, the women complained that the commonly held belief among the Roma that “a Roma man can do everything and a Roma woman nothing” is unfair and hurtful and a means of supporting violence against women. As a result, they said, Roma men abuse their wives physically and emotionally, commit adultery, and abstain from the everyday responsibilities of house chores, childcare, and finances. The women believed that the situation of non-Roma Polish women is much better because Polish husbands treat their wives with respect, help with the daily chores and childcare, and provide for the family financially. ana: So I would lie there in bed, hoping that he wouldn’t return … but eventually he would, reeking of booze and whores … But I would still have to give it to him or he’d take it by force, so I had no choice. At first I was fighting it, but then I just didn’t care … it didn’t matter to me what would happen anymore. You won’t stop men from doing that … there is even a saying that if a man sticks to only one hole, he’ll die. A man can do everything, and a woman nothing, that’s just the way it is with us Roma … it serves their needs, not ours. A woman’s life is difficult, but no, I don’t think that it will ever change. I would never talk about that to my husband, or I’d get a beating … Or if I started talking about it, other Roma would think I’m nuts … laugh at me … The man is the boss, and that’s it! zefiryna: Polish women have easier lives… they’re treated differently by their husbands. In Polish homes, men do more than women. When she comes from work, she’ll sit down, and her husband will make her supper. I can’t complain … some women have it worse … but it’s different … we won’t change it. magda: Do you think it’s unfair? zefiryna: Yes, but you know, there’s the saying, “What is allowed a voivode [lord, governor], you’re not allowed, you brat!”

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The women also stated that in the eyes of the Roma community, adultery committed by a man carries no consequences, whereas a woman who commits adultery can face dire consequences: stigmatization and even expulsion from her community. They admitted that while they found the adulterous behaviour of their husbands hurtful, they were more willing to forgive them if their infidelity was committed with a Polish woman, because in their tradition, a Roma man cheating on his wife with another Roma woman means that he has “remarried.” While they often spoke of their tradition as a source of suffering, their attitudes were contradictory and perpetually shifting. At times they vehemently opposed their tradition, while at other times they spoke of it in glowing terms and said they worked hard at transmitting Roma tradition to their children and Gadjo daughters-in-law. ana: I would teach my children and my daughters-in-law everything … from the basics … especially Roma tradition and customs … because among you, it’s like this … I’m sorry to say this in front of you and us, but you can undress to your underwear and run around the house in underwear, right? Right in front of your parents! But not in a Roma household. My son can’t walk out in his underwear and parade his eggs around in front of his mother and his sisters … We can’t do that … he gets dressed under the covers. And here a Polish woman will come to our home, and some Roma will be sitting around, and she’d say, “Mother, I want to go pee.” I think that I’d grab her by her hair, and I’d put her in order. That’s why, because she has to respect us. The women themselves recognized that the ways in which they perceived and spoke about their tradition were contradictory. According to Ana, Roma women “love and hate” their tradition because on the one hand it limits their opportunities as women but on the other hand it “binds them to all the Roma across the world … and their fathers and forefathers.” Without their traditions, Ana said, “the Roma would not be Roma.” The women also maintained that while some aspects of their tradition, such as early marriages, would never change, other aspects had already altered and continued to do so in a variety of ways. According to Randia, the Roma dress code and men’s contributions to household

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finances had changed significantly in recent years because women were allowed to “wear tight skirts … with slits at the back” and men had begun working in trade. The older women tended to perceive change in their tradition in negative terms, seeing it as the death of their culture. Randia and Basia believed that Roma tradition, and thus the Roma people, were dying out. The younger women, such as Zefiryna and Ewa, argued that it was not clothing that made the Roma “true Roma” but rather their skin colour and the ways in which society treated them. randia: Today there are no true Roma … there’s only artificial Roma. basia: Not real ones. randia: Before, a Roma woman would never wear a skirt so that her ass is showing through it … only a loose skirt … and an apron. ewa: Mom, now it’s in fashion! Mother, if there were no true Roma, then it would be better for us, because no one would stare at us like that … and they wouldn’t say, “Oh look, a Gypsy is walking down the street!” Or, “You won’t get a job because you’re such a Gypsy!” Then we could say that today there are no true Roma … but not because a Roma woman wears a tight skirt. I can wear a mini-skirt for that matter, and they would still call me a Gypsy … a Gypsy! magda: So you think that true Roma are still around? ewa: Well, of course … how could there be no Roma? There are Roma who’ve married Poles … And their children? What do they call them? Poles? No way … well … maybe if they look like their father, and have blond hair … but if a girl has dark hair, she’ll stay a Gypsy … or they’ll call her “speckled.”

Poor health The women were often despondent about their state of health. Nelka, who suffered from depression, “nervous attacks,” high blood pressure, and alcoholism, admitted that she did not want to live. When she was having a “nervous attack,” she acted like she “would never normally act,” as if she was “a single woman.” She stopped caring about her husband and children, wore pants and makeup, and untied her hair. However, after each attack she felt guilty about what she had done, so she drank to numb the pain. She believed her mental illness was both

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genetic – her mother suffered from schizophrenia – and a result of the poverty, discrimination, and domestic violence she endured on a daily basis. She said she had attempted suicide several times by various means, including slashing her wrists, hanging herself, and overdosing on prescription drugs. nelka: I think I just don’t care about myself … if I die, I die. I love my kids, but life is rough. I know I won’t get better, because I can’t take care of myself and my kids like I used to. God has forgotten about me. Well, let it be this way then. I know I won’t live long … Maybe one day I’ll kill myself … or maybe one day I’ll have a stroke. I have high blood pressure, and I’m only twenty-eight … just feel bad for my kids, though, leaving them alone … he [her husband] won’t take care of them. You probably think I’m crazy … well, I am. Ewa believed that her health problems resulted from the physical abuse she had experienced as a child. Her stepfather had loathed her and abused her daily. One day he hit her on the head with a broomstick, which led to a blood clot forming in her brain. According to Ewa, the clot was responsible for the epilepsy and nervous attacks from which she now suffered. While having epileptic or nervous attacks, she acted as if she was another person. She engaged in self-injurious behaviour, had a tendency to harm others, and suffered from total memory loss. She confided that in many ways she would prefer to be dead. ewa: My life is so hopeless … I live in constant fear of those attacks. I think that I’m getting worse. I have this epilepsy, and those strange attacks where I don’t remember who I am, and I could hurt myself or others. I turn into a different person … I begin acting like a young child again, pick my nose and stuff … act silly. The worst is the fear that I’ll hurt someone. Once I almost did, and that stayed with me forever … I was still a young girl then … my mother went to work, and she left me to look after my brothers and sisters, as I’m the oldest … then I had an attack. I told all my brothers and sisters to lie down in a row by the stove … I took an axe and … and was going to chop their heads off, but my mother came back from work early and that saved their lives … If it wasn’t for my mother, they would have all been dead! And you ask me

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what my life is like? It’s pure misery. I don’t believe I’ll ever get better. The worst is the fear of what could happen.

Emigration The inability to emigrate to a western country was a terrible source of frustration for the Roma women. Zefiryna, Ana, Basia, Nelka, and Ewa had all gone abroad, seeking asylum in Germany or Finland, yet those host countries refused to grant them refugee status and deported them back to Poland. They lost their life savings and possessions in the process. The women conceived of the West as the land of milk and honey, where racism, discrimination, physical violence, and poverty were non-existent. They felt dejected because they were forced to live in a country that held no future for them. nelka: If only I could leave … You know, life has no worth for me anymore, because I know that I’m stuck in this country forever. I’ll die and rot here. That’s why I don’t want to live, because it hurts thinking that my children will never live like human beings. For Ana, on the other hand, her desperation arose from the fact that her husband was perpetually dragging the family across the border to try to live in other European countries. Every attempt resulted in financial hardship or ruin. According to Ana, had they not squandered money on these excursions, they would by now have been financially secure in Poland. She admitted that even in Finland they still had experienced racism. Finnish residents who lived close to the immigrant barracks did not want their children to play with Roma children.

Their expressions of hope and their coping strategies In their interviews and life stories and histories, the women talked about the violence in their lives with a sense of hopelessness. However, in informal conversations, they tended to speak in more hopeful terms. When I visited them daily in their homes and accompanied them on errands, it was evident that they also experienced, understood, and responded to their problems by investing hope in the future. In immediate terms, they were preoccupied with the challenges of daily life and with finding ways to improve their circumstances.

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Although in interviews and in their life stories and histories they often talked about “giving up,” in their everyday lives they continued doing “normal things” like caring for their children, cooking, cleaning, shopping, fortune-telling, and trading. They rushed out from their homes early in the morning to secure the best spot for fortunetelling, stood in long queues to purchase discounted cuts of meat as a surprise for the evening meal, or renovated their flat on their own “so it looks more like a home for Christmas.” The mere fact that the women agreed to participate in the research, welcomed me into their homes, and spent hours being interviewed and relating their stories suggested that they had not entirely “given up” and that they were searching for ways to improve their day-to-day existence. In our informal conversations, they also expressed their hopes for the future. ana: You know, one thing that I’m hoping for is that eventually all the western countries … all the leaders will see how we live here … when Poland joins the [European] Union, I mean. Maybe then they’ll somehow help us … Somehow, I’m not sure, but I think that one day the world will see what they do to us here, and get us out … maybe not us … maybe our children. But see? You came all the way from Canada, and you’ll tell people too. The women also hoped that the violence they experienced at home would one day diminish. ana: Yes, we still fight, but things are better now … they will get better. We’ve been married for many years now. I’m so sick now that he’s afraid to hit me really hard … also, I don’t allow it. If he hits me, I hit him twice as hard. I think that he’s more afraid now … and maybe now he cares more about me. I think that as we get older, there’ll be less of that. The women often talked about western countries in hopeful terms. Many were saving and making contacts abroad so they could one day leave Poland. I also became aware that, coming from the West, I was a symbol of hope for some of the women. They often competed for my attention, and jealousy was a common denominator as they chastized me for visiting other Roma families. The hope that I would help them

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immigrate to Canada frequently arose in conversations. Ewa said, “Magda, when you go back to Canada, don’t forget me. Maybe there could be a way for you to bring me there … maybe through your school … there must be a way.”

Reflections This part of the research process was valuable not only because it allowed me to learn about the Roma women’s lives but also because it provided important insights into the various power relations that defined out mutual interactions and roles. These power relations were made apparent in the disparate ways that the Roma women spoke about their problems. Such disparities can possibly be linked to the various benefits and ends they were trying to negotiate for themselves through both my research and their affiliation with me. It might have been the case that they spoke about their experiences of violence in ways that they believed might help alleviate the hardships and violence they experienced daily; consequently, they constructed their accounts of violence according to whom they imagined their potential audiences to be at any given moment. Perhaps they spoke in more hopeless terms in their interviews and life stories and histories than in their informal conversations because they believed that what they said in their recorded stories, parts of which I would quote verbatim in my book, might reach international audiences, and ultimately bring about change. This was indicated, for example, when one day Ana, as I was about to turn on the recorder, asked me to wait a few minutes: “[I need to] compose myself and really think about what I want people to know about my life … it’s not like I’m blabbing to you whatever I want in the kitchen … If you’re going to show this to others, then they really gotta know how we Roma live.” Randia also once asked me if what she had said in her interview was not “too whiny,” because as much as she wanted people to help them, “too much whining” could have the opposite effect. And when I asked Zefiryna, following the first taped interview with her, if it was as intimidating as she had thought it would be, she responded, “No … but I was very conscious of what I said … not like when we talk everyday. I don’t pay attention then … I say what I want to say.” On the

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other hand, perhaps the women were less careful and particular about what they said during our unrecorded conversations, as the potential audiences and benefits were less apparent; thus, conveying a sense of hopelessness might have been less of a concern. Although power relations framed our mutual interactions, there were no obvious signs of discord between the Roma women and me in this stage of the research process. Despite a mutual distrust, and my doubts and resentments about working with them, antagonisms between us never surfaced when I visited the women in their homes, recording interviews and life stories. I always strove to be diplomatic, even in situations that caused me a great deal of discomfort or worry, such as when the women smoked cigarettes or reprimanded their children harshly. While I made a concerted effort to feel empathy for their struggles, I also knew that any conflict between us could compromise chances of developing a theatre performance with them. Thus, I avoided discord at all cost. I was holding onto the hope that if I managed to establish a strong rapport with the women, they might one day show interest in doing a play with me.

CHAPTER

3

F or mi n g T h e T h ea t r e C omp a n y

Negotiating terms and roles The day I thought might never arrive finally did. At the beginning of January, the Roma women agreed to work with me on developing an ethnographic theatre performance. I was thrilled! Although I had already tossed around the idea on several occasions, the first time they seriously considered it was at Randia’s flat just after New Year’s Day. As usual, I was visiting Randia, Zefiryna, and her husband, Marek, and we were all having afternoon tea. Marek asked if I was still planning to create a theatre performance with the Roma. When I replied that this was still my hope, he suggested that I should invite the Roma from Olsztyn to participate, as many of them were “artistic types.” When I stressed that I only wanted to work with the Roma women from Elbląg, Marek scorned Randia and Zefiryna, saying to them, “You lazy [women] … you should get to work … make some money … better than standing out in the cold for hours on!” Then he turned to me and asked, “Can you guarantee they [skinheads] won’t come and burn our homes down?” When I assured him that the performance would not present anything that might compromise their safety, or that would be contrary to the wishes of the Roma women themselves, he conceded that the project was a sound idea. Randia concurred with him because, as she put it, “Better to sit in a

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warm theatre than to be spat upon on the street fortune-telling.” Zefiryna, however, wanted to know if she could withdraw from the project if she was not satisfied. When I assured her that she could, she replied, “If Randia goes … I’ll go.” Randia, Zefiryna, and I touted the idea of the project to other Roma women, many of whom agreed to participate – provided they had the time – because “if Randia and Zefiryna [would] participate, so [would they].” We often discussed details of the project at Randia’s house, or while the women were fortune-telling. To a large extent they were very enthusiastic, but had mixed feelings about staging the performance at the Cultural Centre. They appreciated that we would have free access to a rehearsal space and performance venue at the centre, which was close to where many of them lived, but they felt intimidated about performing there. What would the real “professionals” at the Cultural Centre think about a bunch of “dirty Gypsy women wandering around the hallways”? The women were not familiar with the Cultural Centre; most of them had only attended a few concerts and/or films there. Generally, however, they did not think highly of it because, like many other people in Elbląg, they had heard about the corruption and mismanagement there. Nevertheless, the women hoped that performing at the centre might be to their advantage: it was the largest cultural institution in Elbląg and, as such, could attract a large public. Some of the women also hoped that making contacts at the centre would benefit them in the future. For example, Randia thought that the centre’s directors might hire them if they needed some Roma to work on other projects. To me, staging the performance at the centre was a matter of economic necessity. Had finances permitted, I would likely have staged the project elsewhere, as working at the centre was fraught with politics. Its organizational structure and work ethos were still to a large degree products of socialist Poland. Under state socialism, the very structure and organization of the workplace inspired resistance in the workers. Many work rituals imposed by the party, such as inter-departmental competitions, “voluntary workdays,” and “production campaigns” to celebrate the party’s “cult of work,” fomented the workers’ revolt (Verdery 1996, 23). One manifestation of this spirit of revolt was the ethos of non-work: workers performed the bare minimum of labour required to receive a paycheque (ibid.). This created a certain attitude in the workplace, where work was hardly rendered a priority, and

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other activities such as standing in a queue to get necessities like bread or milk took precedence (46). Also under state socialism, the Secret Police were maintaining surveillance in the workplace through planted informants. As a result, the workplace was often characterized by a high degree of paranoia, suspicion, and fear: no one trusted anybody (24). After the collapse of state socialism, many organizations changed their names. For instance, many “Houses of Culture” became overnight “Cultural Service Centres,” or “Institutes for European Studies.” However, these cosmetic changes merely reflected their desire to convince the public that they had made a break with the past; much of their structural and ideological underpinnings remained deeply submerged in the previous era (Malesevic 1995). These structural and ideological ghosts were undeniably walking the halls of Elbląg’s Cultural Centre. Executive offices stood empty for days, with secretaries eternally telling you to check back tomorrow. Only when a major cultural event was approaching were the corridors a-buzz with throngs of employees preparing for it. As soon as the event was over, the building was deserted. The director of the centre was even more elusive. Employees distrusted each other, as staff members were routinely and summarily dismissed from their jobs. They worried that their colleagues, out of self-preservation, might betray them to save their own positions. Working at the Cultural Centre as a woman complicated things even further because of firmly entrenched patriarchal attitudes. As in many western corporations, men dominated executive positions, while secretaries were invariably women. The director’s secretary not only answered his phone and filed his papers but also served him coffee and sweets. There were exceptions: the manager and artistic director of the mainstage theatre section were both women. However, their positions were at best precarious, dependent on their staying in the director’s favour. People’s condescension toward women was very apparent in their interactions with me. Staff at the centre often referred to me as “little girl,” likely because they found it odd for a woman to be a theatre director at the age of thirty-one. The theatre manager reminded me that it was my duty as a woman to clean up after a male colleague and his students had left the studio. When I countered that the director had

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never mentioned custodial duties when hiring me, the manager was stunned that I would not accept my obligations as a woman. Given such working conditions, I was worried that rehearsing the Roma project there would be challenging both for the women and for me. As well, I was petrified that if the women encountered prejudice at the hands of the centre’s employees, this might compromise the project irrevocably. Nevertheless, the benefits of working at the centre outweighed the risks, and the Roma women and I decided to make it our project base. We made decisions concerning rehearsal schedules, remuneration, and the women’s roles in the process. Right from the beginning, various constraints challenged the project. Time was one of them. We decided we would meet three times a week at the beginning, and later, when the performance text was set, once or twice a week. The women could not commit more time to the project, because they had to tend to their families and household chores and devote some time to fortune-telling and trading. Finances were another constraint. By the end of March, I had learned that I was to produce the play with my own money. The Cultural Centre had withdrawn its funding from the Roma project following the fiasco of my student theatre production, Horses and Angels, at the National Festival of the Spoken Word: Is That Love? held in Elbląg earlier in the month. The main director of the centre had unilaterally entered my ethnographic performance Horses and Angels, which was an exploration of violence and gender in Poland, into the competition in December 2003. Despite the students’ and my efforts to create a work of high artistic calibre, the performance had not won any recognition from the jury. While we never heard directly from the jury about the reasons behind their verdict, the centre’s assistant director informed me that he no longer could support – beyond providing a free rehearsal and performance space – our theatre projects, which lacked any artistic value and were “difficult” thematically. He also dismissed Shawn from the position of theatre instructor, claiming that he could no longer support his salary. Following my discussion with the assistant director, rumours spread around the centre that the jury members snubbed our performance because they believed it expressed “radical, unsupported feminist sentiments.”

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This episode ultimately limited the scope of the performance in profound ways. Options for stage, costume, lighting, and sound design as well as props were severely limited. We lacked the money to hire designers or purchase expensive materials. The women and I had hoped to take the performance to other Roma communities in Poland, but this too would now be impossible. Also, as much as I wanted to compensate the women for any financial losses they might incur due to their involvement in the project, which would infringe upon the time they could otherwise spend fortune-telling or trading, I could only offer to pay each woman forty zloty ($c15) for every three hours spent in rehearsal. However, the women were happy with this arrangement, as fortune-telling and trading were “hard to come by” now. Furthermore, the lack of success of Horses and Angels at the National Festival, along with the withdrawal of funding from the Roma play, had more than an economic impact, as it profoundly affected my relationship with the actors, whose morale was seriously compromised. At the commencement of the project, the actors seemed unenthusiastic about participating, and two were even considering leaving our theatre troupe. They worried that the subject matter of “violence and Roma women” would draw similar responses as Horses and Angels. Shawn’s dismissal was also a devastating blow to the actors. They wrote a letter of complaint to the centre’s administration, demanding a clarification for the action, but to no avail. In the end, however, none of the actors withdrew, although some never regained the enthusiasm for doing ethnographic theatre they had earlier in the year. This, I believe, was responsible for some of the power struggles that unfolded in rehearsals. Safety constraints and internal politicking within the Roma community also affected the women’s collaboration in the project. Initially, they did not want to act in the performance because, as they claimed, they were not actors and would not feel comfortable on stage in front of an audience. After a while, however, they began entertaining the idea of performing, saying that “even though [they] were not actors, [they] could still tell people a lot about [their] lives, [and] theatre was a good place to do it.” We even began planning for Randia, Ana, and Ewa to take the main roles, as they were the most comfortable with the idea of acting. However, one day Randia and Ewa abruptly informed me that neither they nor any other Roma woman from the community would

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perform. They had come to this agreement among themselves, Randia claimed, and believed that this decision was necessary in order to “protect [themselves] and [their] families.” In other words, they worried about the repercussions they might experience from performing in front of an audience, in a country where racism against the Roma is so widespread. Later, they admitted that they also chose not to perform because they did not want to “make a laughingstock out of [themselves] in front of other Roma.” According to Randia, there was so much infighting among the Roma in Elbląg that everyone looked for the slightest chance to “sic another person,”1 and they were not willing to compromise their reputations for “some sort of play.” I tried to assure the women that it was unlikely there would be any violent repercussions on the part of audience members in the theatre; yet they still refused. “Yeah, in the theatre they would cheer … but later we’d get our asses smacked,” said Ewa. I did not insist, because I did not want to jeopardize their safety or their reputations. Instead, we agreed that they would participate as playwrights, directors, dramaturges, and designers, and that my actors from the Cultural Centre would do the acting. Initially, the women were slightly apprehensive about working with Polish actors. They wanted to know whether the actors were trustworthy and “friendly to the Roma.” I was able to reassure the women that the actors were very enthusiastic about working with them, and that the very reason they were involved in the project was to speak out against discrimination. The women requested, however, that during the initial stages of the process, no male actors were to be present, as they felt uncomfortable about discussing their personal lives in front of men. The male actors were to join the rehearsal process once we began developing the texts of the performance. These constraints, together with other factors such as ethnicity, illness, and religion, had an impact on which Roma women were able to participate in the project. I could only afford honoraria for seven women at most. In the end, five Roma women participated – Randia, Zefiryna, Ana, Basia, and Ewa. They were the women with whom I had associated the most since commencing my research in 2002. Other Roma women either did not want to or were unable to participate. Ana, Basia, and Ewa also excluded certain women from the process. Minka and Nelka were unable to participate. Minka was to have guests over the months of May and June, so she would be too

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busy. Nelka was not on speaking terms with her sister Ana and did not want to work with her. Beata – Randia’s non-Roma daughter-in-law – refused to participate because she did not feel comfortable contributing to a performance that would speak about Roma women’s lives. She did not consider herself Roma, and believed that the Roma women in the community would not appreciate her input. Randia and Zefiryna refused to permit two of Randia’s other non-Roma daughters-in-law to participate, as they claimed these women were not “reliable sources of information.” Ana’s mentally ill mother, Agata, was keen on participating; however, Ana and the other Roma women claimed she was dangerous and “incapable of rational thought.” They even threatened to commit Agata to a hospital if she insisted on getting involved in the project. The other women discouraged me from seeking the involvement of a group of Roma women who were devoutly Catholic, likely because of existing antagonisms between the two groups over fortune-telling. Other participants in the project included my co-investigator, Shawn, who would also be performing, and six actors from the Cultural Centre: Agnieszka, Grażyna, Olga, Gosia, Maria, and Derek. Agnieszka (aged nineteen) was a student of Polish philology at Gdańsk University. Sisters Grażyna (eighteen) and Olga (sixteen) were both attending the lyceum in Elbląg; Grażyna planned to study at the University of Poznań after her maturity and entrance exams in the spring. Gosia (eighteen) and Derek (eighteen) were also preparing for maturity and university entrance exams. The youngest, Maria (fourteen), was in her first year of lyceum. While I had ten students in total enrolled in both my seminar and studio classes, only these six actors were interested in participating in the Roma project, due in part to the fate of Horses and Angels at the National Festival of the Spoken Word. They wanted to work on the project because they had acted in Dance As I Play You – my previous ethnographic performance, staged at the centre in mid-December – which explored themes of intolerance and racism. Outside of Agnieszka, Olga, and Grażyna, the actors had no formal theatre training. Agnieszka had previously trained in physical theatre in Gdańsk and had participated in a few acting workshops in Elbląg. Olga and Grażyna had completed elementary acting courses at the Cultural Centre. However, they all knew a lot about theatre because they were attending or were graduates of Elbląg’s lyceum humanities programs.

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Most of them hoped to pursue post-secondary education in drama and/or cultural studies. They saw the courses offered at the Cultural Centre as a step toward becoming theatre professionals. For Olga, auditioning to the National Theatre School in Kraków was her ultimate goal. Agnieszka admitted that she was studying Polish philology at university only because she had not passed her audition to the National Theatre School. She hoped that by taking the courses at the centre she would improve her acting skills and succeed at the auditions the following year. All the actors who participated in our project saw their roles as manifold: ethnographers, actors, and “subjects” of my ethnography. They all had previous training in ethnographic research methodologies from working on our first two performances. However, before the rehearsals commenced, Shawn and I once again reviewed with them some key points about engaging in collaborative research. I also reminded them that we needed to treat the Roma women with respect, striving to make them feel comfortable in the rehearsal studio and not imposing our opinions on them, as we were ultimately engaging in this process to learn from them about their lives.

Pre-rehearsal sessions with the Roma women and actors At the end of March 2003, I began pre-rehearsal sessions with the Roma women and the female actors; here the Roma women were to relate their life stories to us, upon which the performance would be based. Then, in rehearsals, we would create the physical and spoken texts, and design the scenography, costumes, lighting, and sound. As well, the pre-rehearsal sessions were integral in building rapport between the Roma women and the female actors. As the women requested, the male actors did not join the project until regular rehearsals commenced. Our pre-rehearsals were held in the off-mainstage studio theatre where both the rehearsals and the performances would take place. Our performances of Dance As I Play You and Horses and Angels had also been staged there. The studio theatre was a small black box with an audience capacity of approximately one hundred. The space was intimate, with excellent acoustics and no natural lighting. There were risers in the audience area, but the seating was flexible and could be adjusted

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according to the needs of a production. I was particularly pleased that there were no curtains in the stage area: I always found that curtains in a theatre space compromised the acoustics and were cumbersome for the actors. There was a small office backstage, which I often used to prepare lessons, and a storage room for costumes and props. It would have been a dream theatre space, had it not been for its ventilation and heating problems. In the summer it was an inferno, and in the winter a deep-freeze, with the temperature rarely rising above 10 degrees Celsius. The result was a very damp and mouldy space; my allergies dogged me for most of the winter. In the storage room, one could see fungus growing on the outside walls. While the cool environment was acceptable for rehearsing physically demanding scenes, the space would be unbearable for the more sedentary pre-rehearsal sessions. Luckily, by the time we commenced our pre-rehearsal meetings, outside temperatures were warming up. The Roma women, actors, and I initially met three times weekly, for three hours each session. Before our pre-rehearsal meetings, I would set a table with cake, cookies, and soda drinks to create an informal, relaxed atmosphere. The first pre-rehearsal sessions were devoted to signing consent forms and introducing the project. I reviewed the code of ethics governing the project, including issues of confidentiality and anonymity and the right of every research participant to fully withdraw from the project at any time. I stated that all research materials – video/audio recordings, and field notes – would be kept strictly confidential, and that only Shawn and I would have access to them. To protect the participants’ anonymity in my thesis, I would use pseudonyms. While the actors were not concerned about disclosing their identities, the Roma women were satisfied that using pseudonyms would be sufficient to maintain their anonymity. I also emphasized that it was important for everyone to respect the confidentiality of others in the group. Finally, I obtained permission from the women and the actors to make audio and video recordings of the process. We also established etiquette guidelines to help us deal with such matters as lateness and the reciprocal respect of one another. I explained to everybody that the purpose of our pre-rehearsal sessions was to identify various forms of violence the Roma women experienced in their everyday lives, their responses to such violence, and the possible causes – and solutions to – such violence. I asked the women to focus

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their discussions on the problems and challenges they encountered on a daily basis and on the sources of their suffering, pain, or unhappiness. I also asked them to talk about the changes they had witnessed or experienced since the collapse of communism, and how these changes had affected their lives. At this stage I strove to facilitate a process in which the women – although they were the main storytellers and leaders in the discussions – would not be the only ones fielding questions, and in which both the actors and I would also offer our own insights. As Thomas R. Lindlof (1995) argues, an interviewer’s “self-disclosure” helps to establish rapport between the researcher and research participants, and “a sense of reciprocity” (182–3). In the pre-rehearsal sessions, the Roma women told us their life stories. The themes they discussed were similar to those related to me in interviews and included their problems and their expressions of hope. They talked about various forms of violence in their lives, such as poverty, harassment, discrimination, Roma tradition, domestic abuse, poor health, and emigration. However, while many stories told in these sessions shared common ground with those raised in other research contexts, the women were now more inclined to talk about their coping strategies. These strategies echoed, to some extent, the sentiments of hope I had heard and witnessed during the participant observation of their lives. For example, the women insisted that they possessed an “instinct” that led them to “try everything to survive.” Their means of coping with domestic violence, for example, ranged from the use of sedatives and passively accepting abuse to reciprocating the abuse to which they were subjected: ana: There are some women who won’t let their husbands beat them up … if he hits me once, then I’ll hit him twice. And when he’s psychologically abusing me, then I can psychologically abuse him too. My husband has been abusing me psychologically all my life, so I try not to cross his path, and I only take pills … I take pills, and I take pills, and I take pills … and that’s it. And then he says, “Oh, look at her, she’s stuffed herself with all those pills!” But when I really lose it … and if he really hurts me … when I really feel the pain, and when I really have one of my attacks … then, I’m telling you, he’s already afraid of me, because I lose

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control over myself… because then I could do anything … I could take a knife from the table, and I could cut him … I cut him a few times … I cut his hand really bad once … I almost went for his stomach … and now, when he sees that I’m fighting with him, he says, “Go to hell,” and he leaves the house. magda: What else can a woman do to avoid a beating from her husband? ana: She can sit quiet and not talk back … just sit and suffer … [If he says] warm, then warm … [if he says] cold, then cold … and then sometimes for agreeing she’ll also get beaten. basia: Yes. The women revealed that in an effort to avoid harassment and discrimination in public, especially when trading, they often wore pants and cosmetics to “look more like a Polish woman.” They hoped to avoid being snubbed by potential customers. ana: We don’t wear pants, but when we go somewhere trading, then we wear pants in order to make some money … because if people see a Roma woman selling something, they’d prefer to go to the next vendor and buy something from a Pole, even if it costs more … so in order for me to sell things faster, I’ll wear pants … and I’ll put on makeup … I’ll wear a mask, so I look more like a Polish woman. But to wear pants and walk around the city, that would be unacceptable. Developing rapport with the local grocer in order to establish a line of credit, or pawning personal items such as jewellery at local “Lombards” (pawnshops), were some of the other strategies the women adopted to alleviate the effects of poverty. They conceded, however, that Lombards were both a curse and a means of hope for them. On the one hand, “if you run into difficulties, you don’t have to ask for help”; on the other hand, “they are bad, because you lose a lot of money from them … when you want to buy back a ring, you’ll end up paying more for it than it’s worth.” The women also considered theft as a way of getting by when they lacked other means. olga: What happens if a man leaves a woman?

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ana: Well, every Roma woman has the instinct that she’ll know how to take care of things … unless she really is a loser. But even if she doesn’t know how to fortune-tell, then she’ll go trade … and especially if she has children, then she has to do it … there’s no question about it … no discussion. olga: … So either fortune-telling or trading? ana: Well, not only trading … one can also steal. There are different ways of making money … what profession am I good at … and what can I do at this moment. Yet the women stressed that the Roma would never steal in their hometown. ana: I’ll tell you something … a Roma woman will never do anything bad in her own town … there is even a saying, “A Gypsy won’t steal anything in his own backyard.” He’ll go somewhere else and steal there, but … he’ll keep guard of his own home so things won’t get stolen. basia: True … ana: … And especially here where there are so few of us … I’d never go and steal anything, because I might be lucky one time, but the next time, I’d get caught … That’s why, if we want to do the dirty work, we never do it in our own town … but we don’t do such dirty stuff anyway, because we don’t have the inclination to do those things. The women also related how they taught their children, both boys and girls, to “fight back” against the bullying they experienced from their non-Roma peers. ana: So Maciek runs after them [his non-Roma friends] … I tell him not to go to them, but then they use him, they kick him around … They played a game where if somebody doesn’t score a goal, they get kicked … Maciek came back one day kicked all over like a dog … When he was going to sleep, I noticed that his entire legs were blue … I said to him, “So is that a game? Is it?” He said that they were just playing like that, and that it’s a game. “What kind of a game is that? Are you also kicking them like this?” He said, “Well, I didn’t manage to kick any of them yet.” So I grabbed a broom,

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and I started hitting him so much that he was yelling out, “Help … Mommy, I won’t do that anymore!” I said, “Oh, I’ll show you! You play ball, and you let them kick you like a dog?” zefiryna: I teach Marta to fight back … and when she comes home complaining that she was hit, I’ll only hit her in the face … yeah, because she has to learn how to fight back. Why did the Roma women foreground their coping strategies in the pre-rehearsal meetings? Perhaps the group context of these sessions posed different demands and limitations on the storytellers. Talking about their lives in front of Gadje, and in front of one another, might have forced them to consider more carefully how they were representing themselves and their community. They might have wanted to show to the non-Roma actors that, despite the difficulties they faced, they did not lack fighting spirit. When I visited Randia after the final performance of Hope, she asserted, “I’m not sure if these actors of ours learned anything through all of this, but I hope they know now that the Roma don’t go through life meek like cows going to slaughter, because we fight like bulls!” Finally, I believe that in the group setting of our pre-rehearsal sessions, in the stories they told, and in how they told them, the women also had to consider one another. Sometimes it appeared that through their stories of survival, resourcefulness, and standing up to Gadje, they were trying to impress – in addition to the actors – one another. After one session, Randia told me, “You know what, Magda, tomorrow I’ll tell you more how I had to stumble through life … but I did it so well … I was strong! Not like now … I knew how to make ends meet … They [the other Roma women] need to know this too … They only laugh at me that I stole hens! But I didn’t, I never stole anything.” While power dynamics in the pre-rehearsal sessions shaped the ways in which the Roma women told their life stories, the relations among the women, the actors, and me were largely amicable. Opening night was still far in the distance, and thus the stakes were relatively low. In such circumstances, everyone was committed to rehearsal etiquette – defined by a mutual respect – which, in turn, kept personal or group antagonisms and conflicts to a minimum. This was evident in the ways in which we negotiated our interactions, roles, and relationships in the studio: we all strove to keep the atmospher friendly and cooperative. The actors and I tried to make the Roma women feel welcome in pre-rehearsals, safe when telling their stories, and in control of group

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discussions. Thus, we slipped into the role of facilitators, listening, asking questions, taking notes, and audio/video recording rehearsals. The actors’ commitment to respecting the Roma women’s opinions was particularly apparent when they did not protest or challenge the women’s at times negative and generalizing views of Poles. The Roma women in turn worked to keep the sessions amicable and collaborative. From the start they strove to establish good rapport with the actors. This was evident when they playfully tried to determine which actor might “pass as a Roma.” Although they agreed that Grażyna with her dark hair and complexion could be “easily mistaken for a Roma girl,” Ana qualified that it was not so easy to distinguish who was Roma, because many Roma were blond, and in the end, “everybody’s the same.” While joking about who did or did not look Roma was their way of “breaking the ice,” later in rehearsals they would use it for different ends, which would profoundly reshape their relationships with the actors. As well, the women’s efforts at maintaining a friendly atmosphere in the studio were obvious when they encouraged us to ask questions and enthusiastically responded to our inquiries. Randia warmly encouraged the actors, “Do you have any other questions? Don’t be afraid to ask!” Furthermore, the women were careful not to offend the actors with their stories. They often apologized for comparing their lives with those of non-Roma: “I’m sorry we’re constantly saying ‘you’ … ‘us’ … we don’t mean here you particularly, because all Poles are different … but there are some differences between how you and how we do things, so don’t get offended.” When they spoke about Poles negatively, they maintained that they were not generalizing. For example, when Zefiryna complained about the poor hygiene of Polish people, Ana cautiously qualified that they were not speaking about “all Poles.” As we all worked to keep the atmosphere friendly, our pre-rehearsal sessions largely passed with minimal conflict. The only significant tensions arose when Olga sardonically asked the women whether they thought that the Poles’ hatred of the Roma was a result of “blatant racism,” or the Roma’s “difference.” basia: You know what, Magda … it’s really hard to live here … Even when you go to City Hall with some business, it’s hard, because everybody just can’t stand us. olga: Why do you think that’s so? Is it a result of blatant racism, or maybe your own difference?

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basia: No, not because we’re different … it’s racism! zefiryna: Plain racism! Racism against the Roma … against Jews … they show it on tv all the time … There’s a whole program on tv about racism. The Roma women reacted to Olga’s question with indignation – not surprisingly, because it echoed the common view in Poland that prejudice against the Roma stems from their cultural idiosyncrasies rather than from racism. Many Roma to whom I had spoken despised such opinions. While Olga’s remark marred the atmosphere in the studio for the remainder of the day, it did not significantly affect the interactions between the women and the actors at this stage. It was not until rehearsals, when the group’s “sense of propriety” eroded, that Olga’s remark began to influence the dynamics in the studio. The women’s commitment to maintaining the group’s equilibrium at this point was also apparent in their amiable interactions among themselves. Minor tensions mainly arose when they attempted to resolve family conflicts in the studio, or when the younger women tactlessly discussed issues considered taboo by the Roma code of conduct. For example, Ana became annoyed when Randia reprimanded her for refusing – due to personal reasons – to sue her nephew’s school for a beating he had suffered on its property. Or Randia once scolded Ewa for making an inappropriate remark about her Aunt Basia’s sexual relationship with her husband. ewa: Basia’s husband has to force her [to have sex], because he’s old and she won’t give it to him on her own … but she has to obey him, I guess, so that’s the way he gets it. randia: How can you talk like that about your older aunt! zefiryna: Whose fault is it but hers that she took for herself an old husband? How can she be with him when he’s in his sixties? Generally, however, such tensions were short lived and rarely arose in the studio. Usually the women were vigilant about obtaining permission from Randia – the group’s elder – to discuss things viewed as taboo. ana: I became ill after giving birth to my youngest son … it was the

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hospital’s fault. But I shouldn’t really talk about this, because my Aunt Randia is here. randia: It’s fine with me … I said yesterday that you could tell them what happened. Yet it seemed that the respect the younger women were showing their elders in the studio, in addition to following the Roma code of conduct, also served other ends. It might have been the women’s way of ensuring that our sessions did not taint their relations outside the studio. When Randia once assured Ana that she could “take it easy” and talk about whatever she liked, Ana sarcastically responded, “Yeah, right! So you can poison my nerves about it later!” In addition, the young Roma women’s respect for their elders appeared to be directed at both the actors and me: it was meant to demonstrate to us that the Roma, unlike Gadje, had a sense of propriety and respect for their elders. When Olga asked the Roma women whether they talked to their children about sex, puberty, or menstruation, Ana answered, “See, even now you’re talking about this, we’re embarrassed to talk about it because our elder aunt is here … We don’t talk about things like that in front of elders.” Randia also asserted to Olga, “Among us Gypsies, elders are respected … You must know that … we know what’s right and wrong.” In this stage of the project, there were no apparent power struggles among the Roma women over leadership. Although Ana dominated most discussions, the other women did not see this as a problem. They asserted that they agreed with everything Ana said, because, as Randia pointed out, “Things are exactly the way she said they were … she’s got a better way than us of putting thoughts into words.” Likewise, at this stage there were no conflicts among the actors themselves or between the actors and me.

Pre-rehearsal sessions with the actors I also held separate pre-rehearsal sessions with the actors, usually in the studio immediately following our meetings with the Roma women. In our separate sessions, the actors and I reviewed the recordings of our discussions, identified emerging themes, and developed questions for

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future sessions. The actors also provided me with feedback regarding this stage of the research project. Their feedback in turn revealed important insights into how we constructed our perceptions of the Roma women, the stories they told us, and the Roma in general, as well as how we negotiated our roles and relationships outside of the joint sessions with the Roma women. Released to some extent from the tethers of the project’s rules of engagement, the tensions, antagonisms, criticisms, and prejudices largely sublimated during the joint sessions with the Roma women now rose to the surface. This was evident, for example, in the ways in which the actors talked about the Roma women’s participation – for the actors, and to a certain extent, me, a source of anxiety and at times bewilderment. In one of our separate sessions, we expressed our apprehension that the Roma women would not remain committed enough to the process to attend rehearsals regularly. Yet, when the Roma women did attend regularly and punctually, our apprehension was replaced by astonishment and left us wondering what kept the women coming back. magda: You know, what I’m really astounded by is that the women come so regularly, and I think that it’s hard for them. olga: Maybe the money is the motivation. magda: For sure it is, but I think that even if it was the main motivating factor, they still don’t have to come on time and every time … What’s in it for them? What are your other thoughts? Thus we perceived the Roma women’s attendance/non-attendance at our sessions not as “normal” acts that could be supported or hindered by a variety of external factors but as peculiar developments. In contrast, we viewed our own acts of attendance/non-attendance – not all actors were always punctual or in attendance at rehearsals – as “normal.” While both the actors and I found the occasional lateness or absence of fellow actors to be a nuisance, something I often addressed in the studio, nevertheless, we did not scrutinize our own punctuality/ tardiness or presence/absence as we did the Roma women’s. In other words, we did not view our own participation in the project as out of the ordinary, while the Roma women’s participation was always an object of scrutiny to be discussed in our separate sessions. In this sense

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(while not deliberately) the actors and I were labelling the women’s work ethos as “abnormal.” Additionally, the actors criticized the Roma women for being largely passive in relation to their own oppression. In their view the women accepted their tradition as “natural” and “normal.” In contrast, the actors argued that they themselves, as well as their parents, approached their own Polish tradition critically and recognized its problematic aspects. olga: It surprises me that they approach their tradition so uncritically. We’re in the twenty-first century here, after all, and their only argument for everything they experience is that they have to because it’s their tradition. But normally you’d think they might want to change that marriage contract … Don’t they feel bad about that contract … and don’t they feel upset that their men are allowed to do everything … How can they simply take it like that? gra Żyna: Other than Ana, no one was really critical about their relationships. agnieszka: I think that to them it’s more acceptable, because they have grown up around that, but I also think they realize something is not right … Well, they’ve talked about these problems here. olga: I don’t know, but I think that if one is practising some kind of tradition, one has to assume a certain position towards that tradition … and one has to somehow explain things to themselves in their own heads … I see what’s wrong with our Polish tradition. gra Żyna: But if they’re already getting married at thirteen years of age, then I don’t think there’s really any chance. But they consider this to be tradition … After a girl gets married, then in a month or two she’s pregnant … This seems natural to them. olga: They do treat it as normal … You get married and then get pregnant, and that’s just how things are. olga: I was looking at Marta when she hugged her mom, and I was thinking that … I can’t imagine that this child would be married off in two or three years. But it’s strange that they don’t really see that, because my parents … they knew what was wrong with their tradition … in their lives … what was hurtful in their lives … They never repeated those mistakes in raising me, because they don’t

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want me to suffer like them. What is strange is that a woman who knows what she has been through, that she can say that she’ll marry off her girl young. If she knows that it’s not good for the girl … because they admitted that … but on the other hand, they say, “Such is tradition, and we have to.” The actors were setting up here a binary that contrasted the Roma women as passive/accepting with themselves, and their parents as active/resisting. However, such a binary accounted neither for what the Roma women had been telling us during our in-studio discussions nor for what had been revealed through my encounters with the actors – and some of the actors’ parents – in our two earlier projects. While the Roma women’s understandings of tradition were multiple, shifting, and often contradictory, on numerous occasions they articulated compelling critical accounts of their tradition as oppressive and violent. They also talked about their efforts of coping with the burdens of tradition, such as taking sedatives, responding to the physical and psychological abuse of their husbands in kind, refusing to marry off their daughters at a young age, or wearing clothing not deemed acceptable by the Roma community. While most of these coping strategies constituted small everyday acts and practices that destabilize rather than overthrow unequal power relations (Scott 1985, 1990), they were nevertheless premeditated and analytically reflected upon responses directed against the violent and oppressive aspects of their tradition. Likewise, while the actors painted a picture of themselves and their parents as critical thinkers who challenged problematic aspects of Polish tradition, such a picture was rather idealized. Although the actors did indeed question many problematic aspects of Polish traditional values, beliefs, and practices, nonetheless, some of them and their parents were not always critical in what they said or did. For example, in other theatre productions we had developed together, the actors vilified feminists for the ignominy of feminism in Poland or stigmatized a fellow actor because of his alleged disability and homosexuality. In retrospect, I believe that to a large extent the actors’ socioeconomic status was shaping the ways in which they perceived the Roma women’s responses to their oppression. Had the actors been lower middle class women, for whom self-fulfilment – as suggested by Marody and Giza-Poleszczuk (2000) – was being constructed in Poland in more traditional terms such as homemaking and motherhood, their

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understandings of the Roma women’s attitudes toward tradition might have been very different. However, for most of the actors, who came from middle or upper-middle class families and sought self-fulfilment in post-secondary education and professional careers, recognizing the Roma women’s responses to oppression as significant or meaningful was more difficult. Furthermore, the actors at times talked about the Roma culture as primitive, static, or “sealed off” from the rest of the world. olga: More proof that their culture is so tightly sealed off from the world is that living here in Poland, they still don’t change their tradition … they must see that children are being raised differently … and they see that girls are not being married off so early in Poland, generally … and it’s surprising that it doesn’t change gradually. It’s not that they should change it themselves, and say “stop doing that,” but that this hasn’t changed so much historically … slowly … But if you think about our own culture, things have been changing gradually … Things were different before, and now they’re different, because circumstances forced us to do that. It’s strange, because they’re living here, and yet they’re so hermetically sealed off from our reality. I guess the girls are just not being talked to, and they accept everything as it’s served to them. I think this is the way they’re being taught … Like Marta, she gets hit at school, and then she also gets hit at home for not fighting back … instead of hugging her and talking to her, and explaining things to her … and giving her some good advice. magda: Well, I think that we can’t look at the Roma as being separate from our reality … We are all living in the same time and space. I also think that, as they themselves pointed out, their “tradition” has been changing in various ways as well … For instance, Polish marriages are a more common occurrence now … The relationship between men and women in the household has also changed, as men tend to contribute more in terms of finances. We can’t think of their culture as unchanging and of ours as evolving. In our culture, many things have been slow to change as well … our treatment of minorities, or women in general … I mean racism and sexism is a big reality in Poland. gra Żyna: That’s different, though … I don’t agree with you. I think that the Roma as an ethnic group … the reason why their tradition stuck around for so long, and that it has been reluctant to change,

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is because … all the clothing … the caravans … because they’re trying to protect themselves from taking on a Polish way of life … going to our schools. But I think that now … they say that it won’t … but I think that things will change eventually because it’s all progressing … You can’t stop it … They even have television … Television also has a certain influence on them as people, for sure … It’ll give them a different kind of awareness … They’ll see a different world. agnieszka: Of course, but I don’t think that an ethnic group can hermetically isolate itself from the rest … I also think that what might contribute to the way things are in their culture is the lack of education … and that they are not able to exchange their opinions as freely as, for instance, we are … gra Żyna: You know what … their culture reminds me a lot of some of the more primitive Polish cultures … such as some of the groups that still live in small villages … In villages there’s a similar understanding of marriage … It was often considered to be a kind of contract. The above conversation reveals the actors’ assumptions about the Roma. First, the actors maintained that Roma culture was “sealed off” from the rest of the world, and had not been changing historically, which they attributed both to the Roma’s lack of education and to their attempts at “protecting themselves from taking on a Polish way of life.” In contrast, according to Olga and Grażyna, Polish culture has been changing throughout history. Second, some actors assumed, as articulated by Grażyna, that Roma culture would inevitably undergo changes as Polish society progresses, because television gives people “a different kind of awareness.” Third, Grażyna put forth that Roma culture echoed the “more primitive,” “small village” cultures of Poland, where marriage was often perceived as a “kind of a contract.” Such assumptions positioned the Roma culture at an earlier level of social development and a separate historical moment from mainstream Polish culture. The actors were propagating what Fabian (1983) calls the “denial of coevalness” – representing “the other” as existing in “a time other than the present of the producer of anthropological discourse,”(31) and thus obscuring the contemporaneity of the unequal relations of power that define the encounters between western and non-western cultures. Although the actors recognized that Polish culture is not homogenous,

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as it consists of different “smaller” cultures, they denied Roma culture such heterogeneity. According to Crehan (2002), “other” cultures, “the colonised rather than the colonising,” are most often viewed as “bounded,” stable, rooted, and unique (60–1). Yet the Roma women themselves spoke of Roma culture and tradition as changing, in terms of dress code, men’s contributions to family finances, the power dynamics between husband and wife, and Roma and Gadjo intermarriages. As well, the actors’ observations suggest that they perceived – to some extent – the Roma women, and Roma in general, as “backward” in their conceptions of shame and sexuality. Olga, for example, having heard about Ana forbidding her children to walk in their undergarments in front of family members, criticized the women’s notions of modesty: olga: I can’t imagine how one could decide whether someone else can walk around in their underwear in the house. I’m not embarrassed to walk around however I want to … in a t-shirt … our home should be a place where we feel most comfortable, wearing whatever we want to … For me it’s very strange … it’d be strange to walk to the bathroom in pyjamas or something. While the actors contrasted the Roma women’s “strange” with nonRoma “progressive” notions of shame, such comparisons once again accounted neither for past nor present conceptions of shame in Poland. Merely fifteen years ago, when I lived in Poland, talking with family members or friends about sexuality was generally considered unacceptable. And despite Olga’s suggestion, walking around in one’s underwear in many households was likely to be deemed improper. It is difficult to imagine that there has been such a massive shift in attitudes over fifteen years in a culture where the Catholic “denial of the flesh” continues to shape Polish mores. Among my family members and friends, there is still a strong belief in the “propriety” of what should or should not be said and done in front of others. Thus, Roma notions of shame might not be as “strange” or culturally idiosyncratic as some of the actors thought. Furthermore, the actors spoke of the Roma women’s attitudes toward children and child-rearing as “strange”: gra Żyna: What is very strange is that the girls are being taught to be adults so early … that they clean, wash the floor … and they’re

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supposed to take care of themselves, but no one talks to them about their destiny … about sexuality and marriage … and that marriage is not a game with a friend that you know … that it also entails different things, as well. This is so strange, that on the one hand they are approaching their girls like they’re adults, but on the other hand they treat them like kids. magda: How do the Roma women treat their children? gra Żyna: When an older boy beat up Marta, she was still hit by her mother because she didn’t fight back. I know they’re trying to maybe harden them up, but still I think that it’s harsh. “Strange” here seems to imply “negligent,” as according to the actors, Roma children were not taught about “destiny,” “sexuality,” or “marriage,” were slapped for not fighting back, and were forced to “take care of themselves.” Yet, while the Roma women admitted they were at times impatient with their children, they did not believe they harmed them, even if they “spank[ed] them occasionally [to] keep them in line.” They also boasted that Roma mothers loved their children immensely and “would never give [them] away to an orphanage.” As well, although they conceded that their tradition did not permit children to dine at the table with adults, they did not perceive it as “putting their men and themselves in front of their children;” instead, they saw it as a cultural practice aimed at cultivating respect in the young for their elders. “Our children don’t sit with adults at the table, and they must ask parents before they grab anything from the set table. They can’t just grab … this is to teach them respect for adults, because such is our tradition … We respect our elders,” explained Randia. The actors also spoke with negative undertones about the Roma women’s attitudes toward theft: agnieszka: I think they are saying that if the situation doesn’t force them to [steal], then they won’t do it … but if a situation forces them to do it … if they wake up in the morning and have nothing to give their children to eat, then there is no other option for many Roma women but to steal. gra Żyna: … I also read in a newspaper … someone was writing that the Roma, if you look at them, they right away get defensive

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and start asking, “Why are you looking at me like that? Do you think I’ll steal?” olga: Like they’re looking for a fight … But I think that in some stores, at least the smaller ones, if a customer comes in, then it’s natural that the people would turn their heads to see who is coming in … but I have seen Roma right away say, “Why are you looking at me like that? Do you think that I’ll steal? Everyone’s looking at me because I’m Roma … but be careful, because Poles can steal, too!” And then they start going on about how, no matter how hard you watch them, they’ll rob you if they want to. agnieszka: I think that they’re anticipating those reactions … It’s their way of self-defence. olga: Acting that way, they won’t be able to accomplish anything, because they are only making people angry. gra Żyna: … In some ways they’re solidifying those stereotypes … maybe not knowing that they are doing that, and things remain as they were … Because if you’re in the store, and you’re not even thinking that this Roma person could steal something, and then they spit it at your face that if they want to, they’ll steal anyways, then what would you think? agnieszka: They are always stressing how they are very good at stealing, and that you can stand behind their backs and they’ll steal anyhow. gra Żyna: I see that they are very wise and sharp … that you don’t really see in other cultures … something that really makes you feel intimidated. I think that they are really confrontational … They have something in their eyes, and they wield their superiority over you … They have a skill we don’t … I think they would really do well at school if they only wanted to, because they have that skill. The above excerpts imply that the actors believed the Roma women conceived of theft differently than we did, primarily because the women did not directly condemn stealing but rather considered it to be a strategy of survival to which one could always resort – albeit not in one’s own backyard – if need be. As well, the actors were surprised that the Roma women prided themselves on being “good at theft” and on their abilities to steal in stores. The actors were also astonished by how the women confronted people’s perceptions of them as thieves.

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While they understood the women’s responses in different ways – Grażyna saw them as a form of self-defence, and Olga as a way of “looking for a fight” – generally the actors concurred that such responses only solidified the stereotypes they were meant to contest. However, several things need to be debunked here. First, no matter how “different” the Roma women’s conceptions of theft appeared to us, such differences might have been more about how we constructed the women’s attitudes toward theft during our pre-rehearsal sessions than about any concrete differences in how the Roma women thought, or any of us might think, in such circumstances. For both Roma and Gadje living under conditions of abject poverty, acts of theft would most certainly carry different meanings and moral implications than for more affluent Roma or Gadje. Second, the Roma women’s responses to perceptions of them as thieves perhaps could be seen as the only reasonable means of responding to prejudice and racism under the concrete political conditions of present-day Poland. From the women’s stories, it was clear that they answered the accusatory stares of store clerks and customers with sarcasm. In this context, sarcasm might have been a “weapon of the weak” (Scott 1985) wielded against the discrimination of those in power. Maybe addressing the Gadje’s allegations with sarcasm prevented the Roma women from resorting to a powerless defensiveness and permitted them to preserve a modicum of self-respect in the face of constant humiliation. Moreover, since the stories our participants tell us – and how they tell them – are always mediated and shaped by our own presence, likewise what the Roma women were saying in the studio was always in response to the presence of the actors and me. The stories the women told us might have been subversive strategies directed at us Gadje in efforts to challenge the unequal relations of power that defined our interactions in and outside the theatre. Ana once told me that she hoped the rehearsal process would show the Polish actors that the Roma women had a fighting spirit and could “speak up to Gadje no matter what.” Perhaps this was what the women were trying to show us; this was what the “intimidating something” in the women’s eyes – as Grażyna put it – might have been. Furthermore, how we envisioned the potential problems of representation for this performance revealed problematic assumptions we held about the Roma women’s – and our – ideas about theatre. Prior

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to one of our pre-rehearsal sessions, Olga asserted, “I think the women are really set on what they want us to show … They’ve got all these different ideas for this play. I don’t know, it’s going to cause problems … theatre isn’t like Love and Hate.”2 Her remark resonated further in the studio that day: magda: What do you think might be the potential difficulties with this project … anything? gra Żyna: I think that there’ll be difficulties in representing violence in this performance, because they might see things differently than we do, and also because they might not want to show certain things to an audience. maria: Yeah, how would we really get at those topics? magda: If they don’t want to talk about them, then they don’t have to. gra Żyna: We’ll have to be careful about how we talk about it on stage, because they might object to what we’re saying or how we’re portraying and improvising violence … I think that this will be challenging. magda: I think that we have to be aware that the women’s conceptions of violence might be very different from ours … Also, how they want to represent things in the performance might differ from how we’d like to have it done … I mean, in terms of style … theatrical expression. olga: It’ll be different … the women watch a lot of soap operas. What stands out in the above excerpts is that, to some extent, we attributed any difficulties that might arise in the process to the “different ideas” the Roma women might hold about what to represent – and how to represent it – in the performance. Consequently, rather than addressing potential issues of representation in terms of the discrepancies between the Roma women’s and our ideas of what to include and exclude from the performance, and focusing on how such discrepancies might be negotiated in productive ways, we bemoaned how the women’s “different” theatre aesthetics would create problems in the rehearsal studio. This tendency exposes certain assumptions we held about the Roma women’s and our ideas about theatre. Specifically, we viewed our notions of theatre as “normal” and the Roma women’s as “different.” For us, the Roma women’s different ideas – and not ours –

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would likely result in difficulties with constructing the performance’s representation. These understandings continued to influence our attitudes toward the ways in which the women created the spoken and physical texts of the performance throughout the process. Particularly, our conviction that the women wanted to construct the performance using a “soap opera” aesthetic as the framework would shape in significant ways the power dynamics during rehearsals among the Roma women, the actors, and me. Moreover, the actors sometimes transferred their often negative perceptions of the Roma women and their ways of life onto all Roma as an ethnic/cultural group. For example, when Grażyna spoke about the “intimidating something” in the women’s eyes, she extended her observations to include the entire “Roma culture”: “I see that they are very wise and sharp … that you don’t really see in other cultures … something that really makes you feel intimidated. I think that they are really confrontational … they have something in their eyes.” Finally, the ways in which the actors and I negotiated our roles and relationships in our separate pre-rehearsal sessions, where project etiquette was not a going concern, varied significantly. While I was the main facilitator during the sessions with the Roma women, in our separate meetings I was more of an instructor, hoping that certain assertions of my authority would allow me to temper some of the actors’ negative perceptions of the Roma women. For instance, when the actors spoke of the women as passive victims of oppression, I discussed the partial and situated “truth” of our own observations. The actors, however, saw me more as a co-facilitator than as an instructor in these sessions, and hence more as their equal. Although during our in-studio discussions they endowed me with the role of primary facilitator and rarely contested my comments, in our separate sessions they often took the reins in discussions. While this could be linked to the fact that during the sessions with the Roma women the actors might have still felt uneasy about the process and felt safer when we met separately, I nevertheless found these shifting roles tiresome and frustrating. I noticed that my acting as sole facilitator during our sessions with the Roma women limited the actors’ levels of participation in our discussions and compromised the project’s collaborative spirit. On the other hand, the leading roles the actors assumed in our separate meetings often had little to do with making a meaningful con-

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tribution to the research project and more with venting their sundry frustrations, which chipped away at the group’s morale. My resentment of these shifting roles was at times responsible for the tensions that arose among us. This was particularly evident in my responses to the actors’ concerns. On one occasion, for example, when they griped, with no end in sight, about the potential struggles that might emerge between them and the Roma women, I abruptly asserted, “I wish you stopped worrying about problems that don’t yet exist … We’ll cross that bridge if we get there. I think we could use our time more productively now!”

Pre-rehearsal sessions with the Roma women The separate pre-rehearsal sessions I held with the Roma women usually took place at Randia’s or Ana’s flats or at the women’s fortunetelling spot. As well as providing me with another chance to spend time with the women, the meetings were an opportunity to solicit feedback regarding rehearsals. As such, our separate sessions – in ways similar to the separate sessions with the actors – provided important insights into how the Roma women constructed their perceptions of the actors and Poles in general, and how the women and I negotiated our roles and relationships when we met outside of the joint pre-rehearsal sessions. These sessions, like those with the actors, were marked by tensions, antagonisms, prejudices, and criticisms that mainly stemmed from the distrust the women felt for the project, the actors, and me. While the women largely managed to conceal their distrust during our joint pre-rehearsal sessions, in our separate meetings they spoke openly about it. For instance, when I met Randia the morning after our first joint pre-rehearsal session, she confided that the other Roma women had not attended as they were apprehensive about the project and wanted her to first “feel things out.” Later in the process, the women conceded that although the actors were “nice” and “seem[ed] interested in their stories,” they were still not sure whether they could trust them because, after all, why “would anyone put too much trust in Poles”? In one instance, the women’s distrust of the actors was made apparent in their responce to Olga’s suggestion that perhaps the Roma’s differences, and not racism, were

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to be blamed for the discrimination against them. In the joint sessions, the Roma women let Olga’s remark slide, but in our separate meeting, the women talked about their mistrust of Olga and the other actors. They complained that they had to be careful about what they said in rehearsals, because the actors were “really no different than any other Pole on the street” and that they only “put on good appearances” in the studio. The women also worried that the actors might breech the project’s confidentiality agreement and start relating what they heard in the studio to people outside. When I assured them that this would never happen, as the actors, despite their at times stereotypical views of the Roma, were nevertheless very committed to the project, Ana bawled, “Yeah, right, and who would trust that?” While the women were very friendly with me in our separate meetings and, as far as I could ascertain, did not hesitate to discuss any of their concerns, they also approached me with a certain degree of distrust, as they incessantly questioned me about my intentions. They wanted to be assured that what I wrote in my “book” was going to “speak well of the Roma to the world.” They were also mistrustful of the project itself, specifically in how it might affect their lives: ana: And I don’t think that the performance will change anything, because nothing has changed for us ever. randia: You never know … Maybe they’ll show this play in Canada … and people will finally see how we’ve been treated … You never know what can come out of this. [Ana shrugs her shoulders doubtfully.] Although the women discussed the impact of the performance on their lives among themselves, they were clearly directing such queries at me. I sensed that they spoke about the potential impact of the performance in negative terms in order to rouse words of encouragement from me. In one instance, when I admitted that I did not think the performance would bring any significant, immediate changes into their lives, even if it managed to alter the attitudes of some Poles toward the Roma, Ana disappointedly responded, “You’re right, we never had too much trust in things like that … Life for the Roma doesn’t change that easily … at least not in Poland.” Moreover, my role in these sessions altered. While in the joint prerehearsal meetings I was mainly a discussion facilitator, in the separate

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sessions with the Roma women I ended up acting more as a mediator, seeking ways to restore and maintain their trust in the actors and the project. For example, when the women voiced their unease over Olga’s comment about difference and racism, I tried to downplay – by stressing Olga’s young age – the significance of her remark in order to prevent potential tensions from flaring up in the studio. The women also now saw my role differently: they expected me to be their advocate and friend in navigating potential differences and conflicts between them and the actors. For example, when I met with Randia the morning following our first joint pre-rehearsal session, she assured me that she had spoken positively to the other Roma women about the rehearsal and strongly encouraged them to come. She also wanted to make sure that if any conflicts arose between the actors and the Roma women, I would “not hesitate to take [their] side and show the actors who’s the boss!” Later, when I visited Randia and Zefiryna at their flats, Zefiryna commented on Olga’s remark: “You should tell all your actors that we’re your friends so that they watch what they say … and don’t blame us for the racism the Poles [subject us to].” During this phase of the project, there were few opportunities for me to fulfill the women’s expectations of me as their advocate, as no major conflicts between the Roma women and the actors arose. However, as tensions were evidently brewing, I felt it was only a matter of time before the women would call my hand. Nevertheless, I kept telling myself that everything was unfolding as it should. I had a troupe of actors, and we had all come together to create a play about Roma women’s lives; things could not have been better. Yet deep inside I knew that keeping the group together was going to be as tricky as developing the play.

CHAPTER

4

Reh ea r sa l s I : T he T h ea t r e P r oce s s

How we made the play After our pre-rehearsal meetings wrapped up, we began developing the physical and verbal texts of the performance through regular rehearsals. The actors and I were excited about finally starting “the real work.” The Roma women, however, were initially apprehensive. They worried that they did not have the expertise or experience to develop a theatre performance. “This whole process will be a waste of your time, Magda,” Randia fretted. “We know nothing about theatre … Why don’t you do this yourself?” Nevertheless, when the rehearsals eventually commenced at the end of April, the women were much more enthusiastic. Ana even confided in me that she was really looking forward to the rehearsals, as she had always wanted to do “something artistic.” The Roma women, the actors, and I met three times per week, three hours per session, for five weeks, in the same space in which our pre-rehearsal sessions took place. The rehearsal process involved developing a theatre performance in response to the same questions the Roma women had addressed in the pre-rehearsal sessions – their everyday problems and fears. In rehearsals, we developed a basic storyline, key images, individual scenes, and plot sequence, the psychological,

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emotional, and physical profiles of the characters, blocking and choreography, the spoken text, and the design. Rehearsals usually commenced at 6:00 pm and ran until 9:00 pm. The Roma women always arrived as a group and were never late. Most of them attended all rehearsals. I arrived half an hour early to set up the refreshments table. As in the pre-rehearsal sessions, I served water, soda, coffee, tea, cake and cookies during the break. This was Randia’s favourite time, as she really enjoyed the chocolate cream cake and soda. “I really shouldn’t be having all this with my diabetes … but one time it won’t hurt,” she would guiltily qualify. The Roma women usually spent the break wandering around the Cultural Centre’s hallways, smoking and chatting with one another in Romany. They rarely socialized with the actors, which was a mutually reciprocated arrangement. Usually, the actors spent the break in the theatre or outside in the square. According to Olga, it was the cigarette smoke that kept them away from the Roma women. Conversely, the Roma women enjoyed my company and often insisted on relating their day’s misfortunes to me. Occasionally, Zefiryna and Ewa brought their children to rehearsals, but Shawn more often than not took the Roma children and Amadeusz to the park or out for a treat. Only toward the end of the rehearsal process, when Shawn’s presence as an actor was required, did both the Roma children and Amadeusz attend rehearsals. This made everything much more challenging. Although the children played in the adjacent dressing-room, we often had to interrupt rehearsals to mediate a fight that had broken out. A typical rehearsal day was very busy for both Shawn and me. During the day I spent time with the Roma women in their homes, shopping and running errands. Shawn home-schooled Amadeusz, and twice a week, on days when we did not rehearse with the Roma women, also led rehearsals for his theatre project, The Cinderella Project–Prometheus Rebound, that he was developing with his actors at the Cultural Center. My mother usually prepared meals, while Shawn assumed the bulk of the household tasks so that I could spend my time with the Roma women. At nights I stayed up late writing field notes or editing the script of the play in a two-by-two metre bathroom, as I didn’t want to keep my mother and Amadeusz awake. Saturdays and Sundays were the only days when Shawn and I could spend time with Amadeusz and my mother together. After five days in the field and rehearsal studio,

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guilty about our time spent away from Amadeusz, Shawn and I would heartily welcome a weekend to reconnect with him. I remember the first rehearsal vividly. It was a hot, sunny afternoon, 16 April. On my way to the theatre, sweat beading my forehead, I worried that the women would find it too hot to attend. I recall the empty streets and the clamouring of birds, chirping their displeasure with the heat. But the women arrived at the theatre early and quietly waited for the actors. Soon, though, Randia’s patience grew thin, and she remarked aloud, “I don’t want to miss my favourite tv serial.” The other women wanted to know how we would turn the stories they had shared in the pre-rehearsal sessions into a play. At that point the actors arrived. They were apprehensive and quiet. A combination of anxiety and anticipation filled the studio. I caught myself wondering what would happen to my research if the whole process fell through. Yet our first rehearsal went very well: I explained the logistics of the play development process to everyone and circulated rehearsal and performance schedules. We also spent some casual time chatting, while indulging in the refreshment table offerings. I was hoping that the glacial divide between the actors and the Roma women would slowly recede. By rehearsal’s end, conversation between both camps seemed to flow with greater ease. The next two rehearsals were also very preliminary. To provide some guidance, and to somewhat alleviate the Roma women’s anxieties, I suggested various strategies – such as talking about the central story, key images, individual scenes, characters, blocking, choreography, and spoken text – that we could implement to start developing the performance’s texts. The Roma women were most comfortable with the idea of creating the main storyline first, as they argued that it was like writing a script for a television series. The women were very fond of serials, particularly American or Brazilian soap operas, which they watched daily. I suggested that we make the central story of the performance fictive, loosely basing it on the women’s life experiences and memories. In this way I hoped to spare the women from engaging in a potentially distressing, embarrassing, or even hazardous process of “displaying” their lives publicly in a documentary fashion. I also encouraged the women to explore why1 they wanted to tell the story and what they wanted it to convey to an audience. This, I believed, would help them crystallize their ideas while developing the

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storyline. They agreed unanimously that the performance should illustrate how the Roma were like everybody else, that they deserved to live trouble free in their country of birth, and that their lives were filled with hardship. Ultimately, they wanted the performance to alter people’s perceptions of the Roma: “Maybe I’d like the play to change how people think about us … that they see us as people the same as them … no better, no worse,” asserted Randia. The women wanted to first hash out the storyline. There were several permutations of this process: the women and/or I suggested fictive events and characters, or we discussed our ideas and further developed them as a group. They were a heady few days, with everyone still brimming with enthusiasm. We all sat on barely comfortable folding chairs in the grimy studio. And while I did the bulk of the talking at first, everyone was soon offering opinions, and ideas flowed abundantly. I remember the day, near the end of the first week, when the story finally seemed to fall into place. Randia etched out the skeleton of the story: the protagonist Nadzieja (Hope), a fourteen-year old Roma girl, is kidnapped by a Roma man, Dennis. In accordance to Roma customs, she is subsequently married off to him. We were all impressed with the plot, and especially with the character’s name – Hope – as we appreciated the various associations it offered. While Randia asserted that the name represented the dreams they held onto in their own lives, Ana countered that Hope stood in sharp relief to their bleak reality. Together the Roma women established the remaining characters of the story, including their names, ages, and relationships to one another. Randia suggested that Nadzieja should have a mother, father, and older sister. Ewa offered that Nadzieja’s mother be called Ząfira, while Randia named Nadzieja’s sister Taisa, and her father Kało. Zefiryna proposed that Dennis should have a mother (Halina) and sister (Zosia). I also posed questions, based on ideas exchanged in the studio, to help the women flesh out particular points in the unfolding story: “How are we going to show that Nadzieja is supporting herself? Can we show that she’s going out to fortune-tell? That she’s trying to make money and is being treated poorly?” Finally, we brainstormed the story’s central events as a group. For example, once we had established that Nadzieja was to be kidnapped by her future husband, Dennis, we volleyed back and forth ideas as to what would follow. Randia suggested that Nadzieja and Dennis might go to his family immediately after the kidnapping scene, while Basia

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and Ewa offered that the next scene could portray Nadzieja and Dennis’s wedding. When I asked the women if the performance should include some non-Roma individuals committing violence against the Roma characters, Randia proffered that the wedding party should be raided by “Polish hooligans.” The fragment that follows demonstrates how we negotiated the plot after Nadzieja and Dennis’ separation: ewa: Now this scene should end, and we should wait until he finds himself a new woman … Then we’ll go back to Nadzieja. randia: No, we won’t go back to Nadzieja anymore. basia: We won’t go back to Nadzieja? randia: No, it could be like this … You [Ząfira] have a daughter [Taisa] now, and it could be that now she has a man come over and ask for her hand, and now she gets married. ewa: No, not really … there’s no point in showing that. basia: No, there isn’t! magda: So are we going to show Nadzieja? She was the main … ewa: … Yes … Everything was centred on her … I think that we should now totally get rid of Dennis’s family, and focus on Nadzieja. Although we came up with a basic storyline in the first week of rehearsals, the final version did not crystallize until the very end of the process. In that final version, the audience members enter from backstage and walk past Nadzieja’s body lying on a pedestal. They are ushered to their seats, joining Nadzieja’s family members – guests at her funeral – who are holding tea lights cupped in their hands. As family members recite their prayers, Nadzieja abruptly sits up, interrupts the “service,” and begins to recount her life story with her relatives peopling her drama. She explains that she is/was a Roma woman, a character created by the Roma women of Elbląg, some actors, and an anthropologist. Her story begins to unfold, going back to her teenage years, when, as an ambitious young girl, she wanted to finish school. We learn that she was kidnapped by Dennis, a young Roma man from another town, torn away from the innocence of her childhood, and thrust into marriage. “If only I were a dog, Mama!” Nadzieja laments before relating the violence of her married life the audience. She tells of her

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wedding-day party, in which Polish hooligans stormed in and fractured her father’s skull and jaw. She laments that after her wedding, Dennis regularly beat her, and she quietly bore his infidelity and indifference to their son and daughter. The audience learns of her countless attempts to leave Dennis, and his kidnapping of their children at one point to teach her a lesson. As her memories continue to flow, Nadzieja struggles to halt the action of the spectacle – to stop the painful retelling of her life so she can die fully. Yet her memories relentlessly drag her back into the action, playing themselves out for the entertainment of the guests. As she slips into schizophrenia, her memories and delusions merge – she befriends, and becomes, a dog. Her journey ends in a psychiatric ward where, with the help of her canine companion, she overdoses. Once the basic plot was established, the remaining elements came into place in a relatively small amount of time, like putting up a Christmas tree: once the tree is found and secured, adding the trimmings is effortless and pleasurable. Fleshing out the play’s central images was my favourite part of the rehearsal process because, as a director of physical theatre, I always approach a play first through images. The Roma women also seemed to sincerely enjoy this stage of the process, as I witnessed a torrent of creative impulses being exchanged. They established most of the images on their own, although Ewa and Ana at times attempted to include the actors in the discussions. Some of the images the women identified included a banquet table set with food, a woman displaying affection to her pet, a dancing Roma woman twirling her dress, and a woman shielding her face with her hands while a man pulls her to the ground by her hair. The associations the women attached to the image of the set table were numerous, including its expression of good fortune. Ewa pointed out, however, that the table was also a source of consternation for the Roma women who perpetually feared that one day the tables in their homes might stand empty. The image of a woman hugging her pet was significant to the women, as pets are often their most cherished companions. “When I come home, my dogs are there waiting for me,” said Randia, “always … so I hug them and hug them … They are always waiting for me … because who else is?” According to Ana, many Roma women feel a close affinity with their pets, especially dogs, because “their men treat

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them like dogs … and Poles treat them like dogs.” Zefiryna added that dogs in Roma households were better off than the women, and that she herself often wished that she was a dog, who would be loved and fed by everyone. For the women, a dancing Roma woman twirling her dress signified freedom. Ana explained that when she saw Roma women dance with abandon around a campfire, she felt “better inside” and was reminded of the Roma’s true, “free nature.” Randia, who was in her late fifties and remembered living in caravans, had many fond memories of dancing: “I’m telling you, Magda … we used to dance like this around the fire until dawn … twirling and twirling and out of breath … so free and happy like we’ll never be again … The Roma aren’t happy anymore … did you know that?” The women contrasted this image with that of a man hauling a woman down by her hair as she shields her face. Ana emphasized that for Roma women, shielding one’s face was an automatic response, a means of self-defence, to a man’s anger. “That’s what men do to us,” said Randia, “they yank us by our hair … pull right to the ground … I saw this done to my mom when I was little, but I didn’t understand then … I only understood when I got married … That’s when I understood.” By the end of the third week of rehearsals, we had established the images that were to be used in the play. Now the Roma women wanted to flesh out scenes and decide where they belonged in the play. We were all actively participating in this process, discussing and negotiating suggestions. agnieszka: Would it be possible for him [Dennis] to come back to me [Nadzieja] to take my children? Could it happen that he wants to take my children away from me? ewa: But you wouldn’t let him do that! magda: Could Dennis come to Nadzieja and take one of her children away from her? olga: Kidnap it? ewa: It could happen … it could happen that he would kidnap her child … Maybe when the child was playing in the playground, because otherwise she wouldn’t have given him away … and then she’s looking for the child … going crazy because her child is

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missing … She’s phoning the police … but it doesn’t even enter her head that he could. magda: Could we do a scene where Nadzieja’s husband is kidnapping her children … and she phones the police? ewa: [to Agnieszka] Yes, and then she goes through a nervous breakdown … Then you call for the police and they look for the children … but then your sister comes in and says, “Maybe it was your husband who took the children, because it never happens that a child disappears from the playground!” And then you realize that really he could have done that, but you, afraid of going there yourself … with your mom, you go there with your mom, and you take away the children with the police … with the police, because you can’t go there yourself. At times the women accepted suggestions without much negotiation. For example, they immediately approved of my proposal to include a scene in which Nadzieja begins suffering from anxiety attacks, and asked the actors to incorporate it into their improvisations. But there were also instances when the women maintained a strong conviction about what a particular scene should be. For example, when I suggested that Nadzieja’s birth scene could follow the scene in which Dennis leaves with his friends, the women emphatically disagreed and asserted that at this point Nadzieja should sneak past her mother-inlaw – who was in the scene preparing a meal – and run away to the safety of her parents’ house. Developing character profiles was another part of the rehearsal process that the women enjoyed thoroughly. Ana admitted that she might have “a good sense of acting” because her suggestions regarding characterization worked well on the stage. By the end of the first week, we already had some clear characterizations established, especially for Nadzieja, Ząfira, and Dennis. While the actors had relative freedom in developing the physical, psychological, and emotional profiles of their characters, the Roma women helped them establish core traits. Usually this happened after the actors improvised new scenes during rehearsals, or showed the women scenes they had prepared in extra-rehearsal sessions. For example, the women provided Olga with feedback regarding her portrayal of Ząfira, after the actors improvised the opening scene of the performance for the first time:

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ana: There’s one suggestion, Magda … when the mother [Ząfira] comes and starts acting, she [Olga] needs to be less aggressive. ewa: [to Olga] And don’t hit the chair like that … this looks terrible. ana: If she’s gentler, it’ll look better … you’re stressed out, but not so angry. By the end of week 3, the Roma women and actors began developing the blocking, choreography, and spoken text of the performance. This was the slowest aspect of the whole process, as we were initially unsure of how to proceed and what the most effective tack would be. Eventually we decided to incorporate a variety of strategies. On some occasions the women assumed the director’s hat, explaining what a particular scene should convey. The passage below shows how the women blocked the opening sequence of the performance: ana: [pointing extreme downstage right] Kało sits in front of the television. ewa: Or sits and reads his newspaper. magda: So he’s sitting in front of the television. So Gosia, you can be the father for now as Shawn’s not here. You’re sitting and eating in front of the television. What is Grandmother doing? ewa: [pointing left of centre-stage] Grandmother is in the kitchen … she’s walking around the sink, trying to prepare a meal. ana: Mother is busy making dinner. magda: So Mother and Grandmother are together … ana: … in the kitchen … together in the kitchen. magda: What is Granddaughter doing … Nadzieja? ana: She has just returned from school, and she’s doing her homework. magda: And what is her sister doing? ana: She’s cleaning … magda: … Sister is cleaning. In terms of choreography, the Roma women often offered up ideas to the rest of the group to negotiate a consensus. Randia, for example, recommended that in the fight scene between Nadzieja and her husband, Dennis should grab her by the hair and throw her to the ground. Ewa suggested the gestures Nadzieja should use when protecting herself from Dennis’ blows:

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ewa: She could have some kind of tics when she sees him approaching … not her mother-in-law, but him. She’d make a gesture to protect herself from him hitting her … because most often what we are scared of is the face … We are scared to be hit in the face … and we’re scared about our hair … so she would make gestures to protect herself. We talked about it before … she’s covering her face. The women also directed scenes by demonstrating specific movements and gestures that they wanted the actors to perform. When we were developing the wedding scene, some of the Roma women enacted the gestures and movements of a traditional Roma dance. Ana was twisting her wrists and snapping her fingers, and thrusting and shaking her chest to show the female actors how Roma women danced. She also taught Derek how a Roma man might dance. Further, the actors suggested movements and gestures to the Roma women by acting them out while the women offered their opinions. For example, when we wanted to introduce stylized choreography into the scene in which Dennis beats Nadzieja, Agnieszka and Derek tweaked their gestures and movements until the women were satisfied. The blocking, choreography, and spoken text also emerged through improvisation. While the actors improvised the scenes, the Roma women would stop them to offer suggestions: nadzieja (agnieszka): Where were you? I’ve waited two whole nights for you. I’m leaving! dennis (derek): Where’ll you go? nadzieja: Home … I’ll be happier there. dennis: Home? To those poor bums? randia: Oh yes, it’s good … very good! Nadzieja, you should now say, “And I’ll raise the child myself.” On other occasions the Roma women did not halt the improvisations but fed the actors the lines as they performed: nadzieja (agnieszka): [to Dennis] Do you think that you can bribe me because you have money, and you have a house?! ewa: [to Agnieszka] “See what you said to me … that when I get back to my mother, I’ll starve to death … but I didn’t, and I’m raising my children … you came yourself.”

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nadzieja: You said when I go to my mother’s I’d die of hunger … but look, we’re healthy, the children are healthy, and we’re managing very well! randia: [to Derek] “You know …” and you answer her like that, “You know, we were living with my parents, and maybe that is why things were not good … but now we’ll be living alone.” dennis (derek): You know we were living with my parents, and now we’ll live on our own, and we have grown children already … we’ll live better. Sometimes the Roma women joined the actors in improvising the scenes. Although they were initially reluctant to do any acting, they got their feet wet when they stepped in for Derek and Shawn – who had not yet joined rehearsals – while developing the matchmaking scene. ana: Okay, so the two of us [Ana and Ewa] will be the guests, and she [Gosia] will be the father. [Ana (Halina) and Ewa (Dennis’s father) are looking at Nadzieja.] halina (ana): So she’s available … the youngest one? z Ąfira (olga): Yes, Nadzieja is waiting for a husband. ka Ło (gosia): There’s still time. z Ąfira: Well, slowly she should be getting ready. grandmother (gra Żyna): She’s young … there’s still time. halina: Well, they get married at that age. grandmother: She still can wait. halina: We have a very nice son for her … she could take a look at him. nadzieja: Can he cook? z Ąfira: She got it into her head that her husband would be doing everything for her! halina: Well … for a man it doesn’t look good to cook food for his wife. nadzieja: Does it look good for a girl? z Ąfira: Watch how you talk! halina: It wouldn’t suit a man to cook food for you … you as a girl must learn, and if you don’t know how, he might help you. Listen, I won’t keep the cat in the bag any longer. We came here because we have business with you … we have a son … you have a daughter … give us Nadzieja, won’t you?

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z Ąfira: But we don’t know if she’s going to like him. halina: We’ll bring him in so you can take a look. z Ąfira: But she’s still very young! halina: So she’s young! [sarcastic, assured] Where’s the problem? We were young, too, when we married … yes? Finally, the Roma women improvised some scenes of the performance with the actors sitting on the sidelines. Below, the scene in which Nadzieja encountered Dennis with another woman on the street was solely improvised by the women. Ewa was playing Nadzieja, Randia Halina, and Basia Dennis. nadzieja (ewa): I saw your son with another woman on the street. halina (randia): I don’t believe you! nadzieja: I hit her! halina: Where’s my son? nadzieja: I don’t know … he’s run away somewhere. Of course he’s not going to stand and watch it when I’m hitting that woman. I once forgave him, and I won’t be sitting at home alone when he’s walking around somewhere! [Basia comes in as Dennis.] halina: What were you doing? Why are you going out with other women? You have a young woman, and I was guaranteeing you! You can’t act like that … I won’t fight with Gypsies over you! nadzieja: I won’t be with you … I won’t chase after you … and I won’t look for you at nights, and I won’t sit at home alone, do you hear?! I’m packing my things up and I’m going home! I’m going to my mom’s! dennis (basia): You can’t! [Halina walks off, while Nadzieja and Dennis are left alone to argue.] nadzieja: Do you think that you can do what you want? That you can walk back and forth … left and right … when I’m pregnant? So you think that I’ll be more tolerant now because I’m pregnant! [to Randia] You come in now, because you’ve heard that I’m pregnant. halina: So what, you’re expecting a child, and you’re walking around with other women?!

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ewa: Now Dennis keeps his head down, and I say [as Nadzieja] “I won’t be with you, and I won’t forgive you, and I am going now to my mom’s place!” [to Basia] Now I’m going to another room, and you’re following me, and I … oh, right, he was supposed to hit her. magda: How would such a fight look like? randia: You grab her by the hair and throw her down. [Basia tries to grab Ewa by the hair, but she breaks into laughter and concedes that she does not really know how to do it. Grażyna suggests that maybe the actors will act out the fight, and the women will instruct them on how the fight should look. Agnieszka and Derek come onto the stage. The women tell Agnieszka to yell that she will not stay with him.] The Roma women – except for Basia, who seemed uncomfortable with the role of actor – enjoyed the opportunity to enact the scenes. They admitted later that they were impressed by their ability to “take over the project all by [themselves] like that” and were convinced they “could become actors and directors yet!” As evident above, they preferred to relinquish their improvisations to the actors when the action required more precise choreography or became physically demanding, such as during the fight between Dennis and Nadzieja. But the improvisations enacted solely by the Roma women were invaluable to the actors and me, as they provided us with substantial chunks of the Roma women’s verbatim text, and with the opportunity to observe the women’s movements, gestures, and speech patterns, which helped to develop physical profiles of the characters. This opportunity was not available to the actors to the same extent when they improvised alongside the Roma women, because they were absorbed in their own performances. I also provided assistance in developing certain sections of the physical and spoken texts of the performance at the Roma women’s requests. When we struggled with Nadzieja’s scenes of schizophrenic delusions, Ana suggested, “Magda, why don’t we tell you what we want … write it all down, and then in the peace of your home, you can work the scene out … Then we will tell you if we like it or not.” Everybody, including the actors, concurred with Ana, as they were all concerned that we lacked the time to work everything out through improvisations. Hence, I developed the majority of the scenes involving

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Nadzieja’s delusions. However, with the women’s permission, I based these scenes on what I had previously heard, recorded, or observed during my fieldwork and interviews with them. I also drew from my encounters with other Roma. For example, the monologue I wrote for Nadzieja, in which she recalls how Dennis wanted to throw her dog out of their wedding reception because it smelled, was based on a life story related to me by a Roma woman. In the original version, the woman talked about her husband’s hatred of her dog and his desperate but unsuccessful attempts of getting rid of it. Nadzieja’s monologue in which she tells the audience about her father singing of freedom just after hooligans had broken his jaw, was based on an anecdote a Roma woman from Olsztyn had once shared with me: her uncle, who was a musician and had always sung about the bondage of the Roma over the centuries, was one day severely beaten by the police. There were also words and lines and short passages I unilaterally introduced into the spoken and physical texts of the performance, as I believed they would benefit the performance ethnographically and theatrically. For instance, in Nadzieja’s opening monologue, I took the liberty of introducing a self-reflexive moment by inserting a small passage where she tells the audience that the performance is an ethnographic theatre event: “But of course, my dear ladies and gentlemen … of course, this is merely theatre! I was created by Roma women from our town … based on their life experiences and memories. Oh, and they collaborated with a few actors … an anthropologist … [grandiosely] It is what you call ‘ethnographic theatre’!” This, I believed, would problematize any factual claims that the performance might implicitly make by merit of being an ethnographic representation. I also wrote some of the play’s transitional bridges between scenes in order to glue the text into a more theatrically cohesive whole. For example, at the end of Nadzieja’s monologue in which she tells the audience that she had witnessed a man beating a dog, I inserted the additional line, “What happened then, Papa?” This line is a bridge to the next scene in which Halina and Nadzieja’s parents discuss her kidnapping; the line also alludes to her illness, which “impaired” her memory. I always presented such insertions to the Roma women first for feedback, and then rewrote the passages until they were satisfied. As we developed the physical and spoken texts, we also designed the scenography, props, costumes, lighting, and sound. Our designs

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underwent many revisions throughout the process. For instance, our costume design was altered several times before we finally decided that Nadzieja would wear a white wedding dress and the rest of the actors would dress in black mourning clothes. Initially we considered having the actors wear everyday Roma clothing, including for the women flower-patterned, pleated skirts and aprons as well as non-traditional skirts with slits at the back. Later in the process, the women suggested that Nadzieja should wear a colourful skirt, a white shawl covering her shoulders, and a bright headscarf, while her “guests” were to be dressed in black. The final decision, on Randia’s advice, was to have Nadzieja wear a white wedding dress. Similarly, our stage design underwent several incarnations before we finally decided to use a pedestal/platform as the sole stage piece. Originally, a banquet table and several chairs were supposed to occupy the stage; closer to the performance, we wanted to have a coffin as the lone stage piece in which Nadzieja would rest at the beginning, and at which a banquet would be celebrated during the wedding feast scene. A few days before opening night, we decided to replace the coffin with the pedestal, which doubled as the banquet table. Ideas for the play’s design emerged in a variety of ways. Generally, suggestions for props came about spontaneously as we were working out the physical and/or spoken text. For example, the idea for a scarf – in the play it was both Ząfira’s costume piece and the prop she used to bind the newlyweds’ hands – was born by a fluke when the Roma women and actors improvised Nadzieja and Dennis’s wedding scene. It was then when Ana suggested that the grandmother2 should bind the bride and groom’s hands with a scarf. Costume choices were largely negotiated by all participants: magda: I also have some questions regarding costumes … so everyone will be in black except Nadzieja? ana: She’ll be in white, because she died. And they’re mourning her, so they’re dressed in black. magda: How should Nadzieja be dressed? ewa: In white. magda: In white … but what kind of dress should she wear? ana: It has to be long. magda: But simple … or some kind of flowers … how about a blouse?

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ana: She doesn’t really need to have a blouse … she can just have a shawl that would be pinned down with a brooch … it doesn’t necessarily have to be a brooch … or she can tie it around here with some kind of ribbon. [Ana demonstrates how to tie the shawl with a ribbon. The actors watch her dress Agnieszka in the shawl. Ana ties a scarf around Agnieszka’s head. The scarf is folded lengthwise and tied at the front of her head.] While we were all involved in discussing costumes, the Roma women accompanied me to many second-hand stores and markets, as it was critical for them to be directly involved in this aspect. Other designs for the play emerged from suggestions offered by the women, the actors, and me. The women really enjoyed thinking about the various designs – especially lighting – for the play, and their ideas were diverse and innovative. They recommended that we employ a subdued lighting plot to set a sombre tone for the funeral and to highlight the darkness of Nadzieja’s life, marked by strife, violence, and mental illness. For the sound design, the actors proposed that we use a recording of the popular Roma song “My Cyganie” (We Gypsies) – the same song Kało and Nadzieja sing as a duet – to be played during the wedding scene and at the very end of the performance as Nadzieja dies.

Factors that shaped the performance In one of our last rehearsals, while enjoying a piece of her favourite chocolate cake during the break, Randia remarked, “You know … it wasn’t easy to make this play … Decisions were so difficult because it wasn’t just about what we liked or didn’t like … There were so many other things we had to consider … I can’t even count them all.” Randia’s observation was very pointed. Indeed, as we were developing the physical and spoken texts in rehearsals, decisions about what to include or exclude from the play were influenced by a variety of factors such as practical and technical considerations and the past, present, and future contexts of the project. The practical/technical considerations affected numerous aspects of the project, as we had a small budget, minimal production support, and an amateur cast. Our budget limited the number of props we could

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purchase, as well as the overall stage design. For example, the Roma women initially wanted us to present the wedding as realistically as possible, with a large table covered in white linen, complete place settings, and generous quantities of real food to show audience members that the Roma “really know how to play.” Instead, to keep costs down, we had to settle for a symbolic representation of the feast, with the actors miming imagined props. Furthermore, the past, present, and future contexts of the project, in part, shaped what we included or excluded in the play’s storyline. For example, the Roma women based certain elements of the story on their own experiences. When Ana proposed that Dennis’s sister-in-law, Zosia, manipulates Nadzieja into staying with Dennis, it became apparent in the ensuing discussion that Ana’s idea was spawned by her experiences with her in-law siblings: gra Żyna: How does his sister respond to that? ana: His sister … his sister is telling her not to leave him, because she’s [Nadzieja] had enough, and she wants to leave him. She [Zosia] says, “Just wait … he might change … just wait a bit more.” She’s trying to talk her into it … well, usually those sisters try to manipulate you and order you around. When I was first married, I was fourteen years old, and those other cows in the household were eighteen … so they were trying to order me around. That Celina! There were five other girls in the house, and there were also two boys, and they were all trying to order me around. [Sarcastically] I let them order me around so much that they didn’t know which way to turn … or which way to run. I was really unusual … I was very tough … I didn’t let them do what they wanted to do with me … But a girl … such a sissy, that wouldn’t know what to do … she’d suffer and keep quiet … It’s always like that … A sister-in-law will hit me … and a husband will hit me … and a mother-in-law will yell and swear at me … and the girl will suffer then. The stories the women related during our pre-rehearsal sessions also helped fashion the plot. For the wedding scene, we decided that Polish hooligans would crash the banquet, and that police officers would blame the Roma for the affray. This hooligan scene revisited the prob-

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lems of racism in Polish society that the Roma women had discussed in pre-rehearsal sessions. Additionally, certain events in their lives contemporaneous with rehearsals influenced some of our ideas for the storyline and central images of the performance. The mental illness of Ana’s mother, which worsened throughout our project, compelled Ana to commit her to a psychiatric hospital. This in turn influenced Ana’s idea of having Nadzieja suffer from mental illness. Along the same lines, Ewa’s and Zefiryna’s dogs played a role in shaping the scope of the performance in significant ways. During the rehearsal phase, both Zefiryna and Ewa purchased puppies, which were a great source of pleasure for them. They spent considerable amounts of time during rehearsals and breaks discussing their dogs. Ewa even brought her puppy to a few rehearsals, as she worried about leaving it alone at home. It was the women’s excitement over their new dogs, I believe, that eventually led to the incorporation of Nadzieja’s canine friend into the play. Furthermore, the women’s preoccupation with their dogs in rehearsals,3 as well as the numerous references they made to their “lives as dogs”4 during interviews and life story-telling, precipitated my idea to have Nadzieja suffer from schizophrenic delusions in which she imagines that she has a canine companion and eventually believes she is a dog. The Roma women also shaped the spoken and physical texts of the performance according to how they believed a Roma should behave or respond in any given situation. For instance, as the actors were improvising the scene in which Nadzieja goes to her in-laws’ home after the wedding, Ana interjected that Nadzieja should be helping her mother-in-law prepare a meal for the family because this was “how things [were] among the Roma.” The future contexts of the project, specifically the performance’s potential audiences, were pivotal in shaping what we included in or excluded from the performance. We kept in mind both Roma and nonRoma spectators, for whom we at times made different allowances. For example, when we considered representing the violence to which the Roma were subjected on an everyday basis, the women did not want to implicate Poles directly so as not to fuel existing antagonisms. Consequently, we decided to include a scene in which Polish hooligans – criminals, rather than “law-abiding” members of Polish society – ransacked Nadzieja’s wedding banquet. Constructing public violence in this way allowed us

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to mitigate any direct responsibility the audience members might feel, while still drawing attention to the violence that the Roma must confront daily. We also took into account potential audience responses – specifically those of non-Roma audience members – when we were fleshing out the story of Nadzieja’s life. At one point, we were faced with two versions of what should happen to Nadzieja after leaving Dennis: one in which she ended up with mental illness, and another in which she faced adversity head on. The Roma women chose the former version to show audience members that Roma women’s lives were not “a piece of cake.” Potential audience responses also influenced our choices in costuming. For instance, the Roma women decided that instead of making costumes from old fabric, we should purchase new clothing, so that the actors would not appear “sloppy” onstage. The focus of the actors and the Roma women on the potential responses of spectators also informed what we included in and excluded from the performance. The Roma women, for example, asked me to expurgate the moments in Nadzieja’s birthing scene that intimated she was in labour. They worried that the portrayal of labour on the stage – a taboo subject in Roma culture – could offend Roma audiences, and “make a laughing stock” out of them. They asked me to rewrite the scene in a way that Nadzieja merely assists her dog in labour. ana: This labour should be done a bit different … she shouldn’t be showing it on herself … but maybe on the dog … but among us Roma, we don’t use such words. She can say that she is in pain to Zosia, for instance … [but] she can’t push … we can’t show that she’s pushing … Oh, Jesus, if Roma came and saw her pushing, my God, we’d be so ashamed. Again with a Roma audience in mind, the women asked Agnieszka not to perform one of her monologues while standing on the table, and Derek not to jump onto the table during the wedding dance scene. Standing on a table, forbidden by the Roma code of conduct, could offend Roma members of the audience as well as compromise their own image in the community. In a similar vein, some of the actors refused to use a real coffin – on loan from a local coffin dealer – as a stage piece in the performance, as they worried some audience members

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might find it sacrilegious and an affront to Polish values. As a solution, I suggested a pedestal upon which Nadzieja would lie at the beginning of the performance, and which would later double as a table.

Putting it all together Concurrent with rehearsals I held separate extra-rehearsal sessions with the Roma women and with the actors. Those with the women, as with the pre-rehearsal sessions, were held at Randia’s or Ana’s flats or at the fortune-telling spot. These meetings were primarily opportunities for me to touch base with the women and solicit their feedback on the rehearsal process. The extra-rehearsal sessions with the actors were held in the studio, normally immediately following our regular rehearsals or on days when we did not have rehearsals with the Roma women. In these sessions the actors and I reviewed the video recordings of previous rehearsals and selected potential spoken and physical texts to be included; we rehearsed the selected scenes and later in the process polished details of blocking, choreography, and spoken text. Finally, these sessions provided us with an opportunity to address issues and concerns that had arisen during the rehearsal process. Due to other commitments, the Roma women were unable to devote the extra time required to review and select the physical and spoken texts from our video recordings and organize them into a coherent whole. However, they asked me to select and put together the material in a way that was theatrically interesting to the audience and that would not be too lengthy or repetitive. When we presented it to them in rehearsals, they provided us with feedback on the selected material and the ways in which we portrayed it on the stage. While deciding which scenes and versions of our improvisations to incorporate, we took into account the women’s input. We would first select from the video recordings scenes that the Roma had solely developed and improvised. Our secondary choices included the improvisations of the Roma women and the actors together, and scenes improvised by the actors with the Roma women feeding them the text. We included scenes that had been improvised solely by the actors only if there were no other materials available. As well, we chose materials that we believed effectively addressed the hardships the Roma women

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faced, such as unemployment, poverty, and abuse. We also decided what to include in and exclude from the performance’s texts based on our considerations of what was theatrically appealing. Thus we did not include actions that were unnecessarily repetitive and did not, in our view, add any novel narrative or visual elements. For example, at times we had to slightly alter the progression of a scene’s action to eliminate superfluous entrances and exits. To ensure a dramatic flow of the action, we would also change the word order initially requested by the Roma women: magda: “You do nothing, but you send the children out!” … and then what? agnieszka: Maybe we should change it a bit … change the order … I think it would sound better, “You send the children out, while you … you do nothing!” magda: We’ll see what they say … should be fine … I think it flows better too. In the extra-rehearsal sessions we also came up with certain theatrical solutions that helped us accommodate ideas of the Roma women that were practically or technically difficult to realize due to budget restrictions, lack of technical support, or number of actors. For example, in order to actualize the Roma women’s request that we insert a scene in which Polish hooligans invade the wedding reception, we decided to have the scene performed in darkness, as we did not have enough actors to perform the hooligans. To accommodate the women’s suggestion that police officers enter during the scene and blame everything on the Roma, we opted to have one of the existing characters narrate this information, as it would be technically difficult and confusing to have the actors simultaneously perform the Roma characters and the police officers. After we selected and put together scenes from the video recordings, the actors performed the material to the Roma women for feedback. The women offered suggestions about the scenes we had selected and the ways in which we assembled and worked them out physically. Occasionally we put together two different versions of the text we had selected from the videos so the women could choose which version to include. This happened when we believed that both versions were equally compelling, or if there was any unresolved contention between the

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Roma women and the actors, or among the women themselves, over the ways in which the action of the performance should progress. For example, we decided to present two versions of the matchmaking scene, as no agreement had been reached between the women and the actors as to whether it should be Nadzieja or Dennis who had a father. In one version, Nadzieja had the father, and Halina visited Nadzieja’s family’s flat with Dennis’s sister Zosia to arrange the marriage. In this version Nadzieja’s father mainly led the conversation with the matchmakers. In the other version, Dennis had the father, and so Halina visited Nadzieja’s parents with her husband, and Ząfira was responsible for talking to Dennis’s parents. After we presented the two choices, the Roma women selected the former version. They believed that although it would be important for Dennis to have a father in order to show that the family’s wealth had come from two working men, it was more significant to have Nadzieja’s father present, because the man, as head of the family, should be brokering the match. Our dress rehearsal was held on 30 May. Even though it was sweltering in the studio, no one seemed put off by the heat. The actors were anxious to hear the Roma women’s final feedback, and the women were excited to see the actors perform in full dress. Randia, Ana, and Ewa were in the dressing room helping the female actors put on headscarves and apply makeup. Zefiryna and Basia were nervous about opening night. “I can’t even think what the Roma will say,” Zefiryna fretted. “What if they walk out? We’ll be a laughingstock … nobody will speak to us!” Olga admitted she was worried about how the performance would be received by her parents, friends, and the larger Roma community. “I hope we’re not whistled out … that’s all I hope for!” she half-joked. And even though the final run-through of the performance was seamless, this alleviated neither the actors’ nor the Roma women’s disquiet – a sentiment to which I was not immune. I think we all sensed that the next twenty-four hours would unfold like molasses on an incline. Tomorrow’s performance was the culmination of everything we had done together until now, and success or failure was looming thick and sticky before us.

CHAPTER

5

Reh ea r sa l s I I : The H u m a n P r oce s s

The anxieties haunting us before opening night were spectres of the power struggles that marked the rehearsal process. These struggles stemmed from our multifarious understandings of theatre and the rehearsal process, and from our disparate notions of what we might accomplish. Existing antagonisms were compounded by the fact that opening night was fast approaching, and conversely, these antagonisms eroded rehearsal etiquette, compromising working relations, and intensifying fears of the impending performance. While rehearsals were productive artistically, they were often fraught with tension, bickering, and verbal abuse, and it was unclear whether the fire or the pot of boiling water was safer. I now doubted my own understanding of collaborative ethnography, with the looming dread that with opening night the project would implode. What follows is the story of our struggles over representation, and what I made of it all.

Soap opera or art: Whose vision is this? The greatest source of friction between the Roma women and the actors was their divergent conceptions of theatre, and consequently their divergent ideas about how a play should be developed and rehearsed.

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Essentially this came down to what can be seen as a conflict between mass culture and art. The Roma women largely seemed to conceptualize theatre as a soap opera. For them, the story was paramount; writing a play was like writing a soap opera script. As a genre of popular fiction, soap opera is generally regarded as a women’s genre. It is characterized by a focus on everyday domestic life and family relationships, protracted scenes, a narrative of repetition and similarity, a predilection for talk over action, an emphasis on the melodramatic, and the use of realism and cultural verisimilitude. Time in soap opera often reflects real time. The Roma women seemed to want to make a play using these same conventions. The storyline they developed focused on Nadzieja and her family’s ordinary life: the domestic realm where female characters prepared meals, men read newspapers, and personal relationships unfolded. The spoken and physical texts they created tended to be melodramatic: Nadzieja’s physical and emotional life was portrayed through themes of domestic violence, infidelity, and jealousy, all mainstays of soap opera. The women’s preferred modes of representation were realism and cultural verisimilitude. They tried to represent the fictional world of the performance in a way that they recognized as their own, and that referred the audience to the norms, mores, and common sense of Roma social realities. For example, they asked Agnieszka not to perform her monologue standing on the table, and Derek not to jump onto the table in the wedding scene, as these acts contravened the norms of Roma life. For the same reasons, they asked me to rewrite the parts in Nadzieja’s monologue that suggested she was in labour. The women also located the play’s central actions at the table, thereby reconstructing on stage the way things were in their lives. For them, the dinner table was an integral cultural space of daily gatherings, where men discussed business as the women prepared food, where women sat to rest, eat, and talk about everyday problems and exchange gossip, and where families and friends gathered to celebrate extra-daily events such as christenings, weddings, or special holidays. The women’s preference to have the characters engage in extended discussions at the table mirrored the predilection in soap opera to talk rather than act. This commitment to realism as a mode of theatrical representation was also obvious in the women’s insistence that the actors, as in many

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soap operas, adopt psychological realism as their acting style. As in Stanislavski’s method acting, the women wanted the actors to behave on stage in an everyday manner, and to faithfully render everyday interactions and conversations. Randia once reprimanded Derek when he neglected to say good morning to Kało in their conversation over the phone. Clearly Randia expected Derek to accurately reconstruct the everyday formalities of a telephone conversation. And it wasn’t just the male actors who were criticized for this. Randia often complained that Olga portrayed Ząfira too aggressively, as Roma women did not act like that in front of men. The women’s attempt to create a theatre performance employing the conventions of soap opera alarmed the actors from the outset of the rehearsal process. They despised the soap opera aesthetic. To them it represented everything that was wrong with mass culture and women’s entertainment; both terms carry negative connotations in Polish intellectual circles. Mass culture is considered to be inferior and believed to be created by popular rather than true artists. Similarly, women’s entertainment is viewed as intellectually mediocre and apolitical fluff. Some Polish intellectuals have gone so far as to disparage women’s entertainment as emotional masturbation. Art stemming from mass culture, and women’s entertainment, are pitted against “true” or “high art,” which is often associated with men as both creators and connoisseurs. For the actors, nearly all of whom considered themselves to be intellectuals, artists, and feminists, it was important to avoid the stigma of being associated with mass culture art or women’s entertainment. Moreover, having already worked with Shawn and me on two other plays, they had grown familiar with – and many found compelling – our understanding of theatre and ethnography as a politicized practice. The “apolitical fluff” label of mass art was particularly disconcerting to them; they wanted to practise socially aware theatre. They clung to the forms and conventions of the modernist high art traditions of twentieth century Poland – traditions that were, ironically, pervasively male and often chauvinist in their representations of women – and to Illustrative Performing Technique. Many of the actors were also committed to the kind of critical ethnography in which they had engaged in the two earlier productions. Thus, they hoped to achieve through more symbolic, abstract, visual, and metaphoric forms of representa-

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tion an achronological montage. They hoped this form of theatre would defamiliarize the audience’s perceptions of reality and encourage social critique and action. While the actors often assured me that they found the rehearsal process invaluable ethnographically, it was clear that they resented and resisted art produced through mass culture. These attitudes became manifest when they ignored or openly scoffed at the Roma women’s suggestions and requests. While at times the actors only laughed to counteract their unease with the material being developed by the women, on other occasions it seemed that they vindictively tried to sabotage the Roma women’s directorial and dramaturgical choices. For example, in the scene in which Randia reprimanded Derek for not greeting Kało properly on the telephone, the actors repeated their improvisation incorporating Randia’s suggestion and then proceeded to laugh. The women ignored them until, a few minutes later, Derek made an inappropriate response while improvising a scene: dennis (derek): So how are things? ka Ło (gosia): Good … we’re sick a bit. dennis: That’s great. ewa: No, that’s wrong! How can you tell your father-in-law that it’s great that he’s sick … you’re being silly! All the actors then burst into laughter, ignoring my efforts to restore order. The Roma women seemed offended. The actors also mocked the melodrama implicit in the texts the Roma women developed by acting in a hyper-melodramatic style. They exaggerated their gestures and movements and incorporated caricatures of pathos in their voices – all clearly intended as ridicule of the actions they were being asked to perform. Both the actors and the women burst out laughing at Olga’s exaggerated gestures, but the women’s discontent was evident in their faces. While I often admonished the actors for these kinds of demeaning remarks and actions, my interventions usually had negligible effects. Many of the actors lacked the wherewithal to temper these behaviours. “It is hard not to laugh when one is blabbing the same things over and over again,” said Olga.

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“They’ll never learn!”: The Roma women take charge The actors’ overt resistance to the Roma women’s conceptions of theatre led to steadily increasing conflicts and tensions between the two groups. The women responded to the mockery and sabotage with their own form of resistance: they asserted their authority as directors of the project, set impossibly high performance standards for the actors, and then mocked, criticized, and sometimes insulted the actors when they didn’t measure up. However, I think it is important to understand the women’s responses to the actors as not just a reactionary or unvaryingly mimetic means of asserting authority; their responses were also implicated in local, global, and gender politics. This was evident in the fact that they did not set uniform standards for all of the actors. Their expectations of individual actors were shaped by factors such as gender, rehearsal history, physical appearance, relation to me, and nationality. I believe that is because the factors were inextricably linked to the diverse ends the women were pursuing, whether consciously or unconsciously. The Roma women became hyper-critical of all of the actors’ performances. Randia would often remark, “They’ll never learn!” when the actors tried to learn a Roma dance or song. However, they were especially contemptuous of Derek and Olga. In Derek’s case, no matter how hard he tried to meet the women’s expectations, they openly scorned him as incompetent, unintelligent, and clumsy. [Ana tells Derek to stand in front of Agnieszka and dance. She shows him how Roma men dance, hands hitting her knees and clapping. Derek tries to imitate her but ends up falling into Ana. Ana laughs and says, “Jesus!” She gives the other women a look I interpret as “God, he’s slow!” Zefiryna looks directly into the camera and laughs. Randia rubs her forehead in resignation. Ana leads Agnieszka in a dance around Derek. He is supposed to stand in one spot dancing, while Agnieszka circles around him. His movements are clumsy and out of rhythm … he falters, and is barely capable of clapping. Ana watches him, laughs, and cries out, “Dennis, what are you doing?!” She shows him the movement again, but he still can’t duplicate it.] ana: Look what you’re doing … look what you’re doing!

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[Ana imitates Derek, exaggerating his clumsy, mechanical movements. Everyone is now laughing at him, both the actors and the Roma women. The actors sit at the table and start clapping, as if showing Derek how to do it. Derek seems embarrassed and uncertain about what to do next. He manages a strained smile. Ana slumps as though in resignation and goes off to talk to the other women in Romany. Derek tries dancing again with Agnieszka. Her dancing seems to impress the women. Now Ewa intervenes:] ewa: Don’t jump like that! [Ewa mimics Derek, mechanically jumping up and down, her body rigid. She then demonstrates the dance, breaking down the movements into beats.] ewa: One, two, three, four. [She shows the actors how to count out the claps and steps. The actors stand in a row practising, except for Derek, who stands next to Ewa.] ewa: [to Derek] Look here, don’t walk like a stick! [Everybody laughs.] ewa: Don’t bend your legs so much! zefiryna: Maybe he has crooked legs. derek: I don’t have crooked legs! zefiryna: Oh, he doesn’t understand anything! randia: He’ll never learn! [Derek is following Ana’s steps.] ana: Don’t be so stiff! [The other actors are still standing in a line, practising the dance. The women are laughing at Derek again. Basia mocks his movements, thrusting one hand out as she dances. The Roma women openly laugh and point their fingers at him.] When we rehearsed the scene in which Dennis discusses his plans for emigrating with Kało and Ząfira, the Roma women harshly chastized Derek for asking an apparently legitimate question meant to establish continuity in the text: randia: So now Nadzieja’s family is grateful that they are going to get their tickets. Dennis asks Kało what they are going to do once they arrive in the new country; Kało answers that they will ask for asylum.

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derek: Maybe Kało is asking that, because I know what I’ll be doing there. ewa: No! [pointing a demeaning finger at her forehead] How do you know what you’re going to do there? You’ve never been there! derek: But I planned it all. ewa: No, you planned it all, but you don’t know what you’ll be doing there … You’ll go there, and they’ll take you, but you don’t know what you’ll be doing there … You’ll find it out there! The Roma women were also often hyper-critical of Olga’s efforts, albeit in less vitriolic terms. They were particularly critical of her physical and verbal characterization of Ząfira. The feedback they provided, although necessary in helping Olga develop her characterization, usually contained put-downs: ana: There’s one suggestion, Magda … when the mother comes and starts acting, she needs to be less aggressive. ewa: [to Olga] And don’t hit the chair like that … this looks terrible. ana: If she’s gentler, it’ll look better … you’re stressed out, but not so angry. [The actors play out the scene once again. All the women like it, except for Randia, who is shaking her head “no.” It appears that Randia is still questioning Olga’s portrayal of Ząfira, but she is silenced by the other women. Ewa touches Randia’s hand and says “good.” Basia holds Randia’s arm to calm her down. Ana looks at Randia knowingly. Olga, however, notices what is going on, and I sense that she is growing more and more frustrated.] Even after Olga made considerable adjustments in her portrayal of Ząfira by softening her movements and gestures, the Roma women continued to be dissatisfied with her performance for most of the rehearsal process, asking her to redo certain scenes repeatedly. Tensions mounted while we rehearsed the wedding dance scene. Although the women never verbally criticized Olga’s ability to dance, as they did with Derek, on numerous occasions they laughed and gestured disapprovingly with their heads and hands as Olga practised the steps.

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“A slave doesn’t trust his master”: Gender and race intrude To understand the Roma women’s treatment of Olga, Derek, and – at times – other actors, one needs to consider the various ends the women were trying to negotiate for themselves. While asserting their authority as directors of the project and counteracting the actors’ contempt constituted important ends in themselves, other equally significant goals seemed to be at stake. The Roma women’s antipathy toward Derek can possibly be explained in terms of gender. The women generally treated men with suspicion. They had insisted that no male actors be present during the pre-rehearsal sessions. But their trepidation went beyond a mere uneasiness of discussing their lives in front of men. They were distrustful of men, because men abused and exploited them and enjoyed a privileged position within Roma culture. “A woman is a slave to a man,” Ana confided in me. “That’s why she can’t ever trust men … A slave doesn’t trust his master.” Or, as Randia asserted, “You have to be careful with men. We Roma women know how to deal with them [so as] not to cause ourselves trouble … but we feel most comfortable among women … among ourselves … it’s then when we can really talk … Who would trust a man with that!” Derek was a man and a Gadjo, and thus the women must have doubly mistrusted him. “Never, ever trust a Gadjo, not even if he’s a father to your children,” Randia once said. Furthermore, Derek’s masculinity, I believe, stood in direct opposition to the Roma ideal of what a man should be. With his long hair, gentle demeanour, and higher-toned voice, he was antithesis to the Roma ideal of the macho man. It was Derek’s lack of robustness and confidence in his movements – as perceived by the women – that bothered them the most. “All right … like a man, with balls!” Ana yelled at Derek once when directing him. Yet it is precisely this macho ideal of masculinity that Roma and non-Roma men alike have historically espoused to assert their dominion over women. Ridiculing and humiliating a man who seemingly failed to meet society’s ideal of manhood might have been one of the few tangible and safe ways available to the Roma women of subverting – however momentarily – the power

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men wielded over them. However, the women’s maltreatment of Derek could have also been born out of homophobic sentiments. Although Derek never discussed his sexuality in rehearsals, given his appearance and the fact that he was single and childless, the women might have believed he was gay. For Derek, this must have felt like déjà vu. In the previous play we had worked on together, he had been the only male actor and had come under attack countless times from the three female actors in the company. This might have been partly a consequence of the subject matter of the play – gender inequality. The female actors may have perceived Derek as implicated by virtue of being a man in the sexist ideologies and practices they were trying to undermine through the medium of theatre. Whatever their reasons, they were ruthless to the point of cruelty in disparaging his suggestions, mocking his acting, and ostracizing him. He was denounced in turn for being too male and not male enough. His response was to “stay cool,” as he called it. I read this as a form of passive aggression. He feigned indifference, walked away from confrontations, and invested less and less energy in the play. This helped allay the attacks on him, but at the expense of his engagement in the play. The memory of this difficult experience must have been fresh in his mind as he faced similar criticism from the Roma women in Hope. While the women openly mocked and humiliated Derek, they at all times respected Shawn’s performance, although he struggled with the pronunciation of both Roma and Polish texts, and his masculinity, like Derek’s, also strayed from the Roma ideal of manliness. Despite Shawn’s long blond hair, gentle manner, and soft voice, the women unfailingly complimented him on his portrayal of Kało. Randia went so far as to say of Shawn, “He looks like a real Roma man would!” While the gestures and movements that Shawn adopted for his portrayal of Kało were indeed strong, determined, and full of machismo, when Derek eventually adopted a comparable characterization for the role of Dennis, the women’s response to him did not significantly change. Only in the final week of rehearsals, when the good of the performance became the impetus for a temporary amnesty, did the women soften their opinions of Derek. The women’s preferential treatment of Shawn needs to be considered in relation to Shawn’s nationality and his relationship to both the women and me. Shawn was a Canadian, and the Roma women held

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anything Canadian/American in high esteem. In addition, Shawn often babysat Zefiryna’s and Ewa’s children during rehearsals gratis: if not for him, they wouldn’t have been able to participate in the project. Finally, Shawn was married to me, and the Roma women’s relationships with me were entangled in a complex web of factors that contributed to my favourable position among them. I was, in their eyes, a potential gateway to the West; my project provided a source of regular income; I routinely brought bread, eggs, meat, fruit, and confectionery when I visited their households; and I was often a confidante to them. Finally, although Shawn’s appearance was also “unmanly,” in contrast to Derek he embodied heterosexuality through being a husband and father. Given these factors, the Roma women’s attitudes toward Shawn and his performance were not surprising. Conversely, Olga’s rapport with the Roma women was severely compromised by a careless remark she made in an early, pre-rehearsal meeting with the women. They never forgave her for saying that the Roma’s “own difference” was to be blamed for the discrimination they experienced in Poland. As well, Olga’s tenacious and at times malicious resistance to the women’s suggestions during rehearsals further fuelled the antipathy between them, leading the women to articulate high expectations of Olga’s performance. The women were quick to judge the actors as “looking or not looking Roma enough,” and “acting or not acting like a Roma.” These judgments shaped the standards of perfection they set for the actors. Grażyna, Agnieszka, and Shawn met with their approval; so did Gosia and Maria, for the most part. Derek did not. The focus on looking and acting Roma significantly shaped the dynamics between the Roma women and the actors. At issue here, I think, were the politics of establishing a rapport with Gadje. In other words, how could the Roma women establish a rapport with the actors without compromising their own reputations among themselves and within their community? The Roma women told me that Roma children early in life are taught by their elders to never fully befriend Gadje or reveal the Roma way of life to them.1 Yet to a certain extent this was what the women were doing in the rehearsal room. Their participation in my project was so much about betrayal – of their personal experiences, memories, and lives, as well as certain aspects of Roma cultural practices, customs, norms, and beliefs. Such a betrayal was not taken lightly among the Roma.

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The head of Tarnów’s Association of Roma once said, “There is a Roma code of conduct that forbids a Roma to tell Gadje the truth … that’s why a Roma should never tell strangers the truth.”2 And many Roma children would likely have learned about the famous twentieth century Roma poet, Papusza,3 who was expelled from her community in Poland for betraying the Roma way of life to Gadje. Perhaps, for the Roma women in my project, judging Gadje actors in terms of their ability to look and act Roma, and fashioning their relationships accordingly, was a way of circumventing the Roma code of conduct. Favouring some actors over others on the basis of their Roma-like appearances and behaviour could have been a means of asserting to other Roma that, while they had agreed to work with Gadje, they only endorsed the more “acceptable” ones.

“But Magda will be with us”: Solidarity deepens While the relationships between the Roma women and the actors were strained for most of the rehearsals, with the actors sabotaging the women’s suggestions and the women asserting their directorial authority, my own relationship with the Roma was not compromised. On the contrary, as the antagonisms between the women and the actors grew, so did the women’s expression of solidarity with me. They were clearly trying to nurture a sense of camaraderie with me. They were always cordial. When speaking to me, they used verbs declined in the second person singular, often including my name, which in the Polish language adds an even greater sense of collegiality and warmth to a conversation. In stark contrast, they never addressed the actors by their first names; instead, they at times used verbs declined in the second person singular with a paternalistic tone of voice. But most often they used the more detached third person singular form. Gesturally, the women demonstrated our chumminess by discreetly communicating to me via facial expressions and hand gestures their observations and sentiments about the actors’ performances or the current politics in the rehearsal studio. This sense of our solidarity was especially evident when a reporter from tv Gdańsk attended one of our rehearsals and proposed making a documentary about our project. Ana, for example, asked me in Romany, in front of the reporter, if they would be paid for participating. As the discussion continued, they openly referred to me as “our friend”

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in the reporter’s presence and ensured that I had no objections to their participation. Finally, they insisted that I attend the outdoor filming sessions of the documentary. reporter: We’ll also film you on the streets … so you agree, because it won’t hurt Magda’s project in any way? ewa: But Magda will be with us during those rehearsals? reporter: She’ll be here in the theatre, and when we’re doing work out in the field, she’ll be able to be there, but she can’t give you any directions. [The women agree by nodding.] reporter: As a friend, she’ll be able to be there … but you’ll be more responsible for what you’re doing … you’ll be your own team. ana: Yet we’d still prefer it if Magda were there. magda: I’ll hide behind the tree. [Ana looks at me and smiles.] ana: She speaks to us in a simple language … We understand her … and sometimes there are such Polish words that we don’t understand very well … very educated words … ewa: … and Magda would be able to explain it to us. The sense of camaraderie the women expressed toward me in rehearsals I believe can be linked to the numerous factors that framed my relationships with them. However, I also think that they genuinely trusted me – as much as a Roma can trust a Gadjo – and considered me their friend. Ewa once told me, “We Roma don’t have many friends, because we trust no one … but friends that we have we cherish … we never betray them. There are so few one can trust, even among us, because such is today’s world … a man is a wolf to a man.”

“It’s hard when you’re a Gypsy!”: Power struggles among the Roma women While my relationship with the women remained positive in spite of the tensions and antagonisms in the rehearsal studio, the interactions among the women themselves were at times strained. Conflicts surfaced along generational divides. While, according to the traditional Roma

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code of conduct, Randia should have held the strongest claims to authority due to her seniority, the women often usurped her power. At times they tried to minimize her directorial input or even excluded her entirely from the decision-making process. For example, on one occasion when Randia questioned Olga’s portrayal of Ząfira, the other women tried to censor her by gently touching her arm and exchanging looks. When she advised Olga on her acting, the younger women would impertinently cut her short and change the topic. There were numerous other occasions when the younger women reproached her. Although the younger women were also embroiled in power struggles among themselves and occasionally censored one another, most of the tensions arose between them and Randia. At times it appeared that they suppressed her suggestions in order to moderate frequent clashes with the actors. However, all of the Roma tried to varying degrees to assert their authority over the actors, so what was really going on? I believe the younger Roma women marginalized Randia’s input because they considered her old-fashioned and worried that her “out-dated” ideas would compromise the quality of the performance. After one rehearsal, friction developed over the choice of costumes. Zefiryna mocked Randia’s suggestion that the actors wear colourful skirts and aprons. “You only argue, Mom, but you just don’t understand anything … you’ve got all these old-fashioned ideas … they’d only laugh at us … ‘Look at the backward Gypsies!’ they’d say!” This power struggle really only surfaced during the rehearsal phase of the project. Prior to that, Randia held symbolic power4 by virtue of being an elder. Once rehearsals began and the stakes were higher, the younger women continued to recognize her formal authority but temporarily forgot to legitimize it in substantial means. Instead, they tried to assume the symbolic power for themselves as a group. Within the group, the women openly conferred authority and trust upon Ana. She in turn consolidated her symbolic power in several ways: she used the pronoun “we” when speaking on behalf of the Roma women in rehearsals; she confidently and enthusiastically assumed the role of co-director; she actively participated in improvisations; she asserted her authority over the actors;5 and she openly bragged about her friendship with me. These were all effective means of asserting authority within the group. However, I think Ana’s acquisition of symbolic power – and consequently the women’s “forgetting” of Randia’s authority as an elder –

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cannot be explained solely in terms of the politics of power during rehearsals. Something else must have been at stake, for why would the women endow Ana with symbolic power without reaching for it themselves? The advantages of being the boss during rehearsals could conceivably confer other benefits, such as subverting men’s power, or gaining access to the sundry benefits that might have come from forming an alliance with me. Why did the women relinquish such an opportunity without a struggle? They may not have been conscious of endowing Ana with symbolic power during rehearsals because she had already fostered her authority in their everyday lives. Ana had a reputation among the women as an effective arbitrator in family disputes. They spoke of – and I had personally witnessed – her counselling them over squabbles involving friends, spouses, siblings, or children. While they were fortune-telling, they regularly confided in her, sharing their problems and seeking her advice. Furthermore, they admired Ana’s ability to recruit potential customers for fortune-telling. Although I never witnessed Ana actually telling someone’s fortune, I often saw her stop passersby and work on piquing their interest. She was articulate and passionate, and immensely gracious when convincing pedestrians to consider the potential advantages of knowing “the secrets of the future.” In this she appeared to have the advantage over the other Roma fortune-tellers because one side of her family was non-Roma Polish. Her complexion and hair colour were fairly light, and she dressed, as she often put it, “more like a Polish woman.”6 A passerby could have easily mistaken her for a Polish woman asking for directions. Indeed, the people Ana managed to stop – although they invariably refused her offers to tell their fortunes – appeared generally less hostile to her than they were to her colleagues. Although the other women never acknowledged it, they seemed more eager to go fortune-telling if she was there. Ana’s reputation for recruiting potential customers extended further. The other Roma women saw her as “being generally good with Gadje.” This meant that she was able to cultivate positive relationships with Gadje as well as stand up to abuse and discrimination. During our pre-rehearsal meetings, she presented herself as both friend and foil to Gadje. She told us stories in which she both forged friendships with them and challenged their prejudices. Randia said, “When I go to all those offices, I get so stressed out … so worried. I know I should just

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tell them to go to the devil … but it’s hard when you’re a Gypsy, unless you’re like Ana. She’s got a strong spirit … She knows how to show them, but not everyone’s like that.” Minka once advised Elzbieta to take Ana on a trip to the social assistance office to apply for a winter heating subsidy. “Ana will manage. You won’t get anything done yourself … you’ll end up with a [nervous] attack!” Likely, then, the real source of Ana’s authority in rehearsals was her pre-existing symbolic power within the Roma community. After all, our project involved working with Gadje, and who would be a bettersuited leader in rehearsals than the Roma community’s central arbitrator and advocate?

“You’re guaranteed to get paid”: Different stakes, conflicting goals Despite the tensions during rehearsals, relations among the actors and between the actors and me remained largely amiable. We managed to keep residual tensions from two previous plays outside of the rehearsal studio for Hope, even though some antagonisms between us did arise due to the actors’ chronic disrespect for the Roma women’s work. Relations between the female actors and Derek – strained in the previous project – were now mostly amiable, aside from the few instances when the actors joined the Roma women in ridiculing him. Generally, however, the actors supported and respected one another’s work. I believe they were banding together to thwart the Roma women’s directorial and dramaturgical suggestions. In this unmistakable politics of us-versus-them, any internal discord among the actors, or between the actors and me, would have not been in the actors’ interests. There was more behind the conflicts that arose during rehearsals than just our ideas about theatre. Each of us – the actors, the Roma women, and me – had different goals and therefore different stakes in the project. Accordingly, the rehearsal process took on different meanings for the different players. The Roma women saw the rehearsals as an opportunity to earn extra income. “I’d rather come here and make some money than stand out there fortune-telling in the cold,” admitted Randia. “It’s warm here, and you’re guaranteed to get paid.” But the rehearsals held other, less obvious meanings too. Ana joked, “I get a break from those Lucifers

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of mine, and him [her husband]. We also have fun here and get to see others that I would not have seen so often … and of course, it’s some help financially.” Rehearsals provided a refuge from real-life problems. Once Ana arrived distraught because both her mother and sister were very ill. When I offered that she could go home, Ana insisted on staying at the rehearsal, because at home she would only sit and fret. Furthermore, the women said that the project was a means of telling the larger public about their lives and perhaps generating some help from the community, although not all the women concurred with this. Finally, the rehearsal process was very much about the celebration and sharing of their culture with the Gadjo actors. When they were interviewed by a local television station, the women told the reporter that they enjoyed the rehearsal process because they took pleasure in teaching the young Polish actors about Roma culture and customs. For the actors, the rehearsal process was a form of professional development, an opportunity to work on another ethnographic project, and a source of enjoyment, as they were passionate about doing theatre. It was also a means for them to “get to know another culture,” which was particularly important for those who planned to study art and culture after graduating from the lyceum. I, of course, had my own stakes in the rehearsals. To me, they were primarily part of a larger research process designed to provide me with the material I needed to write my dissertation. Of course, I was also in it for the joy of doing theatre, but earning a doctorate was what had brought me here, and I couldn’t afford to lose sight of that goal. Similarly, the performance we were collectively working toward had diverse meanings for the Roma women, the actors, and me. The women wanted the performance to teach Gadje that Roma people deserved to live at peace in their country of birth, and to expose Poles to hardships the Roma faced. Some of the women hoped the performance would alter the ways Gadje perceived the Roma. It was also an opportunity for the women to share their culture and customs with Gadje. “We could have a large table set up, covered with a white table cloth, and lots of food on it, so they see that the Roma really know how to play!” suggested Ana during one rehearsal. When the tv reporter asked the women about Hope’s central message, they answered that it was all about their culture and life, and that all people, regardless of their skin colour or nationality, should be considered equal. For the actors, the performance was an opportunity to gain public

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exposure, which would help in their professional development. Furthermore, they wanted the performance to pass on a strong anti-racist message: “We have to be careful about how we say things … how we represent them [the Roma],” said Grażyna. “We want the performance to speak against racism and not to perpetuate the stereotypes of Roma.” For me, the performance was both a component of the research process and an ethnographic-artistic representation with a political agenda. I hoped that it would engage the women, the actors, and the audience members in a critique of the social realities that encouraged acts of violence against the Roma women and the Roma in general. I also hoped it would expose and destabilize the unequal power relations that defined the relationships among us. Amidst all of the conflicting and lofty goals, it would be easy to overlook a more mundane meaning that working on Hope held for the players – the opportunity to have fun. But even here our disparate understandings of what “having fun” meant often clashed, further heightening antagonisms. For the Roma women, having fun in rehearsals appeared to include socializing with other women, talking about their everyday problems, sharing the latest gossip, joking, and laughing. The actors also enjoyed socializing, laughing, and joking, but they restricted these indulgences mainly to breaks. During actual rehearsal time, fun for the actors entailed doing “serious work.” To me, having fun in rehearsals also meant doing serious work, because this was, after all, my research, and because doing theatre has always been for me a time for focused and committed work. These differences sometimes surfaced in unexpected ways. One day Ewa and Randia brought their dogs to rehearsal. The dogs ran loose around the studio, endlessly barking, forcing us to delay our runthrough of the performance. The actors and I grew increasingly frustrated, worried about the loss of time. The Roma women, on the other hand, were fully engrossed in their dogs’ play, and it was extremely difficult to draw them back into the rehearsal. After the rehearsal ended and the women had left, the actors noticed that one of the dogs had urinated on Gosia’s rucksack and clothes. They were outraged and complained that the Roma women lacked respect for their work and refused to take the rehearsal process seriously. Though the women never brought the dogs to rehearsal again, the incident soured relations significantly.

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Disparate notions of fun, I suspect, also coloured our disputes about the very nature of the play we were collectively making. The Roma women wanted the performance to be a celebration of their culture, replete with a traditionally extravagant Roma wedding feast and passionate Roma music and dancing.7 The actors and I resisted this idea, for different reasons. The actors were interested in representing the Roma in an exotic light, to a certain degree, as a way of satisfying a non-Roma audience’s perception of the Roma as the curious “other.” However, they objected to the women’s scrupulously realistic celebration of their culture, finding it theatrically uninteresting and politically denuded. For my part, I was uneasy about exotic representations of Roma culture. I did not want Hope to perpetuate stereotypes of the Roma as the mysterious and pristine “other.” These stereotypes are still prevalent in contemporary Polish and western popular and academic discourses. I did not want exotic images of “Roma life” to mask the unequal relations of power that defined Roma and Gadje interactions in presentday Poland, as well as our own relations in the rehearsal studio. Hence, for me, the women’s understanding of the performance as a celebration of their culture lacked a politics of culture and power, which seemed to me to be essential in a country where, to borrow Sherene Razack’s words, “minorities are invited to keep their culture but enjoy no greater access to power and resources” (1994, 898). One day I suggested that we try incorporating Brecht’s idea of suspending the play’s illusion as a means to expose the power dynamics between us and to reveal that the performance was a constructed event, not a true rendering of Roma life. I offered that we might have the actors step out of character and provide commentary on the performance’s action, or show the audience how choices about what would be included in the performance had been negotiated and implemented. The Roma women dismissed the idea out of hand. They argued this would only “confuse the audience,” “compromise the beauty of the performance,” and make “people think that either the actors don’t know how to act, or that the Roma are ‘not all there [mentally].’” The actors in turn rejected the women’s inflexibility and argued that “politically, nothing will ever change for the Roma if all they show to the audience is how many hens they can eat at a wedding table.” Once again, tensions were heightened.

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Eventually I talked the Roma women out of making the wedding feast a significant part of the performance. I argued, with the actors’ support, that while the wedding was an important aspect of the play, we should foreground the arduous rather than the celebratory moments in the characters’ lives if we wanted the performance to bear a political message. The women accepted my argument, but in some ways it was a hollow victory. I believe it had a detrimental effect on the relationship between them and the actors and was, in part, responsible for the unattainable standards of perfection the women demanded of the actors while working out the wedding scene. The conflict over our disparate conceptualizations and goals exposed, for me, the risks inherent in collaborative and critical ethnographies that take up the project of social critique and action. Ethnographers try to protect and advance the rights of research participants, but in retrospect I see that I neglected to consider sufficiently what such rights meant from my research participants’ points of view. I paternalistically assumed that I knew what was best for them and ignored their own expressed needs, however contradictory and shifting. While the Roma women’s conception of the performance as a celebration of their culture was certainly problematic,8 I recognize now that it was unfair to dismiss their representation of Roma culture merely as their identification with the hegemonic ideologies and practices that perpetuated their oppression. In fact, their vision of the performance as a celebration of their culture might have been more “messy” and contradictory than I imagined. It might have been simultaneously hegemonic and counter-hegemonic, perpetuating some of the more innocuous Roma stereotypes (mysterious, pristine, musical) while at the same time destabilizing negative Roma stereotypes, such as lazy or dirty. As well, the women’s desire to make the performance a celebration of their culture may have been a concrete political move, a way of asserting their right to celebrate their ways of life, after over five decades of being denied that right altogether under the socialist state’s racist agenda to homogenize all Polish citizens as workers of the state. Finally, what I neglected to take into account – sadly, given the project’s commitment to sensuous and engaged scholarship – was that the women’s celebration of their culture through traditional Roma dance could have been about the joy of dancing, a more embodied, sensuous, and not easily rationalizable experience.

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Ironically, while my project sought to facilitate a ground for the Roma women to articulate their claims for justice, by persuading them to foreground the arduous and to background the celebratory, I actually denied their right to speak for themselves. In other words, I invited them to the discussion table but would not allow what they had to say to jeopardize my own rhetoric. For all my postcolonial concerns about the rights of “the other,” I betrayed myself as a western bourgeois liberal.

“We have to find some kind of balance”: My Faustian contract The power struggles that simmered below the surface during rehearsals eroded mutual respect, but the antagonisms between the actors and the Roma women were rarely verbalized openly. Gestures, laughter, jibes, and other forms of antipathy were the usual means of expression. On both sides, true feelings were only overtly verbalized when one group or the other was alone with me during our extra-rehearsal sessions. These sessions became an important forum to let off steam out of earshot of the other group. At the same time, the sessions exposed the precariousness of my position, as both sides tried to sway me into supporting their goals and helping them derail the other group’s work. I found myself implicated in what British ethnographer Peter Loizos (1994) has identified as the anthropologist’s “Faustian contract.” Faust was a recurring archetype in northern European literature, best remembered in Christopher Marlowe’s seventeenth-century play The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s nineteenth-century play Faust. Faust signed a contract in which he commended his soul to the devil to attain absolute power and knowledge. Loizos saw in the story of Faust a metaphor for the dilemma of the anthropologist who, bound to his/her informants by an unspoken contract of reciprocity, is expected to compensate them for participating in the study, for their hospitality and their companionship. This describes my situation perfectly. From the start of the project, I had undertaken an unspoken Faustian contract with both the Roma women and the actors. The bridles of this contract required that I was

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to be both the women’s and the actors’ friend and advocate in negotiating the differences and conflicts between them in return for their participation in the study. As the antagonisms deepened, and their conflicting goals became more evident and divisive, the contract also called for my complicity in the actors’ and the Roma women’s efforts at sabotaging one another’s work. And as laid out in the small print, I was to be the executor of their ideas. So I found myself in Faust’s shoes – trying to enjoy the benefits of the unspoken “contract” while not giving away too much of my soul to either side. This balancing act required constant vigilance on my part, never more so than in our extra-rehearsal sessions. For the Roma women, these sessions became a place to further assert their authority as directors and dramaturges. They made it clear that they expected me to be their advocate and friend when mediating conflicts in rehearsals. “When we sometimes disagree, Magda, you’ve got to keep our side, won’t you … because you know what we want and you’re our friend,” Randia reminded me. The challenges of fulfilling such expectations are not difficult to imagine. While I was always deeply committed to the Roma women and their interests, taking sides in the rehearsal studio was obviously problematic. Although I tried remaining neutral as much as possible to provide both groups a space to negotiate their differences, the Roma women did not always see this as a fair deal. During our extra-rehearsal sessions, the women chided me for “siding with the actors,” and for not asserting myself as the leader of the project. For them there could be no neutrality: I was either with them or against them. They perceived my attempts at neutrality in rehearsals as a sign that I was really standing with the actors. Meanwhile, the actors were putting similar demands upon me during our separate extra-rehearsal sessions. They expected me to rally behind them in their conflicts with the Roma women in rehearsals. They appealed to my “Polishness” and my credentials as a theatre director: “You, surely, must know where we’re coming from,” Olga said. “You’re a Pole, after all, and a director!” Like the Roma women, the actors tried to convince me to assert my authority as director of the project in order to shape the performance according to their vision of theatre. A few of them took me aside and insisted that I “wake up and acknowledge [my] responsibilities as director [because] if we leave the

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performance entirely to the Roma women, the audience will leave bored to death.” The expectation that I would take charge of rehearsals may have in part stemmed from my existing relationship with the actors. I was their teacher at the Cultural Centre, and they no doubt perceived me as the “expert.” We were still enmeshed, perhaps subconsciously on their part, in roles that are the norm in Polish schools: teacher as expert and students as passive recipients of knowledge. The actors and I had just finished working on another play that the Cultural Centre had entered in a national theatre competition, and the stakes had been high for all concerned. The experience had to some degree forged our roles: under pressure to win, I had acquiesced to the students’ wish that I assume a more directorial role than I had wanted as an anthropologist. Now, in preparing for Hope, the actors once again wanted me to don my director’s hat. Perhaps sensing resistance, this time they took a subtler approach. They didn’t expect me to assert my directorial authority in a heavy-handed manner. They probably recognized that this might add to existing frictions between them and the Roma women, which in turn could result in the dissolution of the project. They were also likely aware that this was something to which I would never agree. Furthermore, I believe they did not feel it was right to compromise the ethnographic and collaborative nature of the project, as on numerous occasions they had expressed their enthusiasm for ethnographic theatre and for finding ways to maximize the Roma women’s input in the project, and they had spoken of their concern for the Roma women’s plight. Instead, the actors insinuated that I should table certain theatrical solutions and implement them through gentle persuasion and consent. In an effort to convince me to submit, they disparaged the ways in which the Roma women took the lead in rehearsals and the directorial decisions the women made. They argued that the women’s autocratic manner was inhibiting their creativity and productivity in the studio. Attempting to win me over, the actors tried to camouflage their coercion with sentiments of compromise. They suggested that “we” should try to achieve “some kind of agreement” with the Roma women that would satisfy both sides. The suggestion was couched in egalitarian terms; it insinuated the validity of both groups’ needs.

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However, the agreement that the actors were proposing rested on the assumption that their vision of theatre was more theatrically valid than the Roma women’s. gra Żyna: At the beginning … it looked like there was interesting material, anthropologically, but I always thought that it was great material for a documentary … I wasn’t sure how we could do a play out of this. I think that it is one thing to show their life as monotonous, and another thing to bore the audience to death, because you can do that too! I think that we have to be aware of when we are choosing materials for the play … we have to consider how to represent it in a way that it neither offends the women … nor that we don’t find it boring or against our expectations. magda: Do you think that such a balance is possible? derek: I think that, yes … we’ll be choosing it that way. agnieszka: I think such a compromise is possible, because they were interested in the more theatrical modes of expression we were showing them … I think that they can’t think and create theatrically … I think that they are creating things the way they see them … it is our role to show them how things could be done. For the actors, compromise entailed showing the women “how things could be done” because they couldn’t “think and create theatrically.” Clearly, it was the women’s – not the actors’– compromise being called for here. My responses to the actors’ attempts at coercion were by no means straightforward. I found myself perpetually wondering what to do so as not to compromise my relationship with either group. On the one hand, I wanted to ensure that the process allowed the women to construct and represent their knowledge in ways meaningful and important to them. On the other hand, I was cognisant of the insidious power struggles unfolding in rehearsals, of which both the Roma women and the actors were victims. While I was troubled by the actors’ incessant derision of the women’s artistic sensibilities, I was likewise disturbed by the women’s derogation of the actors for failing to meet their – at times – unattainable standards of perfection. Ultimately I wanted to head off any escalation of conflict that might lead to the collapse of the entire undertaking. Finally, I have to admit that the artist in me, committed for so many years to physical and

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experimental theatre, was partial to the actors’ aesthetic concerns, no matter how hard the anthropologist in me tried to quell such tendencies. These two sides were involved in an ongoing struggle, a struggle that was neither won nor lost. I usually tried to honour my Faustian contract in ways cognisant of both the actors’ and the Roma women’s interests, but there were times when I clearly took sides. magda: I think that we can maybe compromise, and that we can’t represent something on stage that the women don’t want us to show … like when the women were saying that it would humiliate them in front of other Roma if you were jumping on the table. But on the other hand, we also need to make sure that the play is interesting for the audience, so I think we have to find some kind of balance here … even if we think that we would have done some things differently. How do you feel about this, Derek? You haven’t said much so far … I feel like this could be most difficult for you, because they seem to be criticizing you so much … can you handle it? derek: Well, no, but what I’m interested in is whether we’re doing it for them, or if we’re doing it for the audience that’ll be coming here and watching it. Because if we are not doing that for the audience, then it’ll be … magda: … We’re making it with them [the Roma women] … so it’ll be both for them and for the audience … and for us … It is a project that is being created together. There are almost always problems in such collaborative works, because what you are seeing and what I’m seeing are two different things … and what they are seeing is different … And what the audience will be expecting – that’s also something different … so all those aspects we have to somehow come to agreement over. Here I was trying to reconcile the Roma women’s commitment to cultural verisimilitude with the actors’ concern for creating a piece of theatre “interesting to the audience.” Of course, what this excerpt also makes apparent is that both the actors and I assumed that what the Roma women wanted would not be of interest to the audience. While the actors’ aesthetic assumptions were valid, given the popularity of avant-garde theatre in Poland, the Roma women’s vision of theatre might have been equally appealing, given the popularity of soap operas and

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television serials. Thus, it was clearly a particular audience, one that could either validate or negate our reputation as theatre artists in the community, about which we were most concerned. There were also times, however, when I complied with the actors’ suggestions to peddle our vision of the theatre to the Roma women. One of these moments came during our extra-rehearsal sessions. magda: I think that there’s always that dilemma of how to merge together art and anthropology … How do you create a work of art with people who don’t really think about art the same way as we do … and how to make their vision – which, according to our notions of art, really has nothing to do with art – into an artistic event? So how do we merge together anthropology and theatre … how to do a performance that is theatrically interesting but is also in agreement with what the women want to say? And it is also interesting to keep in mind how our interests in this performance are different from the women’s interests … and it will be really interesting how we arrive at that final vision. I think that maybe on Wednesday we can start talking to the women about expressive realism, and the possible stylization of the play. About halfway through the rehearsal process, this was in fact what transpired. The actors and I introduced my Illustrative Performing Technique to the Roma women by demonstrating its effect on particular scenes, such as the one in which Dennis beats Nadzieja. Although the women appreciated the impact this stylization had on the scenes and agreed to incorporate it, the fact remains that we imposed this technique upon the play. Our idea of theatre would have likely never been realized in this performance had we not introduced it to the women. And although this stylization was not introduced against their wishes, it is difficult to speak here of an agreement reached on equal grounds. It was unlikely that the women would have refused the suggestion, given that I, with my authority as a theatre director and ethnographer, had sanctioned it. That is not to say that I supported the actors’ agenda all of the time. There were occasions when I openly defended the Roma women’s interests. I took this position when I foresaw that the actors’ requests would compromise the collaborative spirit of the project. I also took this position when I believed that the actors might jeopardize the Roma

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women’s position within their own community. For example, they strongly objected to the actors’ attempts at portraying domestic violence explicitly on stage. In response, I queried the actors: magda: Why do you think this is the case? maria: I think they’re maybe not comfortable showing that their women suffer like that. olga: Or they’d say, “They’re beating themselves like that among Poles, but not among Roma.” gra Żyna: I think that they’re maybe afraid to show on stage what they experience in reality. magda: I also think that this maybe is the case because it’s the beginning of Dennis and Nadzieja’s marriage. Maybe we can ask them on Wednesday when they want to show more physical violence. If they say that they don’t want to, then we can guess why … but if they say that this is because this is the start of their marriage, then maybe there are two answers. olga: They might say that this is because it is the beginning of the marriage, but then they might still not want to do it. derek: Maybe we could act that out, and say that it looks better if she falls down to the floor. gra Żyna: No … even though we know how they’re treated … we can’t show it if they don’t want us to show it. agnieszka: Maybe we could simply ask them why they don’t want to portray that violence on stage … Is it because it didn’t happen, or is it because they don’t think that it will be appropriate to show to the audience? magda: So we can ask them … if you could remember to ask them why … and if they don’t want to … because after all, it’s a performance, and we don’t want them to bear any unpleasant consequences … Maybe they think that portraying violence like that onstage could have some serious consequences for them. We know from their stories that this violence looked much different, and that it doesn’t always end with some kind of slap on the cheek. During the extra-rehearsal sessions, the actors frequently complained about how the Roma women were treating them. I always acknowledged these concerns and tried to assuage them, but I never took the grievances to the women. I reasoned that doing so might jeop-

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ardize both my relations with the women and the women’s enthusiasm for the project. Although I did, in general terms, speak to the whole company about the importance of respecting each other’s work, my refusal to confront the women about their mistreatment of the actors had mixed results. My silence enabled me to maintain a good rapport with the women, but it also undermined the actors’ morale. That, in turn, further exacerbated the tensions and conflicts in the rehearsal studio, and consequently diminished the women’s enthusiasm for the project. Similarly, the Roma women, in our separate extra-rehearsal sessions, were brokering their own Faustian contract with me, asking for my help in implementing their ideas in rehearsals. Because they were not wholly satisfied with the other actors’ performances, they suggested that I rewrite the script in such a way that Agnieszka and Grażyna had the majority of the text and controlled the main action of the performance. As one option, they proposed that Agnieszka’s character, Nadzieja, would tell her life story, while the remaining characters would be mainly pawns in her storytelling. They also asked me to assign Agnieszka as the principal dancer and give Derek a minimal role in the wedding dance scene. Clearly, they wanted me to write many of the actors out of the play. I responded to their persuasive appeals as I responded to the actors’ requests: I tried to balance both groups’ needs. Thus, as I did not feel that it would be fair to the actors to cut out their parts – considering the time and energy they had invested in developing their characters – I had Nadzieja narrating her life story to the audience as the actors enacted certain sequences of the narrative and then entered tableaux when Nadzieja performed her monologues. This allowed me to remove or shorten the more contentious parts of the action, as well as to have the actors recede into the shadows of stasis during Nadzieja’s monologues. In order to have Nadzieja narrate her life story, I decided to structure the text as a montage, where scenes unfolded in a non-linear fashion, and commenced or ended with the actors’ tableaux. This montage effect also helped reflect the achronological nature of memory and represented the fragmenting of Nadzieja’s psyche as she encountered her schizophrenic delusions. When the actors and I presented portions of the play in this non-linear style in rehearsal, the Roma women were pleased with the action’s shifts between past and present. In the end, my decision to use montage served both the women’s agenda and the

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actors’ concerns about the theatrical appeal of the performance. Similarly, while I did not cut out Derek’s dancing completely, I stylized his movements so that they were minimal, and performed in slow motion, which to some extent permitted him to circumvent the women’s expectations of perfection. Throughout the two-month rehearsal period, in both rehearsals and extra-rehearsal sessions with one group or the other, I was continually struggling to find the centre line. I tried to balance needs that were rarely compatible. My Faustian contract with both sides put me in a precarious position. One wrong move and the entire production could collapse, and with it my carefully nurtured relations with both the actors and the Roma women. I became a juggler of power. As tricky and stressful as that role was, it allowed me to see more clearly the insidious workings of power and domination that define Roma and Gadjo interactions in present-day Poland. I saw that both the Roma women and the non-Roma actors were their own jugglers of power in a society that perpetually warned them to distrust each other. Roma and Gadjo encounters outside the Cultural Centre were marred by exploitation, discrimination, and violence – and yet they had to coexist on a daily basis. My precarious role in the production, my constant dilemma of what to do, was probably all too familiar for Roma and Gadjo throughout Poland as they attempted to work out their mutual relations. Yet for me such struggles were unexpected and disheartening. I so much wanted the production to be a success, for my own sake and for the sake of the Roma women. I invested so much time and energy in implementing my model of collaborative ethnography – and in this project in particular – that the mere thought that the production might flop was agonizing. Yet this thought never left me throughout the rehearsal process. One day, about a week before opening night, after a particularly stressful rehearsal, I stayed in the studio long after the actors and the Roma women had left. I went to my office and picked up the phone, my eyes welling up with tears. I was going to call my thesis supervisor and tell her that I could not finish the project … but then my eye fell on the rack of costumes that the Roma women had spent hours purchasing and altering. I put the receiver down. I knew I had to see it through to opening night.

CHAPTER

6

Op en i n g N ig h t

Hope was presented on 31 May and 1 June 2003 at the Cultural Center for International Co-operation in the Arts in Elbląg. Shawn and I were responsible for most of the publicity. With nominal assistance from the centre’s public relations department, we placed public announcements for the two performances in local newspapers, on the local and regional radio news, and on the centre’s website. The actors distributed posters printed up at the centre to schools and public spaces in the area. The performance was publicized as an ethnographic theatre event created in collaboration with Roma women from Elbląg, and based on their lives. Shawn and I decided to charge an admission of eight zloty for Hope in an effort to raise money for the Roma women. At the commencement of each night’s performance, I read out the “Information Letter” regarding the audience’s consent to participate in the research and have their responses recorded in field notes and on videotape. Although Shawn and I did not conduct systematic audience research for this project, based on our observations and the centre’s ticket reservation list, I can roughly approximate that the attendees of the two performances were primarily participants’ relatives, friends, and acquaintances, and a few members from the general public. No employees from the Cultural Centre attended.

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I recorded the audience’s and my responses to the performance in field notes during the opening night. I also managed to solicit some anecdotal responses of audience members immediately after and in the weeks following the two performances.

A personal glimpse My observations and thoughts about the performance are reconstructed from my field notes recorded both during the performance on opening night, 31 May 2003, and a few hours after. Observations are in standard font, reflections in italics. The performance opens with Nadzieja’s funeral. Audience members – invited guests to the funeral – enter upstage, walking past Nadzieja (Agnieszka) to their seats. Darkness befalls the theatre … only a dim amber spotlight illuminates Nadzieja’s body lying lifeless on a pedestal covered with a white iridescent shroud. The amber light warmly washes over Nadzieja’s face, and occasionally glints against the gold that adorns her ears and neck. The sombre lighting sets a tone of uncertainty, mystery … and of disquiet. Silence. Only the shuffling of the audience is discernible. I notice a faint blue light spilling out over the audience, making them appear surreal, dead, cold, and distant. Six figures are already sitting in the audience: Kało (Shawn), Ząfira (Olga), Taisa (Maria), Zosia (Gosia), Dennis (Derek), and Halina (Grażyna). The characters cradle tea lights in their hands. Nadzieja’s dead body, awash in a mournful light, looks noble, mysterious and intriguing. I carefully watch the audience … what are they thinking? As I wait for the lighting technician to cue me to close the house doors, I think about the theatre space … a black box … the audience must penetrate the semi-darkness, cross it completely before finding a comfortable seat. But their comfort will soon give way to uneasiness, as Nadzieja will speak directly to them, questioning and confronting them. There will be no fourth wall. I look at Nadzieja again. She wears a white dress … a wedding dress? In Poland, a white dress carries numerous associations: purity, virginity, youth, beginnings, marriage. Here the white dress is death’s accoutrement. Deceased young women in Poland are usually buried in white dresses to under-

Opposite top: Opening tableau of Nadzieja’s funeral. Opposite below: Nadzieja’s wedding. Above: Nadzieja’s wedding ceremony. Below: Dennis beating Nadzieja. Photos by Foto Bannach, Elbląg

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Opposite: Birthing scene. Above: Nadzieja restrained in a psychiatric ward. Photos by Foto Bannach, Elbląg

score the untimeliness of their deaths: “Your light had yet to shine brightly in this world, but now has been extinguished forevermore.”1 I grieve Nadzieja’s untimely death … I grieve the Roma women’s loss of hope for a better, more just world. Will the audience feel the same? Will they feel complicit in Nadzieja’s death? More audience members walk past me … people of different ages … there are some Roma already, not many though … Why did so few of them come? My mother and son come through the door. What will he think of the performance? Once he asked, “Mama, why are all of your plays so sad?” Some audience members are looking closely at Nadzieja’s face. Her hands are resting across her chest. Do they understand that she is dead? It should be clear. As the audience members file past Nadzieja, they stare at the characters already seated in the audience. Some audience members seem uncomfortable … most opt to sit a few seats away from the characters.

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My mom is one of them. But then I hear my son telling her that she should not worry, as they are only actors. Yes, only actors … and yet they can affect people in so many tangible ways. Perhaps therein lies the power of theatre … the ability to affect how others feel, think, and act. The technician signals for me to close the doors. I then take my seat. The lights fade to black. Silence … darkness for a few brief seconds. It feels like an eternity to me. I can hear my heart pounding … claustrophobia sets in … I want to leave. I worry about the Roma women … how they will feel about their stories being “displayed” in front of an audience. I also worry about the audience’s reactions … what will other Roma from the community think … will this performance bring any trouble to the Roma women? The theatre is close to capacity … but there are a few empty seats … why? Other shows I have done here always had full houses. Were the tickets too expensive? Maybe a play about the Roma was not interesting enough for the general public. My thoughts scatter as the amber light reappears, grows bright … Nadzieja is lying there on her pedestal. The rising light slowly melts the darkness blanketing the audience. Kało stands and says, “Let us rise, in honour of our sister. May she rest in peace, now and forever, amen.” Individually, Ząfira, Taisa, Zosia, and Dennis repeat this prayer. After Dennis is finished, the words are repeated in rounds … a cascading chorus of mourning. The characters’ faces are solemn and serious; the moment etched eternally into their skin … not sorrow, just impenetrable coldness and mystery. It is extremely hot in the theatre, yet the characters’ incantations chill the air. People in the audience strain to look up at the characters, steal a glance, look away … Someone smiles uncomfortably … another looks at a fellow audience member. These next few minutes of text should firmly establish for the audience that a funeral is being enacted, presented. Nadzieja suddenly jolts up, stiffly, head jerking towards the audience. She is assured … calm … determined … her voice strong. She greets the audience and introduces herself as a Roma woman – a character invented by Roma women from “our town,” and by actors, and an anthropologist. She reveals that the event is an ethnographic theatre performance. Nadzieja welcomes the audience members, or “guests,” to her funeral. Nadzieja’s address to her “guests” strains or breaks the illusion of the moment. For Brecht, breaking the illusion of the performance – by

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revealing “the mechanics of the backstage,” or by having actors directly address the audience – was politically driven, as he wanted to “shake the ground” beneath the spectators to engage them cerebrally rather than emotionally with the actions presented on the stage. Yet Nadzieja’s shattering of the illusion is not meant to banish the audience’s empathy; on the contrary, she wants her pain and sorrow to be palpable and real for the spectators. She looks directly into the spectators’ eyes … asserting that the performance is for them … that they are about to be implicated in what is to come. How does it make them feel? I shift in my seat as Nadzieja’s eyes connect with mine … her body moves forward … she notices my discomfort … but it shall pass as she welcomes us all: Welcome, ladies and gentlemen … Thank you for coming … Thank you so much! Wait a minute … please don’t leave! Really, there is nothing to be afraid of … you’ll lay me to rest soon enough. Relax, there’s no reason to fret, I only wanted, before I take leave, to share a few words with you … about my life … Nadzieja walks back to her pedestal, smooths out the shroud, obsessively, as if preparing a table for a special occasion. Her hands do not stop smoothing out the cloth … a little crease here, a wrinkle there. The role of the audience now becomes crystal clear … We have been invited to a feast, a celebration of Nadzieja’s life. A white shroud/tablecloth covering the pedestal-table … as I grew up in a Catholic family, the Last Supper plunges into my stream of thought … we, the audience, are Nadzieja’s Apostles … or perhaps Judases … ready to flee and betray. But Nadzieja is not permitting us to flee just yet … her eyes twinkle with anticipation, determination. More images float through my mind. The table draped in white reminds me of saint days, or feast days … Christmas, Easter, and other significant family gatherings. I feel more at ease … Nadzieja has managed to distract me. Nadzieja announces, “Let us begin!” Kało and Taisa hand their tea lights over to audience members and walk down to the stage. Taisa walks upstage, grabs a broom, and stands in tableau. Kało picks up a newspaper downstage, sits cross-legged on the floor, freezes. Nadzieja removes a book from underneath the table and begins reading it.

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There is stillness on the stage for a few brief moments, and then Kało shatters the silence as he cracks open his paper. Simultaneously, Taisa swings her broom, and Nadzieja flips a page in her book. A moment of silence. Taisa chastizes Nadzieja for not helping her with the household chores. The relationship between Nadzieja and Taisa is quickly established as Taisa attempts to wield her authority over her sister … Nadzieja resists, continues to read. I think of ten year-old Marta, Zefiryna’s daughter. Marta once wanted to buy a book about animals, but nobody had the money for it. She is not doing well at school … next fall she will be placed in a special-ed school, so “it won’t matter anymore,” as Randia always says. For whom? Randia? Marta? Her teachers? Society? Kało reprimands Nadzieja, urges her to help Taisa … Annoyed, Nadzieja throws her book and pencil down, walks over to Taisa and grabs the broom from her … angrily sweeps. Ząfira leaves her candle with an audience member. She walks over to the table, kneels down … her body and face are tired, resigned, frustrated. Kało asks, “Why are you so angry?” Yet he does not expect an answer … he already knows. I know, too. I have seen Ząfira’s face in the faces of so many Roma women I’ve worked with. She has just returned from her doctor, who prescribed her pills she cannot afford. The exchanges between Ząfira and Kało are strained … angry … but Ząfira’s anger eventually gives way to resignation once again. Her body relaxes, and collapses under the weight of her life. “God, you look like you’ve melted into the chair!” Zefiryna would sometimes exclaim after her mother, Randia, returned from a full day of fortune-telling. Yet Randia would remain silent … her body sunken into the chair with exhaustion, pain, frustration, and shame. Kało sends his daughters out fortune-telling to help pay for their mother’s medications … Ząfira protests … does not want her daughters standing for hours on the streets with little chance of making any money. She accuses Kało of exploiting the girls and of not contributing to the household’s finances. Kało remains calm and justifies his failings: trading is not very lucrative these days, as nobody is interested in buying things … and there is no employment available. Perhaps the women wanted to portray Kało as gentle to highlight the shifting dynamics of economic and gender relations within the Roma household … or maybe they did not want to offend any Roma men within the community.

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Nadzieja and Taisa return from fortune-telling. Taisa storms in, agitated … She proclaims that she will never go fortune-telling again. Nadzieja, matter of factly, offers Ząfira a handful of money and explains that someone has just insulted Taisa in the streets. Not much more is said … Nobody addresses Taisa’s frustration, because after all, what is there to say? I feel uneasy. I remember once walking with a friend from the lyceum past a group of Roma women … he looked at them and called out, “Cretins!” I said nothing … I was guilty in my silence. I look around at the audience. Ząfira decides that the money her daughters earned will pay for food, and her pension will cover the cost of her medications. But Nadzieja will not get new books for school … who could think about books when there is no bread on the table? Nadzieja’s command rings out, “Enough!” She momentarily stops the action of the play. Now she is holding the strings in her hands … Yet this is only a performance … When it’s over, what then? Who holds the strings outside of the theatre? The characters are all in tableau. Nadzieja walks over to her mother. Something has changed with her … she seems mysterious, earnest. Her stylized movements are precise and careful. She looks up at her mother, who is lifeless, with a handful of money stretched out before her. Nadzieja gently touches her mother and tells her, with such vigour in her voice (I shudder), had she been given another chance at life, she would come back as a dog … At least then she would be fed in the mornings, cuddled, and taken for walks. Why does Nadzieja yearn to be a dog? The Polish vernacular is full of references to dogs: it’s a dog’s life; things are going to the dogs; I’m feeling under the dog today; what a dog day; someone’s hanging dogs on you (someone is speaking badly of you); what, am I a dog?! (used when someone feels excluded); stop dogging me (stop harassing me); and many others. Many expressions with references to dogs are negative. Yet the Roma women idealize the lives of dogs … In reality, dogs lead less than ideal lives in Poland. Countless unwanted dogs wander the streets, starving, diseased, abused. Why does Nadzieja aspire to be a dog? I like this metaphor … its tensions … ambiguities. I look at the audience. They look pensive. This part of the performance is significant. Nadzieja begins to oscillate between reality and illusion, freedom and bondage, health and

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infirmity. Her physicality slowly morphs into that of a dog … only a trace at the moment, but then, I know what is to follow. Nadzieja looks at the audience … her voice is calm but firm … her body shifts and twists as she agonizingly recollects the day that would profoundly change the course of her life. Her speech hastens as she tells the audience about the day when some people “walked into my life … and settled there for good.” She glares at the audience, holds our unconditional attention. Halina and Zosia leave their candles behind … walk to downstage centre, backs toward the audience. Nadzieja has reluctantly invited them … but they really come on their own volition … the summons was merely obligatory … What do they want? What has happened to Nadzieja? Are the shadows of her life consuming her story? Asserting their will upon her? As Nadzieja’s descent/ascent into mental illness progresses, her control over the flow of events on the stage slowly loosens … the strings are slowly slipping from her hands. The guests, Halina and Zosia, are now seated at the table, discussing Nadzieja’s life. Halina asks Ząfira and Kało for Nadzieja’s hand in marriage to their son Dennis. Kało and Ząfira are uncertain … They are worried that Nadzieja is too young. Nadzieja interjects, “I don’t want to … My husband’s still growing up.” Someone in the audience whispers, “At such a young age … it must be horrible!” Dennis comes down from the audience and is introduced by Zosia and Halina … Dennis assures everyone that if Nadzieja is a good wife, their life together will be happy. “No!” Nadzieja cries out, timidly but convincingly. Halina and Zosia relent for the moment, and Halina suggests that they all share a friendly drink of vodka. Does the audience sense the foreboding of the moment … Do they trust Halina? Halina’s intentions are not entirely social … her voice, her body betrays her … and Zosia shifts uncomfortably. Everyone is seated at the table. Halina sends Dennis out for vodka. Nadzieja stops the action again. She has reasserted her power over the action … and will tell us her story on her own terms … Everyone enters tableau … That is exactly what Nadzieja wants … for everyone to stand stone-dead … powerless … pathetic … like marionettes … to stand helpless as they forced her to live her life. Nadzieja walks slowly over to Dennis … she struggles to recall what happened next, as she stares out at the audience … she carefully leads Dennis upstage; he

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obeys her like a dog. Nadzieja is confident … her gestures are once again assured, calm … but there is a sarcastic edge to her voice as she tries to recall the events to come. But this is all a farce … a put-on … she remembers exactly how everything should go … It’s all sleight-of-hand, to trick the characters into playing her game … but in the end, she will show her hand. Nadzieja’s little “trick” never occurred to me when we were developing the play. Nadzieja starts to speak, nonchalant, as though describing yesterday’s weather. She talks about Dennis leaving, about her and Zosia going to the store. Her tone abruptly shifts … her voice is harsh, accusing, unravelling. And her physicality … her gestures are tenser, rigid, as she talks about Dennis’s “cold hands on [her] heart” – his kidnapping of her … She is resisting her own memories now. “Mama, I don’t want to! Mama, where were you when I …?” she screams. Past and present are fused together in these two sentences. The former, an echo from her past, the latter, an entreaty to her mother, her family, the audience, the world, to confront the past and the present … And while the past shapes the present … the present also shapes the past: how we remember it … how we speak of it … how we forget it. In the next scene Nadzieja’s life is being sold over the kitchen table. Halina, Ząfira, and Kało sit talking about “trade” in the area … They suddenly notice that Nadzieja, Dennis, and Zosia have not returned yet. Halina knows why … She sits at the table uneasily … yet the audience members do not seem to suspect anything. “Mama, I don’t want to!” shouts Nadzieja. Sadness overcomes me, as I know that little can be done. Nadzieja snaps out of her reverie, takes Zosia by the hand and violently pulls her over to the table … Nadzieja is now angry … forceful … fierce. It is as though she wants to scream out, “This is what happened to me! Look, I was snatched away like this … just like this!” as she wrenches Zosia over to the table. She stands beside Zosia, waiting for her to admit to everyone what has just happened. “Dennis kidnapped Nadzieja,” Zosia reluctantly admits. A flicker of vengeance is in Nadzieja’s eyes. The play’s linear flow is shattered … we are no longer gathered at the kitchen table in Nadzieja’s house. She takes us now to another place, where only she and her little dog reside. “Once I saw a dog,” she begins. The pitiful story of a little puppy unfolds. Nadzieja witnesses

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a man brutally beating the dog. “Urrr!” yelps Nadzieja. She runs downstage … crouches … extends her hands toward the emptiness before her. She caresses her imagined friend … hugs it … consoles it. “Shhhh.” I study her empty hands … I am filled with sorrow … Her hands are also the hands of the Roma women I know, stretched out in supplication toward the future. I feel hopeless … there is so little that I can do. Then an uneasiness overcomes me … But the Roma women do not want the audience to be paralyzed by hopelessness … The audience is to feel their hopelessness but also to leave the theatre with a strong resolve to take action … to push for things to change. Then I relax … perhaps it’s just me … Nadzieja’s voice snaps me out of my daze as she calls to the dog, “Come back, girl … come back!” Nadzieja asks her father, “What happened then, Papa?” “The love of god!” Kało responds, burying his face into his hands. Halina, Ząfira, and Kało discuss what has just happened, and what is yet to come. “They ran off, so now they’ll stay together for good,” throws in Halina. She assures Kało and Ząfira that if Nadzieja is obedient to Dennis and her in-laws, she will be happy in her marriage. “They ran off …” But that’s not how it really happened. There was no mutual consent … and this is what Nadzieja emphatically asserts numerous times … She did not want to be married off. Ana was also kidnapped by her husband, then raped and forced to marry him. Dennis steps out of his tableau, approaches Nadzieja, and smiles. Taking her hand, he walks her over to the table where everyone sits in absolute stillness. Nadzieja kisses the hands of Kało, Halina, and Ząfira. Ząfira embraces her and cries. As Dennis stoops down to kiss his father-in-law’s hand, Kało pulls away … Dennis kisses his mother’s hand … Ząfira also turns her back on Dennis. I look over at the Roma women. It’s the first time I can see them clearly, as the lights are at their brightest now. Many of them are smiling … I know they like this scene. “The best part of a marriage is the wedding!” Ana once asserted. The women wanted the audience to see that the Roma can dance and celebrate despite their poverty … and that, as hopeless as their lives are, they are not to be pitied … They want compassion, understanding, and help, but not pity! But does the wedding scene read like this? Not to me. I watch Dennis and Nadzieja kiss their elders’ hands … Ząfira bind the hands of the bride and groom with her red headscarf … and finally, Nadzieja and Dennis slowly

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dance “Roma style,” as the women call it … But for me, this dance does not speak of the community’s integrity and splendour … Instead, I see the dance as a dance of injustice … a dance that subjugates women to men. Nadzieja and Dennis move gracefully around one another, but there is no passion … only the carefully choreographed movements of two people who have nothing in common. Nadzieja’s parents sit despondent, as do Halina and Zosia … perhaps they know what will follow … How could they not know … after all, “No Roma girl’s life is a river of milk and honey,” as Nelka once asserted. Before Nadzieja invites Dennis to dance “like we did that day,” she asks the audience whether they find her life compelling. “Not too boring … but not exotic enough.” She then offers: “Well, then, how about some music! Someone once said that the Gypsy culture makes our country beautiful!” She claps, signalling the technician to play a Roma song. I look back at the audience … someone laughs … others sit expressionless … some watch intently. Nadzieja slowly loses her focus … tension mounts in her body … All of a sudden she trips, yelps pitifully … The characters freeze. Nadzieja slides into her world of delusion again … not willingly … it is a world that now imposes itself upon her … She loses control … as does Ana when she is experiencing a nervous attack. “Something snaps in you and … suddenly, you’re not responsible for your own actions,” she had told me. Nadzieja stoops toward the floor … notices the dog … Alarmed by the dog’s presence, she checks its nose. “It’s better now, right? Doesn’t hurt anymore?” Nadzieja’s eyes brighten. What a contrast to the wedding scene. But Nadzieja seems content … Is she “losing control” then? She looks over at Dennis, who is standing, uncomfortable in his immobility … one leg suspended … she reproaches him for hating the dog. Really for hating her, Nadzieja … he hates her … her desire to be free … detests the stench of freedom that lingers long after “that bitch” leaves the room. Her lips tighten, fists clench … She hates him too. “Attention everyone … I would like to ask my daughter-in-law to sing something for us,” Halina calls out. Nadzieja sings the song she and Dennis danced to at their wedding … In the song, the Roma are dancing, the world swirling beneath their feet. While she sings, her body is static … lifeless … Nadzieja stares into space, above the heads of the audience.

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Suddenly, total darkness. Unfamiliar voices shout: “The Gypsies are having a party! Thieves! Take your fuckin’ party into the woods!” The blackout is extremely effective … audience members shift, whisper … I feel claustrophobic, but the dark void punctuates the poignancy of this scene. Much of the violence the Roma experience happens at night … Many of the Roma women I know fear nights … the anonymity of darkness. I look at the audience … Who are the perpetrators now? The lights return, revealing the characters in tableaux. Props are scattered across the stage … the pedestal propped on end against the wall. Ząfira sits in the middle of the stage, white tablecloth in hand, red headscarf staining the cloth. Kało is lying upon the floor downstage, arms and legs splayed … his body impossibly contorted, twisted in agony … mouth agape. Dennis stands, resting his head against the pedestal. Taisa is by the wall, a pot in her hand. Halina and Zosia are huddled together in a corner. Nadzieja is transfixed by the destruction. Silence. Nadzieja’s voice is filled with such unspeakable emptiness … She describes the aftermath … her father has a fractured skull and shattered jaw. The police doubly victimize the Roma, side with the hooligans. She straightens up … The hollowness in her voice disappears as she asks her father to sing with her about freedom. “He never stopped singing, no, he’s been singing until today about freedom,” Nadzieja reflects. They sing the same Roma song together. The song talks of freedom … I’ve heard numerous Roma songs that mention freedom … a freedom for which many of them struggle. Dennis comes up to Nadzieja, asks her to come home with him. She refuses … doesn’t want to go … doesn’t want to remember what happens next. Nadzieja proclaims that she can no longer remember anything, but Dennis pulls her back … her memory pulls her back … the shadows of her memory refuse to leave her alone. She looks ill … she is shaking, has lost control of the events she had been recounting. Protesting, she begs to be buried … to be left alone. Fleeing, she hauls the pedestal away from the wall, jumps onto it … but too late … other characters immobilize her, forcing her hands across her chest. Nadzieja is shivering … but she does not struggle … only resignation … She stares blankly while the characters discuss her “condition.” Dennis picks Nadzieja up, carries her upstage … places her down on the floor. Halina comes over and readjusts her: “Yes … you always

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sat here … never saying a word … like this … good.” Zosia and Halina curse Nadzieja’s dog, and then Halina asks, “What then, Nadzieja?” Nadzieja rises onto her knees, staring at the ground … shuffles downstage on her knees. She addresses the dog, notices it has been beaten again … its nose is cut. Nadzieja hears the dog tell her that it is pregnant, and that it never wants to return to its master. Nadzieja swears that the dog will never have to go back … that it can stay with her. Who will listen to Nadzieja … to her sorrow? Who will care? No surprise that the Roma women envy their dogs. Dennis comes back home after a long absence. Nadzieja defiantly declares she is leaving him … tells him she is pregnant. Halina intervenes and attempts to convince Nadzieja to stay with Dennis, as “the child needs a mother and father.” I look over at the Roma women. Randia smiles knowingly. I imagine it probably feels as though they are watching their own lives play out before them. The Roma women tell me that Roma men often use the children to blackmail their wives to stay with them. Nadzieja tells Halina that she has seen Dennis with another woman. “Shut your mouth!” Dennis screams, white with rage as he grabs her and throws her to the ground. Holding her by the hair, he hits her in the face three times. I hold my son close to me, covering his eyes and ears … There are parts of the play that he just shouldn’t see. I can’t imagine the pain or fear Nadzieja feels. Tears blur my eyes … I recall many of the stories the women told me with tears tumbling down their faces … I discretely look over at Randia … she is not watching the scene … Randia’s father strung her mother up by a rope until she nearly asphyxiated. I feel guilty for showing the women what they likely want to forget. Is it my place to unearth such pain? even with their consent … their full participation? Nadzieja submits … Her body goes limp, swings from side to side. I worry that scenes like this will get the Roma women into trouble … that their husbands will be affronted by such portrayals. I wish the performance was over. I steal a glimpse at my watch … still another thirty minutes … I cannot bear to look at the audience. My son reprimands me … asks me to be quiet. Dennis drops Nadzieja and leaves … Everyone freezes … Ząfira comes over to Nadzieja and assures her daughter that she is going home. Ząfira stretches her hand out toward her daughter, just as Nadzieja,

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earlier in the play, reached out for the dog. Nadzieja looks up at her mother shyly … carefully … distrusting … She picks herself up and walks on all fours over to her mother … She curls up into her mother’s arms, panting, whimpering … Ząfira rocks Nadzieja, comforts her: “You won’t go back to him, never.” The silence in the theatre is impenetrable … the air thick and oppressively hot … nobody moves. A Roma woman in the audience shakes her head … I do not recognize her … She continues shaking her head throughout the entire scene. I do not know what it means … approval? disapproval? She makes me feel uneasy. Nadzieja lies there, nearly immobile … Her eyes look up at her mother, pleading … she is panting. The Roma women sometimes talk about their “nervous attacks” in positive terms … While experiencing an attack, they are permitted to do more … to act like they want to act. Nelka claims that when she is experiencing a “nervous attack,” she is allowed to dress more like a Polish woman … and this helps her to “get things done around the city,” because she looks like everyone else. What freedom do Nadzieja’s delusions give her? Dennis and Halina walk over to Nadzieja and Ząfira … Dennis demands that Nadzieja return home … Ząfira refuses and chastizes Halina for breaking her vow given at the wedding, that Nadzieja would have a good life in marriage. Nadzieja, with a sudden change of heart, flatly announces, “Dennis promised me he’ll change … that this’ll never happen again. I’ll go.” Nadzieja’s dog didn’t return to its master. But as humans, we are engaged in a more complex tangle of social relations that limit our choices. Zefiryna once described her mother’s relationship with her father: “My mother would always return to him … he’d beat her, and she’d return … he’d beat her, and she’d return … It was like that until he died … I don’t know why … I guess she loved him … or maybe she had no choice.” Dennis announces his plans of going abroad with Nadzieja … He invites everyone to join them. Nadzieja says goodbye to her dog … she cannot take her, but feels guilty … The dog doesn’t want her to leave either … she cries … then the dog leaves … Nadzieja, overcome by sorrow, screams at the dog, “Then go … go now!” Leaving the dog behind, she abandons any hope for escape … for a better life … With Dennis she can only be his object.

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And then they all return, destitute … bitter. They try to convince themselves that “everything will be fine.” This scene has played out for most of the Roma women. They have attempted to emigrate countless times, only to return … eternally denied asylum … perpetually losing their life savings. Ana admits that since they have returned from Finland, they are still paying off their debt … and have nowhere to live. We are now in Nadzieja and Dennis’s bedroom. Dennis returns home in the middle of the night, drunk. He lies down beside her, shoves her to the side, insulting her … Nadzieja protests. Dennis grabs her by the hair and cuffs her in the face … Throwing her to the ground, he kicks her mercilessly … then storms off. Nadzieja lies motionless on the ground. The characters remain in tableau. After a few moments, Nadzieja awakens … growls … then notices the dog standing beside her … trying to console her … Nadzieja apologizes to the dog for leaving … The dog tells her it did not return to its master. “Smart dog!” Nadzieja praises. She now knows what she must do … Her body grows determined … strength returns … Nadzieja huddles with the dog, enters tableau. Halina and Dennis break the stillness. Halina tells Dennis that Nadzieja has left him … yet he insists that she cannot leave him, as they are going to have a child. Halina no longer listens to him … She knows what is to come. “Quickly, where’s the rag!” Nadzieja screams. Everyone else enters tableau. Nadzieja moves the pedestal centre stage, one end facing the audience. She straddles the pedestal … her dog goes into labour … the scene is chaotic … Nadzieja desperately works to deliver the puppies … Her movements are frantic. It is Nadzieja who is in labour … will the audience know that? We had to alter the scene upon the Roma women’s request, because as Basia asserted, “A Roma woman cannot talk about giving birth in public … it’s shameful!” Why is it inappropriate to portray a woman’s labour, but all right to represent a man brutalizing a woman? For me Nadzieja is giving birth … giving birth to her hope in freedom … a better life … as she bears down upon her death pedestal. The dog loses consciousness … Nadzieja begs it not to die … not to leave her alone … She doesn’t want to lose hope … she will hold onto it to the end … Sobbing, she cups some water in her hands, pours it over the dog’s face. In utter dejection, Nadzieja drives her fists into the puddle before her … water and tears become one.

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A powerful moment … painful … I feel Nadzieja’s desperation … I look at the Roma women … they look grave … the spectators sit petrified. I feel helpless … I know so much about the women’s lives … about their sorrows … but there is also so much that I don’t know. The puppies are born … Nadzieja collapses, remains still. We learn from Ząfira that Nadzieja has given birth to twins … she apologizes that the twins could not be with us, as they are mourning the death of their mother. This is the first time since the beginning of the performance that someone other than Nadzieja refers to her death. Nadzieja’s second death is soon approaching. Zosia and Taisa, now as the twins, ask if their mother will ever return. “Never … she’ll never return,” Kało admits. The children call for the dog to come … Maybe along with the dog their mother will return … the children comprehend what the adults cannot. Shifting backwards in time momentarily, Nadzieja calls for her children to come in for dinner … there is no response … Nadzieja panics, calls out their names again … then runs over to Kało and Ząfira, screams, “Mama, Papa … the children … the children are gone!” Dennis has kidnapped them. But things are quickly resolved when the police return the twins to Nadzieja. “Forgive us, Nadzieja,” pleads Zosia. Halina joins Zosia, “Forgive us.” Nadzieja goes blank … she walks upstage, takes the broom and pushes it mechanically along the floor … weaving in and out of the characters and around the pedestal, slowly gaining momentum. Ząfira and Taisa ask the doctor about Nadzieja’s unusual behaviour. Kało, as the doctor, wants Nadzieja to be committed for psychiatric evaluation … Zosia, now a nurse, swiftly grabs Nadzieja’s broom, stops her. Nadzieja does not fight. This might be what Nadzieja wants … Ewa admits that when she is in the hospital, having an attack, she is happy … Even if she died, “it would be fine with her.” Nadzieja is left alone in the hospital. She sits up like a dog begging for scraps … her arms hang in front of her … she is panting … Her descent is complete … or should I call it her “ascent.” Dennis comes up to her. Nadzieja instinctively cowers. “Now everything will be different … you’ll get better … you’ll see,” Dennis insists. He inches closer, reaches out to stroke her hair. Nadzieja growls viciously, throws herself onto him, burying her teeth into his stomach … tearing at him … Dennis cannot break free. The characters, now nurses and doctors, rush over to Nadzieja … tear her away

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from Dennis. Ząfira forces Nadzieja down onto the floor … Nadzieja does not resist … closes her eyes. The white shroud/tablecloth that originally covered the pedestal is bound around her like a straitjacket … she is left lying on the floor … Everybody backs away, extending their hands toward Nadzieja, entering tableau. Nadzieja opens her eyes … remains still … bound. She is content. She calls for the dog. It approaches her. She asks the dog to go to the next room and bring her some pills from the night table. She is calm, but there is earnestness in her voice. The dog brings her the pills and places them in her mouth … fetches her some water. Nadzieja swallows the pills … says goodbye to the dog … kisses it … Slowly, her body releases, her eyes open. Everyone remains in tableau. Music gently breaks the silence as the lights fall: “I close my eyes … the leaves fall … as I fall silent, silence befalls the world.” Has Nadzieja really killed herself? If the dog is only a product of her delusions, then how does she kill herself? Is her death real … or only imagined? Regardless of interpretation, I do not feel much hope for Nadzieja … but is this what the Roma women wanted? Complete darkness. Uncomfortable silence, then applause. The actors break their tableaux and leave. The applause gently swells, then washes away. I’m relieved it’s over, although I’ll have to face the Roma women, their families, audience members. What will they say? What will I say? “That was very sad, Mama!” A response.

“So we’ve made it!” On opening night, after the performance finished and the audience left the theatre, Randia came up to me. Uttering a sigh of relief, she whispered, “So we’ve made it!” I pensively nodded and hugged her. The other women also felt that the performance was a great success. Ewa and Basia even congratulated the actors. The actors were, for the most part, relieved that the show was over, but kept wondering what the audience thought about it. Ana and Randia asserted that they would let us know the following day what other Roma from the community truly felt about the play. “They’ll let us know, Magda, no worries about that! … they’ll let us know … They’re first to criticize,” Ana

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muttered beneath her breath. “Well, at least no one walked out in the middle … That’s a good sign,” pointed out Zefiryna. Strangely enough, I didn’t feel relieved after the performance was over. I was very happy with the actors’ performances, but I didn’t feel the sense of emotional release I normally experienced following an opening-night performance. I was happy that “we’d made it” – as Randia put it – but deep inside I knew that my troubles might not be over yet. Hell could still break loose if Roma audiences disliked the production. In fact, I was so horrified by this prospect that when Shawn informed me that there were some audience members outside of the theatre waiting to speak with us, my heart sank. I regretted that we weren’t able to hold formal post-performance discussions. While I originally wanted to host focus groups, the Roma women strongly objected, as they feared that close personal encounters with the public – in such politically charged contexts – might put them at risk of insults, threats, or even physical violence. Consequently, we decided that the best way to solicit opinions from audience members would be to do so on a very informal basis by approaching individuals casually – particularly friends and acquaintances – either right after or in the days following the performances. Now I regretted this decision. More formal conversations, I thought, would be potentially less confrontational. The Roma women wouldn’t even have to participate because the actors and I could have facilitated the discussions. But it was too late now. People were waiting outside, and I felt compelled to talk to them. Following both performances, the Roma women, the actors, and I talked to a significant number of audience members, predominantly friends and relatives, with a few people from the general public. Yet despite our fears of critical or hostile responses to the issues we had raised, audience members primarily talked about the performance as a theatre event. Those who did discuss the play’s content addressed the representation of Roma folklore and culture. Only a smattering of people talked about the performance in terms of racism and gender inequality as they pertained to Roma women, and in terms of the Roma as an ethnic group. The relatives of the Roma women were mainly interested in discussing the degrees to which the actors had succeeded in faithfully representing the Roma on the stage. For the most part, they praised the performances, and they were particularly impressed with Shawn’s and

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Grażyna’s characterizations. According to Ewa’s husband, Antek, Shawn’s performance was very truthful in regards to his portrayal of both Roma men’s speech patterns and physical mannerisms. Antek particularly appreciated Shawn’s performance because he recognized that Polish was not Shawn’s native tongue, and because it would be very difficult for a Canadian to perform a Roma man. In his view, Roma men had their own distinct ways of being that would be difficult for a foreign Gadjo to imitate. Randia’s son, along with his wife, commended Grażyna for her “Roma look” and physicality. Had they not known that Grażyna was non-Roma, they said, they would have thought I hired a Roma actress for the part. According to them, in addition to her Roma-like appearance, Grażyna was also very sympathetic – while acting – toward the other Roma characters on the stage. They also praised Agnieszka for her theatrically strong performance. While they felt she was not as successful as Grażyna in capturing “the Roma way of being,” she was nevertheless convincing and emotionally compelling. All the Roma to whom I spoke complimented me on my ability to facilitate this collaboration between Roma and Poles, because, they maintained, such undertakings were rare in Poland, given the antagonisms between non-Roma and Roma. Ana informed me that although her husband, Włodek, was not able to attend the performance, he wanted me to know that, as a Roma rights activist, he thought it was a very important undertaking in a city where few Roma events were supported and celebrated. The Roma women’s relatives also bemoaned the lack of support from the local Roma community, as only a few Roma, aside from them, had come to see Hope. However, the women themselves maintained that they were not surprised by such dismal attendance. “No one would really care to come out and see the play … It’s nothing to them,” explained Randia. According to the women, the other Roma in the community were either ambivalent toward the project or bitter about not participating. Yet, they pointed out, most women in the community had been invited to partake in the project but turned down the opportunity. However, the women also admitted that they did not take any extraordinary measures to invite other Roma to the show because they knew “no one would come anyway.”2 While the Roma eagerly discussed the performance as a theatre event, they avoided addressing the specific questions and problems the

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performance had raised. Randia’s son and his wife were the only ones to comment that Hope effectively portrayed the problems and struggles facing the Roma today in Poland. Many of my friends and several other audience members praised the performance for its acting and direction. They were impressed with Grażyna’s and Shawn’s “truthful” portrayals of the Roma, and with Agnieszka’s compelling physical performance and emotional commitment to her character. Moreover, they found the narrative structure of the play, in which Nadzieja was telling her life story and the characters were continuously moving in and out of tableaux, to adroitly deal with the issues of violence and mental illness. Finally, they argued that “ethnic” performances like Hope were long overdue in Poland and were important for people to see in order to learn about and understand other cultures, traditions, and customs. One friend alleged that by watching Hope, he had personally learnt a significant amount about Roma tradition, particularly in terms of marriage and kinship. Another friend said that she had previously known very little about Roma culture, and that the performance made her aware of both its uniqueness and its similarity to Polish culture in terms of its respect for the elders and celebration of the family and the mother figure. A few audience members observed that Hope was about racism, sexism, and violence in the everyday lives of the Roma. Although generally they agreed with the play’s message, they explained the oppression of Roma women in a variety of ways. Some conceptualized the disadvantaged position Roma women occupied in society in terms of the “inadequacies of their own culture.” One person argued that Roma culture was traditional, insular, and reluctant to “open itself up” to the larger Polish society and ultimately to progress. In her view, if the Roma were more willing to assimilate into Polish society, there would be less prejudice against them. She also maintained that the oppression of Roma women was the direct result of their own culture’s radical chauvinism that had little to do with Polish society at large. Another person suggested that the Roma women’s situation was tragic because they had not managed to “escape the cage of their own culture,” mainly due to their lack of education. Indeed the Roma’s lack of education was singled out by the majority as a direct cause of Roma women’s disadvantaged position in society. Two people concurred that if the Roma had been more interested in obtaining an education, both men and women would have enjoyed happier lives.

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Others noted that the difficulties that the Roma experienced in present-day Poland could not be explained in terms of racism, simply because there was no racism against the Roma in Poland. One person suggested that Hope was portraying Poles in a bad light, which he attributed to my alleged ignorance of Poland’s post-socialist reality. Someone even suggested that I had been brainwashed by the Roma to believe that Poles were to blame for the Roma’s misfortunes. Due to my ignorance of the current situation in Poland, he continued, I could be easily influenced by anyone. Had it been a Polish researcher doing this project, the Roma would not have been able to dupe them into doing a play that vilified Polish people for the advancement of the Roma. In a similar manner, someone suggested that the Roma led a good life in Poland but ungratefully spread false accusations of Poles as racist to the international community, when in fact this so-called discrimination they claimed to suffer was their own doing. In this person’s view, the fate of Roma women was so grim because the Roma held backward ideas about marriage, which kept women enslaved to men. Another sentiment, shared by at least two people, was that Hope was really about Poland’s socialist past when the disadvantaged situation of the Roma had been caused by the communist government’s – as opposed to the Polish people’s – attempts at erasing all cultural difference to create a homogenous “worker’s state.” Presently, according to these audience members, the situation of the Roma in the country was radically different, because Poland’s democratic government was now overly tolerant towards the Roma, “letting them get away with murder.” This permissiveness in turn had led to the demoralization of their culture and an increase in Roma crime rates. There were audience members, however, who conceded that they had learnt a lot about the situation of Roma women from Hope. They would leave the theatre, they maintained, pondering the unfavourable situation of Roma women, discriminated against both on the basis of race by Polish society and on the basis of gender by their own culture. They suggested I should have called the play No Exit, which – despite its blatant Sartrean reference – would poignantly describe the impossible circumstances in which Roma women lived. According to them, there was no easy way out for Roma women from their oppression, because disobeying the chauvinist rules of their own culture could get them expelled from their community and leave them as outcasts in a society that rejects them.

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The Roma women were generally happy with the audience responses. After our final performance on 1 June, they enthusiastically informed me that other Roma from the community who had seen Hope enjoyed it and thought the performance truthfully represented Roma life. On the other hand, they did not hear many non-Roma audience responses, as they opted not to talk to audience members they did not personally know. On closing night, after we briefly mingled with some audience members, the Roma women, actors, and I stayed in the theatre to drink champagne. For the first time in my career as a theatre artist, I wasn’t saddened by the closing of the show. I felt no regrets that the project was over, and I suspect the actors and Roma women didn’t either. In fact, while we were opening the champagne to celebrate our success, the tensions that had plagued us throughout the process persisted. That is not to say that we were not making efforts to banish the spectre of unease on this final night together. Both the actors and the Roma women expressed their gratitude for the opportunity to work together. The actors said the play had taught them a lot about Roma culture and customs – a culture they “lived next door to but knew so little about.” They claimed that developing the performance had been valuable to them in terms of actor training, and in gaining experience in collaborative theatre work – still relatively unique in Poland. They feared that after Shawn and I returned to Canada, they would have no opportunities to work on such projects. The Roma women shared the actors’ sentiments, and agreed that the “process was fun” and had provided them with the opportunity to introduce their culture and customs to Polish audiences. They also stressed that my departure to Canada would have a great impact on their lives, as I was “such a true friend to them.” I knew very well that what I was being told was only partially true. While the actors might have been grateful for the acting experience, and the Roma women for the chance to share their “culture” with others, I was convinced that neither the women nor the actors would miss working together. After champagne and cake, and an exchange of thank-you cards, the Roma women left. I vividly remember these final moments. Randia finished her drink and announced it was time for her to go; the other women followed suit. “So it’s over,” said Zefiryna, getting up. The women thanked everyone and left. No hugs, no prolonged goodbyes. Then the door closed after them. I remember thinking that it would be

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the last time these Roma women and actors would ever have anything to do with one another. The actors and I lingered a little longer, drinking beer and cleaning up the theatre. The awkwardness was still dense in the air. We listened to music, and some of us tried talking about the project. Others avoided the topic altogether, as if our celebration had nothing to do with the closing of the performance. However, the actors who spoke about Hope made all efforts to sound positive. Agnieszka, Maria, and Gosia repeated that they had learnt a lot about the lives of the Roma and about acting and doing collaborative theatre. They were particularly appreciative that they had learnt about the workings of racism and sexism, had come to “appreciate the Roma women more as people,” and were now more accepting of difference. For Maria, the project had inspired her to fight intolerance and racism in her own community. Agnieszka promised that in her future work as an artist, she would speak out against the oppression and suffering of underprivileged people. The actors also admitted the work had been very challenging, particularly in reconciling the participants’ disparate ideas of what theatre should be, what it should say, and to whom it should speak. The actors found it very difficult to negotiate their notion of theatre as the symbolic representation of ideas with the Roma women’s idea of theatre as a soap opera, where “nothing [was] left to the imagination.” Yet some of them said that to a certain extent they had found this meeting of disparate ideas very useful, as it taught them to value and respect the opinions of others: maria: For me … yes it was difficult, because they [the Roma women] were seeing things so differently than we did … and at times it was frustrating, because I was thinking, “What kind of theatre are we doing here?” But then I also learned that other ways of seeing, and wanting to make theatre, are also okay … and that we can learn from that too. agnieszka: The women saw things differently, sure, but in the end, they … it was harder for us to accept what they wanted, because they were very good … very accepting … it was our problem, not theirs. When I asked the actors whether they thought the performance would change anything in the lives of the Roma women, they were sceptical. Although they all agreed that it could definitely change some people’s opinions about the Roma, they thought that much more would have

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to be done before people’s beliefs, on a broader level, would alter. Agnieszka thought that, had the play been performed in more venues nationally, there might have been a more systemic impact on people’s attitudes, which in turn might have brought more positive changes for the Roma. However, she recognized that more exposure nationally could also have had negative repercussions, as there certainly would be those who would find the content of the performance offensive. Although some of the actors spoke in positive terms about Hope, I sensed that not everyone shared their sentiments. Those who remained silent likely were opting not to open a Pandora’s box. Nevertheless, what was important to me was that we had finished the project with no apparent backlash from the Roma community, and I had all the required materials to complete my dissertation. Things could have been worse. Since our first rehearsal on 16 April, I could finally safely breathe a sigh of relief. The actors left the theatre at around midnight. Shawn and I stayed a little longer to make sure that all the props and costumes were stored away. Walking home, on that balmy night in early June, we pondered whether or not we would ever again see the actors who had so profoundly framed our lives over the last several months. Within a week I talked with the Roma women about the project, and conducted informal interviews. They all seemed to have enjoyed working on the play. They said it had been an opportunity for them to attend to their immediate needs, such as earning some extra income. Further, they said it had offered them an opportunity to get away from their homes – never-ending chores, children, husbands – and have some fun in the rehearsal studio with other Roma women, an opportunity that, outside of holidays such as Easter and Christmas, rarely happened. But even at such family gatherings, Ana pointed out, they normally did not have much free time to socialize, as they were always busy preparing food and cleaning up. The women also valued working on Hope because they had been given a chance to tell young Polish people about their lives. This was an important opportunity, they argued, because Poles needed to hear about the Roma from the Roma, and not from Polish sources that often portrayed the Roma in a negative light. Their impressions about the actual performance were also very positive. They believed that we had all done a “good job,” both in terms of acting and the story we created:

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randia: It was very nice how it turned out … they [the actors] did a great job. When I was sitting there and watching it, I was thinking, that’s the way we live … that’s how Gypsy women live … and then I thought, my God, how hard it is to live like that! And to think that most of my life is already behind me. ana: The play told the whole story about … the true story about how we live. Some live better … and some live worse … but such is our Gypsy life. Ask any Gypsy and they’ll tell you. The actors did very well, especially Grażyna and Agnieszka … and Shawn. The costumes looked good. I really liked it. But when I asked the women what impact they thought the performance might have on their lives in the future, they unanimously responded “none.” They argued that even if some people, after seeing the performance, changed their opinions about the Roma and became more tolerant of them, this would not bring any significant changes to their lives, because a couple of people could not change “how everyone thinks about us and treats us.” Their opinions, however, were somewhat divided in terms of what impact they thought my book could have on their lives. Randia and Basia thought that if it was published abroad, it might bring people’s attention to the racism that the Roma in Poland endured and perhaps generate some response from the international community: randia: When you write that book, I’ll tell you, no one will read it here, because they don’t care … but maybe there in Canada people will read it and finally see what our lives are like, and maybe they’ll start talking about it … and slowly things will start changing. But we … me … I won’t live long enough to see it. basia: Magda, I don’t know, maybe your book … when people start reading it, and telling others about it … maybe someone will come to see how we live here … like dogs … all that racism against us … but if it’s going to help us, I don’t know. Ana, Zefiryna, and Ewa, on the other hand, did not believe that my book would bring about any significant changes in their lives. Ana insisted that “no one [would] read the book anyway” in Canada, and even if they did, people would not worry about some Gypsies “at the other end of the world.” Zefiryna pointed out that even if it was widely

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read, it would probably be dismissed on the grounds that “some Roma had written it” and that it was not objective enough. Ewa thought that no matter where my book was read, it would not alter the lives of the Roma in Poland: even if it managed to change a few people’s perceptions of the Roma, it would not be enough to bring about any significant changes. However, the most persistent motif in our conversations and interviews was my return to Canada. The women regretted that I was leaving them, because they had grown accustomed to my constant presence: randia: Magda, I’m so worried that when you leave, that I’ll miss you so much. You were like … like family to us. Every day you were here with us … and now you’ll be gone … as if someone died. You won’t probably feel that way, because you’ll be gone … and busy. You have to write me … or call me … you won’t forget us, will you? zefiryna: You have a good trip, but I’ll think of you, because we got so used to you here … now you’ll leave us … probably never hear from you again. ewa: Make sure you write me. I’ll miss you. If there ever was an opportunity, maybe you could bring us to Canada. It’ll feel so empty here without you … but what else can I say … we’ll miss you. And when I paid the women a final visit at their usual fortunetelling spot before my departure to Canada, Randia hugged me and whispered in my ear, “You know what, Magda, it wasn’t the show, but you, who brought hope into our lives … but now you’ll take it away.” I caught a glimpse of her hands resting on my arms: they were wrinkled and swollen from the diabetes that was slowly ravaging her body. I began to cry, not because I was leaving, but because of the poignancy of her words. What right do we have as researchers to walk into other people’s lives, and then disappear one day, as though nothing had happened? I silently asked myself. Randia broke into my thoughts, “You’re crying because you know I’m right.” I smiled awkwardly, kissed her goodbye, and left.

CONCLUSION

I n L ea v i n g

Two days later, Shawn, Amadeusz, and I flew back to Canada. We moved in with friends for a month while we looked for a place to live, dug our belongings out of storage, and set up home again. Then I got down to work, beginning the laborious task of transcribing hundreds of hours of taped interviews, reading a suitcase full of hastily scribbled field notes, and pulling it all together for my dissertation. It was a glum period. I was dealing with culture shock and homesickness; I missed my mother and my hometown – its winding streets, its old buildings, and the local market within walking distance of home. I also missed the Roma women – hanging out with them in the park by the tramline, our shopping excursions, and our dinners together. It felt as if a big chunk of my life had been lopped off. This was a feeling very familiar to me. When I emigrated from Poland twelve years before, I had felt the same overwhelming emptiness and loss. Now, going through the Roma women’s interviews, listening once again to their heart-wrenching stories, only added to my pain. Their voices and their stories stayed with me for days, hampering my ability to write. Great swathes of time passed, lost in reflection. I had mixed feelings about my research. On the one hand, I had accomplished what I had set out to do. I had produced a play with the Roma women, and everyone seemed reasonably happy with the outcome. On the other hand, it hadn’t set Poland ablaze, and the women’s lives seemed no better for

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it. I also had some serious misgivings about what I had done in the field, and indeed about my whole approach to collaborative research and performance ethnography. Looking back on the year, I saw a huge disconnect between the plans, objectives, theoretical assumptions, and methodologies I had set out with, and the realities I had encountered in the field. Everything I had believed in when I began my work was now in doubt. My experiences in the field had turned my research on its head.

Plans and objectives I had arrived in Poland expecting to work with the Romanian Roma women in Morąg. However, as I quickly learned, in politically charged contexts such as present-day Poland, research plans can crumble in ways utterly unforeseen. Roy D’Andrade warns, rightly, that doing fieldwork in the contemporary world “is like attempting to study the physics of moving bodies while living in the middle of an avalanche” (1984, 111).1 My original research field instantaneously evaporated when the Roma of Morąg were deported to Romania. This shifted the location of my research, as I was compelled to work with the Roma women in Elbląg and with my actors from the Cultural Centre. My research objectives altered too, though at the time I wasn’t conscious of this happening. It was only later, back in Canada, analyzing the research material and writing this book, that I came to realize what had happened: in the course of my fieldwork, my growing awareness of power games we were playing changed my focus from the study of external social forces responsible for violence against the Roma women in Elbląg to the study of power relations within our project’s “constructed community.” Borrowing from Tim Hallett (2003), by “constructed community” I mean an intentionally negotiated set of social relations aimed at achieving particular goals – in my case, the production of an ethnographic theatre performance. This turning inward of my focus went beyond my commitment to reflexivity – exposing my presence, personal history, theoretical assumptions, and methodologies of research – with which I had entered the field. My work had become nothing less than autoethnography, and the kind that unsettles the power relations between ethnographer and research participants by “empowering the voices of the latter,” and chal-

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lenging “the authority of the former,” and at the same time acknowledges and critically analyzes power differentials within the research process itself (Groves and Chang 1999, 238). Some of my other research plans and objectives also changed or had to be abandoned. My hope that the Roma women would act in the performance was not realized. As well, my intention to hold formal, post-performance talkback sessions never materialized, because the Roma women feared possible violent repercussions from audience members. Finally, I was unable to conduct a long-term ethnography of participant post-performance responses because my funding ran out and I had to return to Canada.

Theoretical assumptions As my research objectives unconsciously shifted during my year in the field, my theoretical assumptions were also challenged. As I was now no longer studying the hegemonic forces that supported violence against Roma women in Poland, but rather the power relations within my own ethnographic process, I was forced to take a more critical look at Gramsci’s and Foucault’s notions of power. While I found some of their arguments still relevant, others struck me as problematic. The relations of power that I observed in my fieldwork supported, in part, Gramsci’s and Foucault’s contention that power can be manipulated by everyone – even those most socially and economically disadvantaged (Foucault 1979, 92–7; 1980, 142; Gramsci 1971, 326–7, 333, 352). Indeed, all of the participants in my project, myself included, juggled power for our own benefits and ends. In this sense, as Foucault would have put it, everyone involved in the research process was, to varying degrees, implicated in power. The Roma women juggled power to negotiate various ends for themselves. This was evident in the disparate ways in which they talked about violence, depending on the context: more hopefully in informal conversations and pre-rehearsal sessions, more pessimistically during interviews and life stories/histories. The actors, in their separate prerehearsal sessions, juggled power in their efforts to control some aspects of the project; meanwhile I tried to use the same sessions to assuage the actors’ negative perceptions of the Roma women. During pre-rehearsal sessions with the Roma women, I often stood in as

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mediator, attempting to restore and maintain their trust in the project, the actors, and me. In our joint rehearsals, we were all juggling power, advancing our contending conceptions of theatre. Among themselves, the Roma women also negotiated power, through struggles over directorial authority, representation, and the conciliation of diverse ends; this resulted in the transfer of symbolic power from Randia to Ana. In these ongoing power struggles, we were all agents negotiating our actions, interactions, relationships, and ends. In reflecting on these struggles, I also found useful Gramsci’s understanding of hegemonic “truths” – accepted by society as common sense – as working through coercion, consent, and force, and Foucault’s conception of hegemonic discourses as ingrained in individuals’ actions and attitudes (Foucault 1980, 131–2; Gramsci 1971, 159–60). I saw that all of the participants in my project, me included, were implicated in an intricate Gramscian interplay of force, coercion, and consent. The Roma women forced their unattainable acting standards on the actors; the actors and I jointly persuaded the Roma women to abandon their idea of creating a performance that would solely be a celebration of their culture; and I negotiated my “Faustian contract” with the Roma women and the actors. Additionally, what was going on in rehearsals seemed to mirror certain hegemonic ideas, beliefs, and actions prevalent in Poland’s social environments2 at the time. During the separate pre-rehearsal sessions, how each group perceived the other and how we negotiated our roles and relationships seemed to be framed by many of the antagonisms and prejudices that have historically defined interactions between Roma and non-Roma in Poland. For example, the actors and I judged the Roma women’s disciplined attitudes toward punctuality, attendance, and behaviour at rehearsals as “abnormal.” This posture could have been influenced, to a certain extent, by popular stereotypes of the Roma in Poland of being unreliable, unmotivated, and unwilling to work.3 Similarly, the actors regarded the Roma women as passive victims of tradition, while seeing themselves and their parents as active agents of change – a reflection of prevalent attitudes in Europe that stigmatize the Roma as victims lacking a fighting spirit. Likewise, the actors’ tendency to generalize their negative perceptions of the women they were working with to all Roma as an ethnic and cultural group resonates with western culture’s reductionist perceptions of “the other.” Finally, the Roma women’s distrust of the project, the actors, and me could also

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be linked to the same prejudices and antagonisms that frame RomaGadje relations in contemporary Poland. While Gramsci’s structuralist and Foucault’s post-structuralist notions of power helped me to understand the power games being played, my experience in the field also challenged these same notions. For example, though everyone in my project was juggling power, it was clear that power was also a top-down affair, a property of a particular group or individual.4 This was evident in the standards of perfection the Roma women set for the actors, and in the actors’ and my refusal, despite the women’s wishes, to develop a performance that would celebrate Roma culture and customs. Perhaps the most poignant challenge to Foucault’s notion of dispersed power was the Roma women’s decision not to perform publicly for fear of violent repercussions. This challenge was also made apparent in the concrete benefits – or the lack thereof – the project provided to Shawn, the actors, the Roma women, and me. While to a certain extent what went on in the rehearsal studio seemed to reflect (in the Gramscian-Foucauldian sense) certain hegemonic ideas and beliefs prevalent in Polish society, the interactions of the participants also challenged Gramsci’s and Foucault’s notions of hegemonic “truths.” This was particularly apparent in the vast disparities of knowledge constructed at the various stages of the research process. For example, the ways in which the actors spoke about the Roma women’s lives in the separate pre-rehearsal sessions seemed to mirror the antagonisms that have historically defined Roma-Gadje interactions in Poland; at the same time, the actors said they hoped that producing a theatre performance would help fight racism against the Roma. Similarly, in the joint pre-rehearsal sessions, the actors spoke out against racism and intolerance, but their actions contradicted their sentiments. Thus, it seems to me that while people are influenced by hegemonic ideas prevalent in their social worlds, in everyday contexts they also constantly revise, redefine, and renegotiate such ideas into their own “truths,” to serve their ends and needs. The ways in which such negotiations took place in my project were shaped by the power relations, material conditions, and immediate social/political/cultural contexts of the research process itself. The actors seemed to be renegotiating hegemonic ideas into their own “truths” differently at different stages of the project. In our joint pre-rehearsal sessions, for example, they

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might have been trying to secure their relationship with the Roma women and/or me. This might have been particularly important to them in this early phase, when they were still concerned about the success of the project. According to Lindlof, the power differentials that define the relationship between ethnographer and participants during the interview process can sometimes lead to situations in which the participants strive to “induce a more committed relationship with the researcher” (1995, 177). This in turn can lead to participants embracing the researcher’s “analytical interests” and perspectives in the stories they tell during the interviews (ibid.). Seen in this light, the actors might have adopted the women’s and my perspectives on racism and intolerance in an effort to strengthen their relationships with us. Or, it might have been the group setting of our joint pre-rehearsal discussions5 that compelled them to negotiate their ideas in ways that were in line with our perspectives on racism and intolerance. Focus group interviewing, Lindlof argues, provides a forum in which participants influence one another’s points of view (174). Perhaps the group interaction of our joint pre-rehearsal sessions stimulated a negotiation of ideas through a collective solidarity in which no one was willing to express an opinion radically different from what the rest of the group might say. In contrast, the rehearsals might have been too spontaneous and fast paced to allow time for this kind of negotiation. Such an understanding of the knowledge constructed in rehearsals would, at first glance, seem to concur with Fabian’s assertion that certain kinds of knowledge about power can be “made present” only through performance (1990, 6, 86). At the start of my research, my belief – inspired by Fabian – was that people’s deeply ingrained prejudices would be most obvious during the spontaneous interactions of rehearsals. In retrospect, however, I see that those interactions unsettled Fabian’s theoretical assumption. While at first it might seem that the actors’ actions during rehearsals reflected the hegemonic ideas and practices they had spoken out against in joint pre-rehearsal sessions, at a second glance this was not always the case. For example, the knowledge constructed in the performance’s spoken and physical texts corresponded more with the knowledge created in our joint prerehearsal sessions. In informal interactions during rehearsals, the actors disparaged the Roma women’s ideas as inartistic and inferior, all the while creating scenes that critiqued racism and intolerance.

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Consequently, it is impossible to claim that the knowledge constructed in our joint pre-rehearsal sessions always put forth “truths” different from those that were constructed in rehearsals. The similarities in knowledge constructed in joint pre-rehearsal sessions and during regular rehearsals could be attributed to the more deliberate and formal nature of these activities: the actors exchanged opinions in joint pre-rehearsal sessions, and they developed scenes in rehearsals with the goal of creating a performance critiquing racism. In contrast, our informal interactions in rehearsals were more on the spur of the moment. However, this explanation does not always hold true, because scenes were often developed through spontaneous improvizations. Hence, there were no fixed, predictable sets of circumstances that consistently led to the construction of certain forms of knowledge. Different situations and circumstances created different kinds of knowledge that in retrospect were all equally valuable sources of information about the various powers at play within the research process. Furthermore, my original assumption that the construction of knowledge about violence might require more indirect, non-discursive, metaphoric, and physical means of expression was also problematized. At times, physical means of communication were a hindrance to the Roma women’s expression. Although they spoke openly about the violence in their lives during the pre-rehearsal sessions, in rehearsals they were reluctant to improvise, or have the actors improvise, violence onstage; they found it too painful or embarrassing. This is not to say that using physical means of expression produced no valuable outcomes or insights. Enacting Nadzieja’s life story by means of movements and gestures did engage us empathetically in her suffering and circumstances. Moreover, when the Roma women did agree to improvise, it seemed to leave them feeling empowered, with a more secure sense of ownership of the project. Finally, working physically and gesturally provided important insights into the relations of power we were all embroiled in. What I learned in the field is that there are no means of communication that are at all times preferable to others in the construction of knowledge about violence. Different circumstances, different research contexts, and our very presence as anthropologists in the field affect what modes of expression our research participants favour and employ to convey their experiences and conceptions of violence.

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Research methodology Power games in the field also wreaked havoc with my research methodology – both in how it was implemented in the project and in how I have since been thinking about it. Collaboration in the field was diminished by our struggles over representation, in turn a product of our conflicting conceptions of theatre and our different expectations of both the rehearsal process and the performance. The Faustian contract that framed my relationships with the Roma women also marred our collaboration. And finally, Poland’s politically charged context, which led the women to relinquish their roles as performers, short-changed the collaborative spirit of the project. On the other hand, our collaboration was at times enhanced by the improvisations enacted solely by the Roma women, which contributed to their growing sense of ownership in the project. Similarly, my intention to engage both the participants and myself concretely, tangibly, and empathetically in the construction of ethnographic knowledge was complicated. While working out the texts of the performance, we all conceded on several occasions that Nadzieja’s life and death evoked in us emotions of sorrow and anger and often hopelessness. Generally, though, I believe that our empathic involvement with the issues was diminished in the project by the power struggles in the rehearsal studio. For me, at least, emotional identification with the characters of the play was largely short-circuited by the demands of my Faustian contract. From what I observed, this might have also been the case for other participants – unless, of course, one considers bickering and insulting one another as an empathic engagement with the research material. Furthermore, my intent to problematize the ethnographic performance’s representation was also largely complicated because the participants challenged my notions of reflexivity and polyphony. I’ll address reflexivity first. The Roma women decided against employing Brechtian and Kantorian illusion-breaking techniques in any comprehensive way in the play, arguing that such techniques would compromise the quality of the performance and expose themselves and the actors to ridicule. However, I did manage to incorporate one reflexive gesture in the performance – Nadzieja’s opening monologue, when she exposed the performance as an ethnographic theatre event

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created by “the Roma women from our town … a few actors … [and] an anthropologist.” I felt this was necessary to challenge any factual claims the performance might implicitly make by merit of being an ethnographic representation. Also, I think that the metaphoric and stylized modes of representation did, to a certain extent, constitute a reflexive gesture because they exposed the performance as a constructed event. I had some success employing polyphonic devices in the production. The actors played double roles. Stylized acting was fused with psychological realism, highlighting the diversity of voices. For example, legato-staccato sequences of Nadzieja’s schizophrenic delusions contrasted with the realist representation of Nadzieja and Dennis’s wedding ceremony. As well, the characters’ speech contradicted their action: Nadzieja, for example, recalled her wedding day in a joyful tone of voice, while her body remained stiff and uneasy. On the other hand, the potential for heightened polyphony was diminished by the fact that the play presented Nadzieja’s life story mainly from the point of view of the Roma women; no alternative perspectives were incorporated.6 The characters were also largely portrayed in one-dimensional terms: Nadzieja’s family was good, Dennis’s was bad; Nadzieja was the victim, Dennis was the perpetrator. Finally, a greater degree of polyphony could have been attained if the actors and I had allowed the Roma women to celebrate their culture in the performance; doing so would have provided a vivid juxtaposition to the play’s representation and critique of violence. However, our power struggles, culminating in the actors and me vetoing the Roma women’s desires in this regard, short-circuited this possibility. My hope of blending a metaphoric means of theatrical expression with a political message was also only partially realized. This was primarily because the actors’ and my notion of visual metaphor – influenced by the modernist avant-garde theatre traditions of Grotowski, Kantor, and Szajna – was directly at odds with the Roma women’s aesthetic interests. For the women, who favoured the aesthetic conventions of soap opera, theatre carried different meanings and purposes. Clearly, this was the case because any aesthetic conceptualizations and defining practices are also “forms of power complexly linked to nationalism, commercial expansion, and gender politics” (Marcus and Myers 1995, 35). Consequently, complex negotiations, and ultimately compromise,

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shaped the final version of the production. It was a meeting between avant-garde theatre and popular soap opera. It mixed psychological realism with stylized forms of representation, non-linear with chronological progressions of action, and cultural verisimilitude with dramatic expediency. The stylized part of Hope included all the scenes of Nadzieja’s schizophrenic delusions in which she talks to and/or personifies her canine companion. Her movements were precise, careful, and composed of the legato-staccato movement strategy typical of Illustrative Performance Technique. For example, in one of Nadzieja’s first delusional scenes, in which she tells the audience about her first encounter with the dog, the staccato-legato strategy is employed to its fullest. Nadzieja’s staccato yelp and dash downstage-centre to pick up an imagined dog precede her languid, legato gestures of cradling and rocking the dog; these in turn are followed by another burst of staccato activity in which she abruptly drops the dog. The chorus scenes were also stylized. These included all the scenes in which the characters acted in unison. For example, the opening scene introduced vocal stylization as the characters – guests invited to Nadzieja’s funeral – chanted a hypnotic prayer of mourning. Later instances included the doctors and nurses acting synchronously in a psychiatric ward, and the family members doubling as hospital staff and guests at Nadzieja’s funeral at the closing of the performance. The scenes in which Dennis beats Nadzieja were also stylized with the use of legato-staccato; however, staccato movements here dominated, to underscore the brutality of the action. Dennis and Nadzieja’s wedding scene, on the other hand, employed a slow-motion stylization in order to highlight the unreality of the action and its memory-like tone. As well, the actors relied on the Illustrative Performing Technique’s alienating effect – an acting strategy that seeks to present the action onstage as if enacted from a distance, a movement from the past. To do this, the actors visualized fitting their gestures and movements into an imagined precast mould, or tried to re-enact precise, concrete actions they had performed in the past. This gave their actions a sense of unreality, uncertainty, and artificiality. The scene in which Ząfira soothingly rocks Nadzieja in her arms after her husband physically assaulted her employed this strategy.

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Another way in which stylization was achieved was by means of repetition, another component of Illustrative Performing Technique.7 The characters – Nadzieja, in particular – performed some of their actions in a repetitive manner. For example, at the beginning of the performance, after having greeted audience members, Nadzieja walked back to her pedestal and began once more smoothing out the burial shroud, obsessively and repetitively. This underscored the cyclical and persistent nature of her memories and schizophrenic delusions. Other stylized elements included the use of tableaux. To portray characters frozen in time, the actors adopted Illustrative Performing Technique’s use of facial masks to achieve a carved-in-stone effect. Finally, stylization was introduced into the spoken text of the performance – particularly into Nadzieja’s monologues that I had written – through metaphor and poetic verse, which further added to the unreality and memory-like character of the actions performed. When enacting the stylized scenes, the actors did not emotionally identify with their characters in a Stanislavskian manner but rather represented them physically by utilizing a Grotowskian impulse-response mode of acting. On the other hand, the actors also employed psychological realism, the Roma women’s preferred mode of representation. This achieved a degree of cultural verisimilitude on stage, revealing to non-Roma audience members the norms, beliefs, and common sense of the Roma world, as understood by the Roma women participants. Realism was particularly evident in the action around the table in Nadzieja’s household. In these parts, the actors portrayed as faithfully as possible the nuances and cadences of Roma speech and demeanour, and the Roma code of conduct. For example, in the wedding scene, the actors realistically rendered Roma rituals and customs of marriage, such as the elders’ blessing and the symbolic tying of the knot. Throughout the play, the actors playing female characters kept their hands crossed at their chests, while the actors playing male characters used strong, determined, and macho gestures. Finally, cultural verisimilitude on stage was maintained through the use of realistic costumes. However, while cultural verisimilitude dominated many scenes, dramatic expediency took precedence on numerous other occasions. This was apparent in the symbolic use of props and stage pieces – the broom, the book, the white shroud, and the pedestal. While some

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aspects of Nadzieja and Dennis’s wedding, such as the tying of the knot, were presented as they are traditionally done among the Roma, other aspects, such as the drinking of vodka at the table, were portrayed in more metaphoric terms, with gestures and facial expressions. The fusion of soap opera and avant-garde aesthetics was also realized in the intertwining of non-linear and chronological progressions of action. Events in the first half of the play unfolded mostly in chronological order, interrupted periodically by tableaux. We witnessed Nadzieja’s family discussing financial troubles, Taisa and Nadzieja relating their fortune-telling incident, the arrival of Dennis’s family, and the kidnapping of Nadzieja. At this point the action became non-linear, and it continued in that mode in the second half of the performance. This was realized through the use of Illustrative Performing Technique’s strategy of montage8 – breaking up the action of the play into chronologically unconnected scenes by means of tableaux. For example, the scene in which Nadzieja discovers that her children have gone missing immediately followed a scene in which Ząfira tells the audience about the tragic effects of Nadzieja’s death on her children. My strategy of politicization, aimed at impelling the research participants and audience members to social critique and action, was also put to test in the project. On the one hand, politicization was realized through the use of stylized and metaphoric modes of expression, which, in the Brechtian sense, defamiliarized the audience’s realms of experience while re-sensitizing them to the violence presented on stage. For example, the scenes in which Dennis physically abuses Nadzieja were enacted in slow motion to underscore Nadzieja’s endless pain and humiliation. On the other hand, I believe that my strategy of politicization was blunted by the performance’s soap-operatic focus on family drama and relationships, which diverted attention from other forms of violence such as racism and public violence.9 And while the scenes in which Polish hooligans invade Nadzieja’s wedding reception and Taisa and Nadzieja talk about being insulted while fortune-telling did address issues of racism and public violence, they were fleeting, and their positioning in the midst of the other scenes of domestic violence lessened or destroyed their impact on the audience. Furthermore, I believe the performance’s focus on family drama presented violence in the Roma women’s lives as an internal problem of the Roma community and culture. This further compromised, in my view, any critical understanding of the various social forces that fuel

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the marginalization and oppression of Roma women in Poland. In this sense, I believe Hope also compromised the actors’ notion of the performance as a medium for anti-racism, and the Roma women’s idea of the performance as a way of championing peace and tolerance. This became evident in the audience responses to Hope. Some audience members maintained that the performance challenged them to rethink their ideas and beliefs about racism and gender oppression; for many, however, the performance seemed to reinforce their long-held views. Other audience members seemed indifferent to the political implications of the performance, intrigued more by the theatrical techniques we used. It is possible that the performance’s focus on family drama was not the key factor here. Perhaps what compromised the audiences’ critical engagement with the issues raised was simply a lack of opportunity for them to partake in a more formal, post-performance discussion. I had originally planned to hold such a dialogue, but in the end we decided not to because the Roma women feared that it might put them at risk. More formal, post-performance discussions might have inspired audience members to articulate their perspectives in more critical ways. But it might also be true that bringing audience members to engage in social critique and action is altogether more difficult to achieve than I had originally hoped. My experience in the field also suggests that collaboration with research participants does not necessarily impel them to social critique and action. I began my research inspired by Mienczakowski’s (2000) belief that a significant level of insight and emancipation could be realized by involving people in the ethnographic research process, but in the end I was disillusioned. This is not to say that the project had no impact on the participants’ views about race, ethnicity, or gender. For example, some of the actors said it had led them to a greater openness to difference. Maria said she felt inspired to fight racism in her community. Agnieszka promised that in her future work as an artist, she would speak against the oppression and suffering of underprivileged people. Both actors made an effort to stay in touch with the Roma women, at least for a while, and Agnieszka even looked after some of the women’s children, helping them with their homework. Some of the Roma women asserted that working on Hope helped them become more tolerant of Poles. Randia said that the project made her realize that both Polish and Roma youth face similar problems in terms of

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unemployment in capitalist Poland. Zefiryna admitted that collaborating with Polish actors helped her connect to Poles on a “human level … and appreciate their customs.” Yet, notwithstanding these outcomes, it is difficult to speak of any substantial transformative or emancipatory result of the project. Indeed, the intensity of the ongoing power struggles in the rehearsal studio may have had a significantly negative impact: some of the participants might have come out of the process more prejudiced toward one another than at the start. For example, following the closing of the performance, Olga responded to Agnieszka’s observation that the project familiarized them with the Roma’s way of life: “Sure we know about the Roma now … we know things I’d prefer not to know!” To a certain extent, the Roma women may also have been negatively affected. Ana made it clear, for instance, that while she had enjoyed working on Hope, she was not sure whether she would want to work with Polish actors again, because “a Pole is a Pole after all, [and] doing projects like that is always risky.” Politicization, as Mienczakowski (2000) reminds us, also means giving voice to those who have been historically silenced; but in this regard, too, my project was only partially successful. The Roma women were given the opportunity to express their opinions in public both in rehearsals and in front of the audience, but the power struggles and shifting alliances ultimately disempowered them. This was best evident in my – and the actors’ – refusal to construct the performance as a celebration of Roma culture and customs. We rejected the Roma women’s vision of the performance because it did not fit into our idea of “the political” in an ethnographic theatre performance, nor with our understanding of what constitutes art. In retrospect, however, I see that we neglected to consider that a celebration of Roma culture and customs within the play might have constituted a concrete political strategy. The Roma women might have been trying to destabilize certain stereotypes of the Roma, or to claim the right to celebrate their customs, long denied them under state socialism. James Clifford, for example, argues that while in post-industrial contexts displays of cultural heritage have been often viewed as “a form of depoliticised, commodified nostalgia – ersatz tradition” (2004, 8), this ignores the fact that “tradition” often plays a crucial role in people’s struggles for political and cultural freedom. In Clifford’s view, marginalized people’s displays and celebrations of “tradition” constitute, among other things, a public means of asserting their cultural sur-

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vival, difference, history, and pride (ibid). Or as Aaron Glass – who writes about the dance practices of the Kwakwaka’wakw First Nations people of the Northwest Coast – points out, such indigenous presentations of cultural heritage have been historically “a thin end of the wedge.” In the colonial past they opened a space for indigenous people wherein they maintained their embodied cultural practices and struggled for autonomy (76); in the present they provide a means of asserting Kwakwaka’wakw survival and identity (52). Displaying and celebrating their cultural practices in the performance could have been a means for the Roma women to assert their identity, survival, and self-determination. It could have been a pragmatic response to contemporary conditions in Poland, where the Roma often can only “make it” politically and economically by satisfying non-Roma fantasies of “the other.” In other words, the women might have been aware that in a world where racism is ubiquitous, the only recognition their work might get is by showcasing “traditional” aspects of their culture. Even if they did not consciously see public celebration of their culture as a political act, it would be unfair to reduce it merely to objectification and commodification. Allowing the women to pursue their own vision of the performance could have constituted an important response to a particular social and political context. Refusing to accommodate their strategies of self-representation compromised the politicization I was striving for by disempowering the very people I was hoping to help.

Revisiting performance ethnography This ongoing struggle over representation challenged me and the actors to reconsider our long-cherished ideas of what constitutes art versus traditional versus political performance, showing that culture, tradition, politics, and art are interrelated. This reconsideration, in turn, unsettled my entire understanding of performance ethnography and my role as an ethnographer and artist. I see now, at the end of this journey, that a marriage between art and anthropology, between theatre and ethnography, is fraught with complications. Does theatre offer more opportunity for collaborative research? More potential for empowering research participants? I hoped so when I began, but in the end I admit that I don’t know. More than what?

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More potential than interviewing? More than recording life stories and histories? More than participant observation? I think that all of these strategies, if conducted with the research participants in mind, and a deep awareness of the power differentials that define the relationships between ethnographer and participants, have the potential to be collaborative and empowering. In fact, the more I think about it now, the more I realize that the interviews I conducted with the Roma women, my daily visits to their homes, hanging out with them at their fortunetelling spot, accompanying them on errands, and lending an ear to their joys and sorrows may have given them a greater sense of empowerment than developing the theatre performance. In the end, I do not think that there is a simple answer to this question. Every research project and ethnographer-participant relationship is unique. Each is embedded in, and also helps to create, often polarized and contested fields of power. Thus, every performance ethnography will have different meanings, dimensions, and implications, depending on whom it involves and where it takes place. Naturally, some performance ethnographies will be more collaborative and empowering than others. How then do I envision my future journey in performance ethnography? As dubious as I may be about its collaborative and empowering capacities, I remain committed to doing ethnography through performance. I believe it has enormous potential as a means of studying the complex relations of power that unwittingly bind ethnographers to their research participants in the field. This is a necessary study, indeed, for those for whom the anthropological project is not about discovering and interpreting human cultures and social life but about engaging in a critique of social realities. This potential can be revealed by considering the multiple avenues through which knowledge can be constructed in an ethnographic theatre project. In my project, different kinds of knowledge about power were being constructed at each stage of the research process – in my preliminary research with the Roma women, in pre-rehearsal sessions, in rehearsals, and in informal post-performance discussions with audiences and participants. In my future work as an ethnographer and artist, I would like to explore additional avenues through which knowledge about power in the ethnographic theatre project could be constructed. To do so, it might be valuable to conduct two separate ethnographic theatre projects with the same participants and the same research objectives: one project intended for public performance, the other not. Moreover, it might be

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beneficial in these two separate projects to hold sessions in which the participants improvise the physical and spoken texts of the performance in a larger group setting, and sessions in which they improvise only in the presence of the ethnographer. After the completion of the two theatre projects, one could analyze rehearsal transcripts and field notes to address the following questions: How does the presence or absence of an audience affect interactions among the participants, and between the participants and the ethnographer? How do power struggles change in the process of developing an ethnographic performance not intended for public presentations? Do they diminish? What other challenges does developing the not-for-public ethnographic performance pose for the research participants, the ethnographer, and the performance ethnography itself? This might be the most exciting potential of performance ethnography – the potential for a polyphonic construction of knowledge, which in turn could facilitate a more complex understanding of the workings of power in the field. I am also committed to further exploring the potential for performance ethnography to politicize research participants and audience members. The central question to be addressed is how to maximize engagement in social critique and action. In seeking to address that question, it might be important to first inquire whether minimizing power struggles in rehearsals would maximize the emancipatory potential of the ethnographic performance, and if so, how this could be best achieved. Several possibilities come to mind. One option might be to engage the research participants themselves as actors in the ethnographic performance. The question to explore here is whether this would reduce power struggles in the rehearsal studio and consequently allow for a more critical engagement of the research participants with the issues being explored. Developing Hope solely with the Roma women, without the involvement of the actors, might indeed have reduced some of the antagonisms in rehearsals. However, my experience in developing two other ethnographic performances in Poland gives me pause. In those productions, the participants performed on the stage, yet power struggles were very much a part of the rehearsal process. This could be attributed in part to the high stakes involved: the research participants were amateur actors seeking to establish themselves professionally in Elbląg’s artistic community. However, I wonder whether involving research participants who do not aspire to be professional

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actors might pose different challenges for performance ethnography. Not the least among these might be simply a fear of performing in front of an audience, or in front of one another. A second option might be to have anthropology students, trained in qualitative research methodologies, participate as performers. Their ethnographic background might make them more committed than actors to protecting the interests of the research participants, and less focused on the success of the performance as a theatrical event. This in turn might reduce the power struggles in the rehearsal studio, and consequently facilitate a more critical engagement by the research participants with the issues being explored. On the other hand, it is entirely possible that this option might do little to minimize the power struggles. Whether it is anthropology students, actors, or ethnographers who are involved – and no matter how much they strive to facilitate non-hierarchical relationships in the rehearsal studio – field relations are always complicated by differences in gender, class, nationality, and so on. Training in ethnography might not be enough to circumvent all tensions on such grounds. Further, in terms of politicization, I am interested in exploring the role of post-performance sessions in encouraging transformative social critique and action. At this point, frankly, I’m sceptical, at least in such unstable contexts as post-socialist Poland. Certainly the postperformance audience responses to Hope were not encouraging. The majority of people commented primarily on the theatrical aspects of the performances, avoiding discussions of content altogether. Admittedly, racism and sexism are considered by many in contemporary Poland to be risky subjects,10 which could in part have accounted for the end result. Nevertheless, I believe the inherent politics of group discussions in general might also have been responsible for the lack of critical debate. For even in a less public setting, such as the prerehearsal sessions of Hope, our group discussions showed signs of collective self-censorship: the actors and the Roma women carefully weighed and calculated their responses to avoid saying anything outside of what they thought was expected or appropriate in the particular contexts. I suspect that self-censorship might be an even greater factor in more public post-performance sessions. In the end, however, I am sceptical not only of the capacity of post-performance sessions to inspire social critique and action but also of what indeed can be learnt from such sessions about the emancipatory potential of the

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ethnographic process, the performance, and the post-performance sessions themselves. In the end, I believe that simply “hanging out” with the research participants and audience members following the performance, and perhaps conducting follow-up interviews, might be a more effective way to learn about the emancipatory potential of postperformance activity as well as the ethnographic process and performance. If, as Mienczakowski (2000) argues – and I concur – performance ethnography is unlikely to result in collective emancipation but can only effect instrumental change on an individual level (138), then it is only through actually doing ethnography that we can learn about such small effects of the ethnographic process, the performance, and post-performance sessions on people’s everyday lives. Or perhaps to engage the Roma women and the actors in a truly transformative exploration of such issues as racism and sexism, one might have to conduct a series of ethnographic theatre projects with them over the course of several years.

Ethnography of discovery Ultimately, as a result of my project Hope, in my future ethnographic and artistic journey I will be cautious about, and more conscious of, the contents of the baggage I carry – indeed, about all my assumptions on ethnography and art. While these assumptions still in part define me as a person, ethnographer, and artist, I no longer look to them as the sole guide in my future ethnographic endeavours. I want my future ethnographic journey to be an ethnography of discovery, in which both the research participants and I learn the ways of doing ethnography together, starting anew for each project and each set of circumstances – even if the project does not result in a performance at all. There might be no best way of doing performance ethnography. Indeed, the best way to approach it might be for the ethnographer to enter the field holding no commitments to a particular mode of ethnography, aesthetic, or art form. This is the most profound lesson the Roma women have taught me over the course of the project, a lesson I would like to share with those who wish to embark on projects similar to mine. As anthropologists, I believe we should enter the research field as flexible as possible about our objectives, theoretical assumptions, methodologies, and research plans, and allow them to take shape alongside the

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unfolding circumstances and conditions of the field. Experiences in the field – especially in unstable socio-political contexts – will always question and challenge our theories and methodologies, rendering some of them irrelevant in the process. As Greenhouse points out, “people’s altered lives challenge … ethnographers – to redefine order and disorder, losing and winning, cooperation and resistance, oppression and solidarity, mobilisation and denial, violence and humane affirmation, structure and agency, hegemony and resistance” (2002, 8). Far from seeing it as a source of dismay, I believe we should welcome this reality as an opportunity to learn from life itself – fragmented, unstable, and full of contradictions though it may be. I agree wholeheartedly with Greenhouse that the impossibility of verifying grand theories in the field is evidence not of the failure of anthropology as an academic discipline but of its willingness to acknowledge and address the fragmentary nature of lived experience (28–9). Performance ethnography, I believe, can expose the discrepancies of life particularly well. And this is what I strove to make apparent throughout this book. My analysis of power, for example, despite Gramsci’s and Foucault’s influences on my work, cannot be easily categorized as either structuralist or post-structuralist. As an anthropologist, I recognize the chasm between theory and fieldwork. I was testing neither structuralist nor post-structuralist theories of power in the field; and I do not apply them rigidly in my written analysis of power. I recognize that the complex, shifting, unpredictable, and contested fieldwork realities will always challenge our understandings and theories. As such, this book demonstrates that my relationship with structuralism and post-structuralism is complicated. I recognize that people are neither entirely produced by structures of power, nor do they autonomously produce such structures; rather, they are actively engaged in a creative relationship with them (Davies 1999, 18–19). As well, by acknowledging how my theoretical understandings of power were problematized in the field, I refuse to impose ready-made theoretical paradigms on the complexity and “messiness” of everyday life. In my analysis of power, I continuously “tack” between theory and fieldwork experience, and recognize that an understanding of the everyday is fragmented and incomplete and not a progressive accumulation of “knowledge” (Cerwonka and Malkki 2007, 17, 19). While conducting my fieldwork and writing this book, I welcomed surprise and uncertainty and drew

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from, combined, and rejected both structuralist and post-structuralist theories of power. It seems apt to say a few final words about the process of writing this book. As an account of my ethnographic journey – and in particular of the power dynamics that marked my field relations – this book has itself been shaped by the powers at play in the field. This is primarily because the ethnographic stories we tell are not unbiased accounts of our participants’ lives but are influenced by our positions and experiences in the field (Groves and Chang 1999, 262). The bridles of my Faustian contract have relentlessly bound me right up to these final words of my concluding remarks: worried about the consequences this book might have for my research participants, I have endlessly weighed and considered which stories to tell and which ones to withhold. Writing about post-socialist Poland, where racism frames Roma and Gadjo relations, I had to withhold stories that risked subjecting my Roma participants to harassment or violence. As well, writing about a small Roma community in Elbląg, where all of its members know one another, I had to be careful not to disclose stories that might compromise my participants’ standing in their community. As such, the writing of this book was as much about the juggling of power as were my field relations. I close this book in the hopes that my playing with the power of word, has managed to convey the fragmented, contradictory, and unstable nature of power I encountered in my research process. I also hope that it will some day lead to more tangible answers to the question that has haunted me from that moment on a park bench in Elbląg: “Lady, is that research of yours going to help anything … is it?”

A final glimpse For now, the Roma women’s lives remain as they were. I last spoke with them in the summer of 2005, when I visited Elbląg for two months. I met with Randia, Zefiryna, Basia, and Minka. Ana had emigrated to Holland with her entire family, and Nelka, Zefiryna, Minka, and Ewa were all planning to join her in the near future. Nelka had suffered a heart attack, and her husband, Sebastian, had died from heart failure. Nelka’s and Ana’s mother, Agata, had died in a diabetes-

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induced coma earlier that year. Zefiryna had separated from her husband, Marek, who was now living with his new Roma wife abroad. Zefiryna’s daughter, Marta, had quit school the previous year. Ewa had given birth to her fourth son in the fall of 2004 and, according to Randia, her nervous attacks had worsened. Randia claimed that nothing worth noting had happened in her life. She was not interested in emigrating to Holland; she said Elbląg was her home, and she needed to tend her mother’s grave there. Memories of our project Hope were barely alive among the Roma women. Although many of them assured me that they missed the project, they never initiated any discussions about it. When I asked Randia to share her thoughts on the project, she admitted that she had enjoyed working on Hope because it had been a source of extra income. But she said she wouldn’t want to participate in a similar project in the future, because working with the Polish actors had been difficult. When I asked Zefiryna to comment on her involvement in Hope, she stated, “Well … it happened and now it’s gone … but our lives remain the same … no money … no jobs … no hope.” Although Shawn and I tried to contact the actors, we only managed to speak with Olga, Grażyna, and Maria. Shawn ran into Olga and Grażyna while walking to the park one day. They were both now students in the Department of Cultural Studies at the University of Poznań. Shawn and I bumped into Maria at a student theatre performance at the Cultural Centre. She was now attending a local lyceum and was no longer involved in either theatre or social activism. She said that Agnieszka was working with a physical theatre troupe in Gdańsk but that she had lost touch with the other actors. In the theatre Maria sat in the row ahead of Shawn and me, and as the house lights faded, she flipped open her cell phone and nimbly began typing with her thumb one text message after another. An eerie blue glow from her phone illuminated her face. She was heedless of the actors on the stage. I watched her face in that strange light; it had only been two years, but I barely recognized her. Throughout my return visit to Elbląg, I was unable to spend much time with the Roma women, because they were busy caring for another Roma woman I had never met who was terminally ill. A month later, she passed away. I learned of her death shortly before I flew back to Canada, when I met up with Randia in a store. She apologized for not inviting me to the funeral but explained she had forgotten that I was

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in Elbląg. As I walked her to the park, she said, “This time parting’ll be easier [because I] didn’t have enough time to get used to you being around as much.” Then she kissed me goodbye and walked away. I looked back as I made my way slowly down the boulevard, and there she was, standing on the sidewalk beside the tramline, imploring a passerby to let her tell his fortune. I kept turning back until all I could see was a diminutive figure in a bright coat, vanishing for the last time behind a passing tram.

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A p p en di x A

Script: Hope (Nadzieja) Premiered at the Cultural Centre for International Cooperation in the Arts, Elbląg, Poland, 31 May and 1 June, 2003

Dramatis Personae Ząfira (Mama) Kało (Papa) Nadzieja (Ząfira and Kało’s daughter) Taisa (Nadzieja’s older sister) Dennis (Nadzieja’s fiancée/husband) Halina (Dennis’s mother) Zosia (Dennis’s sister)

Olga Shawn Agnieszka Maria Derek Grażyna Gosia

Scene 1 Nadzieja’s funeral. Taisa, Ząfira, Halina, Dennis, Zosia and Kało sit randomly in the audience, in tableau, dressed in black with glowing tea lights cupped in their hands. Downstage centre stands a pedestal with a white shroud flowing down its side. Nadzieja lies upon it, dressed in a gauzy white dress, hands folded upon her chest. A white scarf covers her hair … gold jewellery adorn her ears, neck, and wrists … her face and hands are chalk-white. The lights are low … a

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sombre, warm amber glow washes over Nadzieja. The lights brighten slightly … Kało rises. kało: Let us rise in honour of our sister. May she rest in peace, now and forever, Amen. Ząfira rises and repeats Kało’s prayer. One by one Taisa, Halina, Zosia, and Dennis rise and recite the prayer. As Dennis finishes, the words are repeated in rounds, a cascading chorus of mourning. Nadzieja suddenly sits up stiffly … her head jerks toward the audience. nadzieja: (to the audience) Welcome, ladies and gentlemen … thank you for coming … thank you so much! Wait a minute … please don’t leave! Really, there is nothing to be afraid of … you’ll lay me to rest soon enough. Relax, there is no reason to fret, I only wanted, before I take leave, to share a few words with you … about my life … to reminisce, because, of course, this could be my last chance to do so. I am a Roma woman, who happened to live at the same time and place on earth as you have. Excuse me? But of course, my dear ladies and gentlemen … of course, this is merely theatre! I was created by Roma women from our town … based on their life experiences and memories. Oh, and they collaborated with a few actors … an anthropologist … (grandiosely) … it is what you call “ethnographic theatre”! I would like to share with you fragments from my life … traces forever etched in my memory. There is a lot I don’t remember, because life has raced past me like a panting dog. Sometimes I recall only faces … sometimes hands … or only a scent … yes, a scent … The scent of my life fades and returns, like the rotting stench of November leaves. (smiles) Welcome, ladies and gentlemen … the pleasure is all mine! Nadzieja carefully, obsessively, smooths out the shroud on the pedestal, arranging it like a table. Then she stands before the table, leaning over it, addressing the audience.

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nadzieja: Let us begin! Kało and Taisa pass their candles over to audience members, leave their seats. Kało is wearing black trousers, a black blazer, and a white shirt. Taisa wears a black skirt, blazer and camisole, a long, light patterned headscarf, and gold earrings and necklace. Taisa walks to the upstage-right corner, grabs a broom, and stands in tableau. Kało walks downstage left, picks up a newspaper, sits cross-legged and in tableau. Nadzieja sits down at the table, pulls out a book from under it, opens it, and leans as she reads, in tableau. All three characters remain frozen momentarily, until simultaneously Kało cracks open his paper, Taisa swings her broom, and Nadzieja turns a page. taisa: Nothing! All you do is study, study, study … you’ll study yourself inside out, Madame Professor. Now get cleaning! (whining) Help me out! nadzieja: In a minute! kało: (annoyed) Help your sister! nadzieja: What, can’t she do it herself?! (Protesting, Nadzieja gets up, grabs the broom from her sister, and starts cleaning.) taisa: When you have a husband, you’ll have to do this. nadzieja: I’ll find a husband that’ll do it for me. taisa: Where? In a state of extreme agitation, Ząfira storms onto the stage. Silent, she sits at the table. She is wearing a black dress, red headscarf, and gold earrings. kało: What’re you angry about? z Ąfira: I’ve been to the doctor. taisa: And so? Need more pills? z Ąfira: Yes, as always. There goes my pension! Now what’ll we live off of? kało: The girls’ll go out’n and make some money. z Ąfira: (to her daughters) You heard your father. taisa: All right … Nadzieja, let’s go fortune-telling. Nadzieja and Taisa leave. z Ąfira: (to Kało) All you do is sit … you send the children out, while you … you do nothing! kało: What am I supposed to do? z Ąfira: Go out and sell something, like frying pans … You always

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expect your wife and daughters to feed you. Go out to the villages and trade! kało: They won’t buy anything! What am I to do if they don’t buy, and there’s no work? Silence. Daughters come in. taisa: I’m not fortune-telling anymore! Angry, Taisa leaves. z Ąfira: What happened? nadzieja: Someone swore at her out there. Nadzieja gives Ząfira a handful of money. Ząfira takes the money and holds it in her hand. She pauses … reflects. z Ąfira: What am I supposed to spend this on? We have to eat something. nadzieja: But I need books. z Ąfira: Books! Books can wait. We’ll spend it on food, and my pension’ll pay for my pills. nadzieja: (to all the characters) Enough! The characters all tableau … Nadzieja approaches Ząfira. nadzieja: Mama, if only I could start over … I’d be a dog, a sweet, beautiful dog. You’d pick me up and hold me, take me for walks, and feed me every morning. I’d stand on my hind legs and beg for scraps. Perhaps a miserable crumb of happiness would drop to the floor. If only I were a dog, Mama! (to the audience) The guests came soon after. I remember that day … stifling hot … they walked into my life, just like that, and settled there for good. Halina and Zosia walk onto the stage from the audience. Both are wearing long black dresses, headscarves (Halina wears blue, Zosia red), and gold earrings. They stand downstage-centre. halina: Good day … good day! z Ąfira: Taisa, Nadzieja, put the water on for tea … we have guests! (to the newcomers) Good-day. Please have a seat. What brings you here? The guests sit down. Kało joins them at the table. halina: Well, we were just passing through … trading … staying in a hotel … we asked around where the Gypsies are in town, and someone showed us. And are those your daughters … yours? But they’re still girls, aren’t they?

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z Ąfira: Well, the older one, Taisa, already had a husband … but she left him. Taisa and Nadzieja serve tea. They stand together upstage. halina: (pointing at Nadzieja, wanting to know if she is a virgin) But this one’s a girl? kało: Yes, a girl. halina: So she’s available … the youngest one? z Ąfira: She’s young … there’s still time. halina: You’re not raising her for yourself, are you? (pause) Listen, I won’t keep the cat in the bag any longer … we came here because we have business with you … we have a son … you have a daughter … give us Nadzieja, won’t you? z Ąfira: But she’s still young … only fourteen years! halina: So she’s young! (sarcastic … confident) Where’s the problem? We were young, too, when we married … yes? There’s only one little thing … our son had a wife already … they’re separated now. kało: But our daughter is only a girl! z Ąfira: And she deserves new shoes! halina: I understand, but sometimes old shoes fit better … and he’s the wiser for it too. She’s not the first, and she won’t be the last to get married at such an age. (to Nadzieja) We’ll bring him in so you can take a look. (to her parents) We’ll treat her well. If she’s obedient, and a good hostess, she’ll do fine … it’ll be just like with Mom and Dad … nadzieja: I don’t want to … my husband’s still growing up! z Ąfira: (to Halina) I’ll let her father decide. kało: We need to see the boy. halina: Zosia, call your brother. Zosia calls across the table into the audience, “Dennis!” zosia: This is Dennis. Zosia joins Taisa and Nadzieja upstage. Dennis sits at the table between Halina and Kało. He is wearing black trousers, a white shirt, and a blazer. halina: As I said, he’s divorced … the woman left him for another man. He’s not an idiot … he’s capable, practical … knows how to lead his head. Ząfira comes up to Nadzieja and leads her to the table.

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z Ąfira: This is my daughter. halina: (to Dennis) Do you like her? You were already married … don’t make the same mistake twice. dennis: I like her … if she’s a good wife, we’ll get along well. z Ąfira: And you, Nadzieja? nadzieja: No! halina: That’s a shame … but we can’t force her. kało: Maybe when she’s older … she’s still too young. halina: No harm done … we won’t push things. But hey, no bad will come if we share a drink together. (to Dennis) Go get some vodka. nadzieja: (to the audience) Hold it! Let’s stop here. Everybody freezes. nadzieja: (comes up to Dennis and leads him away from the table … Dennis tableau) Dennis went out to get the vodka … and me? (recollecting) Just a minute … ahhh, I know, Zosia and me … Zosia’s his sister … we went to the store. (goes to Zosia) She wanted to go to the store … not me … I don’t recall what she bought, but I do remember those cold, cold hands on my heart … I felt ill. (desperately to Mother) Mama, I don’t want to! Mama, where were you when I …? Nadzieja and Zosia flank Dennis, backs to the audience, enter tableau. After a few beats, everyone resumes the action. z Ąfira: (to Halina) You’re heading home now? halina: We’ll walk around town a day or two, trade a bit … z Ąfira: Did you sell anything yet? halina: It’s not too bad here … one can sell a bit, as long as you have good stuff … and a car, of course … then you can load it up and go to apartments, villages. z Ąfira: Without a car you can’t move. Silence. After a while Ząfira starts looking around. z Ąfira: Where’s Nadzieja? (calling for her) Nadzieja! taisa: Nadzieja went somewhere with Zosia. halina: And my son’s been gone for so long. nadzieja: (as if in a dream) Mama, I don’t want to! Nadzieja takes Zosia by the hand and forcefully pushes her towards the table where the guests sit. nadzieja: (to Zosia) What did you tell them? Do you remember? Say it … say it once again!

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zosia: (reluctantly at first, then matter of factly) Dennis kidnapped Nadzieja. nadzieja: (to Zosia) Yes … (to herself) Dennis … kidnapped … Nadzieja … (to the audience) Once I saw a dog … (runs downstage) outside, behind the fence … basking in the sun … only a puppy. A man came up to it … grabbed its snout, and smashed its teeth in. “You wretched bitch!” he yelled. Nadzieja utters a pitiful yelp … runs downstage centre, and picks up the imagined dog from the ground … she cradles it, rocking. Shhhhh … shhhhh … shhhhh (suddenly drops her hands, speaks gently) Run away … (pauses) I washed my hands in a puddle. (stares into space, looking at the “dog”) Come back, girl … come back! Nadzieja whistles … silence … she continues to stare, then addresses her father. nadzieja: What happened then, Papa? Everyone steps out of tableau, except Dennis. Zosia returns to the table. kało: (troubled) The love of God. halina: (to Ząfira) You didn’t want to give her in good will, so he took her out of anger. She must have liked him … and he liked her, too. If she didn’t want to, she wouldn’t go. They ran off, so now they’ll stay together for good. kało: Can you guarantee that he won’t leave her … that she’ll be happy? halina: I give you my word … we’ll do everything to keep them together. He took her, to be with her … and we will work hard to keep them together, so they can grow old together as husband and wife. There’s no need to worry. kało: Well, as long as no harm comes to her. halina: We will bring her no harm … but as in any marriage, young or old, a woman must be punished if she asks for it. z Ąfira: But Nadzieja’s still in school … she knows nothing yet! halina: Then we’ll teach her … If she is willing, we’ll teach her everything. We won’t mistreat her … or beat her … she’ll only learn what is for her own good. Dennis steps out of tableau, approaches Nadzieja, smiling … he takes her hand, and together they come to the table. Nadzieja kisses

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the hands of Kało, Halina, and Ząfira … Ząfira hugs her and cries. Dennis goes to kiss Kało’s hand … Kało refuses, pulls his hand away … Dennis kisses his mother’s hand … Ząfira turns away as he takes her hand. halina: Well, my dear children, you are married, so now you must live together in peace and stability. Ząfira removes the scarf from her neck and binds the hands of the bride and groom together … z Ąfira: I give this blessing, so that you’ll grow old together … so that I live to see my grandchildren, and great-grandchildren … and so that you dance at your children’s and grandchildren’s weddings. Kało comes up to Dennis. kało: Son-in-law … because you took my daughter for your wife, be a good husband to her, so that she suffers no harm. May you have a good life together, as we shall with you, so help us God. Everybody chants, “So help us God.” nadzeja: (looking out at the audience, distantly, repeats the words of her father) So that she suffers no harm … (everybody freezes) may you have a good life together … (a trace of a smile … she emerges from her reverie, addresses the audience) And so? What do you think, dear ladies and gentlemen? Are you enjoying my life? Compelling stuff? (ironic) Not too boring? But maybe not exotic enough? Well, then, how about some music! Someone once said that the Gypsy culture makes our country beautiful! Nadzieja claps her hands. Roma music plays. Dennis, Nadzieja, Ząfira, Halina, Zosia, Taisa, and Kało sit down at the table. Nadzieja stands and waits for the guests to sit down. nadzieja: Everyone had a good time at the wedding. Mama asked Dennis to dance … then she asked me … everyone else began dancing. (to Dennis) Come, Dennis, let’s dance, like we did that day … remember? She takes Dennis’s hand and leads him upstage, behind the table. Dennis moves his hands, slowly, dream-tempo … snapping his fingers, clapping his hands to the music. Nadzieja dances very slowly around him. nadzieja: (to Kało) Papa … a toast!

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kało: A toast to the newlyweds! To their health! Kało pours vodka. The guests drink to the newlyweds. Suddenly, as she is dancing, Nadzieja stumbles close to the floor, utters a sickening shriek, like a dog in agony. The music stops. The guests turn their heads. They rise and slowly surround Nadzieja as they watch keenly. Nadzieja extends her hands towards the floor. nadzieja: Little one, come here … what are you doing here, girl? (picks up the dog) I nearly stepped on you. C’mon … gimme your snout … is it better now? You’ve got a cut … but it’s better now, right? Doesn’t hurt anymore? I saw him beat you … poor thing. Where’s your master? You have a master … yes? He’s probably looking for you right now. Go … go to your master … good puppy … good girl. (she sends the dog off) (to Dennis) I nearly fell … remember? Poor puppy … scurrying from corner to corner, through the entire wedding … it drove you crazy … “Throw this mutt out!” you yelled. It left on its own, at night … but the smell … it stayed forever … You bitched for years, “It reeks like a dog!” And now? Can you smell it? Can you? Nadzieja forces a laugh. Her laughter breaks as Halina comes up to her. halina: Attention, everyone … I would like to ask my daughterin-law to sing something for us. Through a fog, Nadzieja starts to sing. nadzieja: O-ray, O-ray, shaba-daba-da amor-ay, Hey-amor-ay, shaba-daba-da, O moor-ya-teer, O sha-tra-teer, Ch-havo, ch-hasa, hel-chee-ahhh. O-ray, O-ray, shaba-daba-da amor-ay … Blackout. Nadzieja stops singing. Everyone is in tableau. Shouting ensues. voice #1: What’s going on here? voice #2: We want to eat … give us a drink! voice #3: It isn’t a restaurant! Please leave! This is a wedding. voice #4: (taunting) What … leave? What … leave?!! voice #5: Hey, boys, over here! voice #6: The Gypsies are having a party … dirty pigs! voice #7: Thieves! voice #8: Goddamned darkies!

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voice #9: Take your fuckin’ party into the woods! voice #10: Police! voice #11: Call the police! voice #12: Police! The disturbance settles. The lights rise. Props are scattered across the stage. The pedestal leans up-ended against a wall. The characters are in tableau. Ząfira sits in the middle of the stage, wringing the white tablecloth in her hands, a red scarf staining a section. Kało is lying on the floor … his body twisted in agony, mouth agape. Dennis stands at the pedestal resting his head on it. Taisa is at the wall with a pot in her hand. Halina and Zosia stand in a corner huddled together. Nadzieja is standing, surveying the destruction. She is the only one out of tableau. nadzieja: (to the audience) The police said it was our fault … as usual. (coming up to her father) Papa’s skull was fractured … his jaw smashed … but he never stopped singing … no … he’s been singing until today … about freedom … as the words lash his tongue. (to Kało) Sing with me, Papa … Nadzieja approaches Kało … they begin to sing “Ore, ore.” After two verses, Dennis comes up to Nadzieja. dennis: Let’s go home! nadzieja: Enough! dennis: (insistent) Let’s go home! Nadzieja runs up to her pedestal, wrenches it down to the floor from the wall. She sits on it as she did in the opening moments of the play. nadzieja: Enough! It’s finished! I don’t remember any more. Good night, ladies and gentlemen … once again, thank you for coming … how nice it was to muse over my life together, before this road of ash. Nadzieja lies down on the pedestal. Dennis runs up to Nadzieja, grabs her, and suspends her above the pedestal. dennis: Let’s go home! nadzieja: Leave me! Forgotten everything! Halina, Zosia, and Taisa come up to Nadzieja. halina: Nadzieja, we have to go now. zosia: Come, Nadzieja … taisa: … Come.

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nadzieja: Leave me alone! Mama, I don’t want to! I forgot it all … (to everyone) Leave! As Nadzieja pleads with her mother, Ząfira forces Nadzieja’s hands across her chest, immobilizing her. Nadzieja strains to get free, but in vain. z Ąfira: (holding Nadzieja’s hands) Nadzieja hasn’t been herself recently … she is easily agitated … and loses control … it’s as if nothing can reach her. taisa: She’s very unstable … z Ąfira: … She talks to herself … (addressing Kało, who assumes role of doctor) You have to help her, doctor. zosia: Please, doctor. kało (as doctor): I’ll do everything I can, dear ladies. dennis: And now? Do you remember? No? Well, you’ll remember soon enough. (looking at his in-laws) Your parents and sister left right after the wedding … and we went home. Nadzieja’s parents and Taisa leave toward the audience. Dennis picks up Nadzieja like a mannequin, and carries her upstage left. He places her on her knees, walks centre stage and watches her. Halina and Zosia come up to Nadzieja. halina: Yes … you always sat here … never saying a word … (she forces Nadzieja into a sitting position) … like this … good. What happened then, Zosia? zosia: That dog … cursed mutt! halina: Oh yes … that dog! What then, Nadzieja? Nadzieja’s eyes are faraway. She rises onto her knees, shuffles a few paces … addresses the dog. nadzieja: Come, little one. Where were you? How did you find me? (looks the dog over) What is it? What’s wrong? Let’s see … (pause) Your snout is all cut up, again … Poor puppy … what happened? (pause) What? What are you saying? Louder … I can’t hear you. You don’t want to go back home? You’d like to stay? Why, baby? Why? Well, tell me … don’t be afraid. What? Who? Your master? Your master is beating you? What are you saying? Ahhh …

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You have little ones on the way? Don’t cry, baby … don’t cry… What? (pause) Of course you can stay with me. (pause) Hush, girl, hush … I promise … you’ll never have to go back … never. Nadzieja holds the dog on her lap and rocks back and forth. Dennis comes up to her and watches her. dennis: What’s with you? nadzieja: Where were you? I’ve waited two whole nights for you. I’m leaving! halina: Where were you? You might be young, but you still have your responsibilities. You’re no longer a single man! dennis: I was out with the boys. halina: Apologize to your wife! nadzieja: I won’t stay with him any longer. dennis: Where’ll you go? nadzieja: Home … I’ll be happier there. dennis: (mockingly) Home … to those poor bums? nadzieja: I’ll leave you … and I’ll raise the child myself! dennis: Child? What child? nadzieja: I’m pregnant. halina: You’re having a baby, Nadzieja? Well, you’ll have to be more sensible than that! You can’t leave him now. A child needs its mother and father. dennis: What … you’ll take another man, so he can raise his hand to my child? You’re not going anywhere! Halina hits Dennis in the face. halina: (to Dennis) Stay out of this! (to Nadzieja) You can’t leave … you can’t support a child on your own … and anyway, what are people going to say? nadzieja: I saw your son with another woman on the street. halina: I don’t believe you! nadzieja: I hit her. dennis: She was my friend, and Nadzieja threw herself on her, wild-like, with her teeth bared! Something’s wrong with her, Mom. nadzieja: A friend? So why were you fondling her then? dennis: Shut your mouth! Dennis grabs Nadzieja’s hair and throws her to the ground. Holding her by the hair, he hits her in the face three times. Nadzieja yelps like a dog. Dennis slams her face into the ground and releases her.

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dennis: Freak! Ząfira comes down from the audience. z Ąfira: Enough! (everyone freezes) Nadzieja will come home with us. Ząfira reaches for Nadzieja, who picks herself up from the ground and walks towards her mother on all fours. They huddle together. Nadzieja curls up into her mother’s arms like a dog … panting … whimpering … Ząfira rocks Nadzieja … comforts her. z Ąfira: It’s all right … shhhh … it’s all right now, my baby … everything’ll be fine … Let me see your face. Where does it hurt? It’ll heal … you’ll come home with us … you’ll have your baby … we’ll help you out. What? What are you saying? (tenderly brings her ear close to Nadzieja’s mouth and strains to listen) Of course you won’t go back to him … Never … shhhhhhh. As Ząfira rocks Nadzieja, Dennis and Halina approach them. dennis: Where is Nadzieja? Ząfira conceals Nadzieja with her body. kało: You can’t have my daughter! z Ąfira: (to Halina) You gave us your word … you stood behind your son … and this is the state she comes home in! (to Dennis) Nadzieja won’t be going home with you! dennis: I’m not leaving this house without my wife! Nadzieja rises and looks at Dennis. nadzieja: Papa … Mama … Dennis promised me he’ll change … that this’ll never happen again … I’ll go. dennis: We’ll go abroad and declare asylum … life’ll be easier for us there. I’ll sell cars. Here we’ll never accomplish anything! Maybe all of you’ll come with us. Nadzieja yells out: “We went!” She speaks quickly, erratically, trying to recall everything in the greatest detail. nadzieja: Yes, we went … now I remember … we all went … wait a minute … no, not all of us … (whistles for the dog) Girl, where are you? … Come! I have something to tell you … Just don’t cry … I beg you, please don’t cry. (angrily) Why are you blubbering?! I’ll take you … later! Shut your mouth!! (crying, listens to the dog) What?! Well, then go! Go … now! Go already! Go!!! Nadzieja goes into tableau as she shouts at the dog. After a pause, Ząfira, Kało, Taisa, and Zosia come out of their tableaux.

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z Ąfira: (to the audience) They refused us asylum … We lost so much money. (to Kało) Now what? kało: We went into it blindly … if only we’d asked around. halina: Who could’ve known? dennis: Don’t worry … we’ll manage. We’ll buy something here … sell something there … Our girls’ll buy blouses at the warehouse … taisa: We’ll manage. zosia: Everything’ll be fine. Nadzieja comes out of tableau, repeats “Everything’ll be fine.” She lies down on the floor downstage in a foetal position. Dennis comes over to her, swaggering, drunk. He lies down beside her, brutally shoves her aside. dennis: Move over!! nadzieja: Leave me alone … you stink! Dennis shoves her violently once again. dennis: You smell like a bitch! You filthy rag! Dennis jumps up in a rage, grabs Nadzieja’s hair … he cuffs her in the face, throws her to the ground, and then kicks her relentlessly. He leaves in a rage. Nadzieja lies motionless on the ground. Characters remain in tableau. Nadzieja awakens, growls … makes licking sounds. Rising, she walks away in a daze … notices the dog beside her. nadzieja: You came back! (listens to the dog) What? No … there’s nothing wrong with me … (listens) No … nothing hurts anymore … I don’t want anything … thanks … (listens) Well, maybe fetch me some water … yes, cold, please. (pause) Thanks. (drinks) Why did he beat me? I don’t know … as usual, he came home drunk … reeked. (pauses, smiles) You know? I thought you wouldn’t come back … I missed you … I’m so sorry, puppy, that I left you. What? You’re not angry with me? Good dog … but where were you? (listens) You didn’t go back to your master? Smart dog! Now we’ll be together. Lie down here … yes, here … like that … It’s still early. Nadzieja falls asleep cuddling the dog. Halina, Dennis, and Taisa step out of tableau. dennis: Where is Nadzieja? halina: Not here.

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dennis: What do you mean, not here? zosia: See what you’ve brought upon yourself?! She’s left you. What’re people goin’ to say now? dennis: She’ll come back … She has no choice … we have a child. halina: Child … child! You were away day and night … and now, a child? We’ve got ourselves a father! Nadzieja snaps out of her tableau, and yells “Quickly!” as she runs over to the pedestal … she moves it centre stage, with one end facing the audience. Nadzieja straddles the pedestal. nadzieja: Quickly! Where’s a rag?! Yes, here … come here. (clicks her mouth for the dog to come) Don’t be afraid … we’ll manage. (lifts the dog off the floor and places it before her on the pedestal) Lie down. Breathe, like this … (Nadzieja inhales and exhales) Good … one more time. (inhales and exhales) It hurts? Not much longer. (runs over to stage right … scoops up a handful of water, runs back, and pours it on the white cloth) Good dog … yes … breathe … that’s it! (inhales and exhales) In … out … inhale … exhale … (looks at the dog) Wake up! Wake up! What’re you doing?! Don’t leave me! You filthy carcass! (weeps … violently shakes the pedestal) Can you hear me? Hear me?! Nadzieja slaps the water on the pedestal with her open hands several times … then a smile is slowly etched upon her face. nadzieja: You’re alive … alive … good dog! (Nadzieja delivers a puppy) Look, it’s so beautiful … he’s yours … see? And healthy … lick him … go ahead, lick him. (delivers more puppies) See? Another one … all of them beautiful, like you … lick … lick … yeah, like that. Exhausted, Nadzieja places her head down on the pedestal. Taisa comes up to Nadzieja. Ząfira rises. Nadzieja and Taisa freeze. z Ąfira: Nadzieja gave birth to twins, my dear ladies and gentlemen … a girl and a boy. They couldn’t come today … they haven’t been themselves since the death of their mother. taisa and zosia (as the twins): Will Mommy return? kało: No … never.

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z Ąfira: Since the death of their mother, they sit in the garden all day long, calling for that dog. Taisa whistles for the dog. Zosia clicks her lips. z Ąfira: She went missing, right after … when Nadzieja … taisa (as girl): When the doggy returns, she’ll find Mommy. zosia (as boy): Come back, doggy … come back! Nadzieja breaks her tableau. She leaves the pedestal and calls out. nadzieja: Janny, Rivana … come home … dinner! (pause) Janny … Rivana … dinner! Hurry! Where are you? Don’t joke around, please … (gets up and walks downstage centre … distressed, she searches the audience) Janny! (she runs over to her parents) Mama … Papa … the children … the children are gone! I looked everywhere. Call the police! taisa: Maybe it’s that husband of yours. kało: Maybe he took them! z Ąfira: He was threatening you … remember? Taisa and Kało enter tableau. halina: Luckily, everything turned out all right … the police came and took the children … returned them to their mother. zosia: Forgive us, Nadzieja. halina: Forgive us. Nadzieja walks upstage centre, takes the broom and begins mindlessly pushing it along the floor. She weaves in and out between the characters, the pedestal, slowly gaining speed … her eyes are manic. z Ąfira: Something bad is happening to Nadzieja … she seems to be far away … nothing reaches her. taisa: She only talks to that dog … she has to see a doctor … maybe he’ll help her. z Ąfira: (to Kało) Is this the only way, Doctor? kało (as the doctor): I don’t see any other option. She’ll have to be under constant medical care. We’ll do as much as we can so she can return. (to Zosia) Sister, take Nadzieja to the ward. Zosia (as a nurse) goes over to Nadzieja and pries the broom from her hand … the broom drops. Zosia guides Nadzieja downstage centre, sits her down on the floor and leaves. Nadzieja kneels, like a begging dog, arms hanging before her, tongue extended as she pants. Dennis slowly comes up to Nadzieja, stoops down towards her. Nadzieja instinctively covers her face, cowers.

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dennis: Nadzieja, don’t you recognize me? It’s me, Dennis. (Nadzieja cowers more) Don’t be afraid … everything’ll be different now, and you’ll get better, you’ll see. We’ll buy a house with a garden … (reaches towards her … Nadzieja growls) just like you wanted. (closer, Nadzieja growling more) You look so beautiful. As Dennis reaches for her hair, Nadzieja barks viciously … throws herself onto him, buries her teeth into this stomach, tearing like a deranged wolf. Dennis is unable to break free. In slow motion, all the characters (now nurses and doctors) walk over to Nadzieja. They tear her away from Dennis. Ząfira lays Nadzieja down onto the floor, who capitulates and closes her eyes. The characters take the white cloth from the pedestal and tie it like a straight jacket around her. After Nadzieja is bound, the characters leave her to lie on the floor … they all back away, hands extended, eventually entering tableaux. Nadzieja opens her eyes. nadzieja: (quietly, inconspicuously calling for the dog) Here, girl, come. You’re here, aren’t you? I know you’re here. (listens) Is it you? (feels the floor for the dog) There’s a good girl … you have to help me. See that room? (impatiently) No, not there … across the hall. Go over there, all right? Yes, that’s it! In the top drawer there are pills … the small ones … see them? Yes … bring them to me, quick! Good girl … close the door … come over here … give them to me … a paw-full … yes … put them into my mouth. Nadzieja opens her mouth, waits for the pills … now with her mouth full, she struggles to speak. nadzieja: (swallows hard) Good girl … thanks … now off you go … No, wait … give me your mouth … (kissing the dog) don’t say a word … remember … now go … go … Go … Nadzieja’s body relaxes … eyes open … everyone in tableau. Music fades in: “I close my eyes … the leaves fall … as I fall silent, silence befalls the world.” The lights fade.

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Appendix B: Elbl ąg Roma

k ey

Mor ąg Roma

Tarnów Roma

Tarnów and Limanowa Contacts

Not es

introduction i Roma have been commonly referred to as “Gypsies” (in Polish, “Cyganie”) throughout history. In recent years, the term has been deemed derogatory by some Roma and non-Roma. Elbląg’s Roma often used the two terms interchangeably in reference both to themselves and to Roma as an ethnic group. 2 Theatre companies and artists in Poland who aimed to politicize audiences into resisting the totalitarianism of the Polish government included Teatr Ósmego Dnia (Theatre of the 8th Day), Andrzej Wajda, Kazimierz Dejmek, Provisorium Theatre, Teatr Współczesny (Contemporary Theatre), and Pomarańczowa Alternatywa (Orange Alternative) (Filipowicz 1992). Many theatre artists at the time adopted Brecht’s idea of the politicization of theatre as a means of encouraging theatregoers to engage in political action. However, the ways in which they sought such politicization varied, as certainly not everyone concurred with Brecht that to politicize audience members one must discourage them from responding empathically to the play, or that this was even possible in the first place. Certainly it is not difficult to doubt Brecht’s politics of anti-empathy, given the emotional depth and complexity of his characters, such as Mother Courage or Shen Te. As well, for me this social critique was never contingent upon the abrogation of the audience’s empathy, as I have always appreciated the political potential of empathy in theatre.

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3 Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) was a poet, theatre practitioner, theoretician, and playwright who developed “epic theatre,” which aimed at the politicization of audiences by inviting them to engage in social critique and action. Brecht argued that a political theatre must stave off the audience’s empathy rather than submerging them in the comforts of illusion, draining their emotions, and leaving them predisposed to accept the world as is. In his view, politicized theatre needed to appeal to the audience’s intellect and ultimately make them want to change the world represented on stage. Brecht’s “epic” style of acting is characterized by actors stepping in and out of character; the simultaneous presence of the actor and that actor’s character; actors shifting roles, and playing more than one character; actors offering commentary on the play’s action; and a symbolic – but economical – use of props. Such illusion-breaking strategies are meant to expose the constructedness of the performance and to defamiliarize events presented on the stage, to bring the audience to a consciousness of difference and political action. Brecht’s dramaturgy was influenced by the theatre of various countries including China, Japan, India, and Russia. For example, Brecht’s “alienation effect” – the simultaneous presence of the actor and her character, meant to estrange the events presented on stage – was inspired by Chinese opera, in which an actor’s characterization is self-consciously presented. Brecht created many of his works in collaboration with members of his writing collective, including Elisabeth Hauptmann, Margarete Steffin, Emil Burri, and Ruth Berlau (Calabro 1990; Wiles 1980). 4 Jerzy Grotowski (1933–1999) was a Polish theatre practitioner-theoretician and founder-director of the Polish Laboratory Theatre. His notion of “poor theatre” emphasized the relationship between actor and spectator and called for the elimination of profligate scenography, props, costumes, sound, lighting and makeup. Actor training was rigorous, incorporating East Asian body training techniques, and aimed overall at achieving full mastery of voice and movement (Grotowski 1968; Osinski 1991). Later in his career, Grotowski abandoned theatre per se, and through undertakings such as his Special Project (1973), Project Mountain (1977), Theatre of the Source (1976), and Objective Drama (1982), he explored what he referred to as “theatre anthropology”(Osinski 1991). 5 Tadeusz Kantor (1915–1990) was a Polish theatre director and theoretician, painter, and designer. He was influenced by Constructivism, Dada, Informel Art, and Surrealism. In his Cricot 2 Theatre, actors performed

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in an artificial, anti-realistic manner that incorporated grotesque and stylized forms of expression. Kantor’s theatrical explorations underwent a variety of stages, including Informel Theatre (1960–62), dominated by chance, coincidence, and the objectification of the actor; Happenings, which challenged conventional understandings of theatrical space; and Theatre of Death, which explored death and memory via the concept of “Reality of the Lowest Rank” – the lowest, poorest, and most defenceless aspects of human existence (Plesniarowicz 1994). Jozef Szajna (1922–2008) was a Polish theatre and visual artist. His concept of “visual theatre” focuses primarily on visual forms of expression by employing elaborate stage designs, props, and costumes. His acting style is highly expressive and stylized. Szajna’s artistic influences include Art Informel, Surrealism, and Expressionism. His art often conveys his wartime experiences as a prisoner of Auschwitz (Szajna 2000). Ministry of the Interior and Administration of the Republic of Poland (2003), “Programme for the Roma Community in Poland,” August. Available at www.mswia.gov.pl. According to such sources, the Roma baptize their children, for example, merely to collect presents from the godparents. Residents of the former Polish eastern frontier (Kresy) were commonly referred to as Kresowiacy in post–World War II Poland. Michael Stewart (1997), for example, links the subordination of Roma women within Roma culture to its denial of the female body. While male sexuality carries no negative values within the Roma system of beliefs, a woman’s sexuality is considered impure and shameful, a stigmatization employed, in Stewart’s view, to control women and establish an ideology of male supremacy. Stewart argues that this allows Roma men to transcend – by transferring onto women – their own stigmatization by nonRoma. Paloma Blasco (1999), writing about Roma (Gitanos) in Spain, argues that their gender ideology and notions of female sexuality constitute a means for the Roma to assert their power over non-Roma in Spanish society. Other studies of gender in Roma culture include Acton et al. (1997), Arias (2002), Kelly et al. (2004), and Okely (1997). For example, David Arias (2002) and Paloma Blasco (1999) conducted ethnography among Roma in Spain. Judith Okely (1983) worked with British Roma, Carol Silverman (1981, 1986, 1988, 1995a, 1995b, 1996a, 1996b, 1996c) with Balkan Roma, and Michael Stewart (1997) with Hungarian Roma. A recent ethnographic study by Arias (2002) examines concepts of Roma

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kinship and identity among the Catalan Roma of Spain from a gendered perspective. As well, Levinson and Sparkes (2003, 2004, 2006) explore the ways in which Roma women and girls in England negotiate their identities and personal needs at home and school. However, while Arias and Levinson and Sparkes conducted interviews with Roma women and girls, and engaged in participant observation of their daily lives, their ethnographies were not collaborative in the sense of involving participants in the planning and execution of the research. In the social sciences, the notion of embodiment advances a new understanding of mind and body as a unified entity and thus challenges Descartes’s mind-body dualism, as well as other binaries, such as cognitive/behavioural, reason/emotion, subjective/objective, and corporeal/ incorporeal. It has been increasingly recognized that bodily means of expression such as movement, gesture, and non-verbal vocalization as well as emotions and sensations are legitimate “objects” of research, as they constitute embodied actions of a human agent rather than simply the physiological or the biological (Butler 1999; Farnell 1999; Lester 2005; Lock and Farquhar 2007; Scheper-Hughes 1992; Stoller 1995). Ethnographers using a collaborative approach to research often critique interpretive ethnography for ignoring the complex issues of power that define any research process and ethnographer-informant relationship (Scott 1990, 37, 131–2, 381). Throughout this book I have used the term “participants” in reference to the Roma women, as well as to the people anthropologists work with in general. In collaborative research the term “participant” has been increasingly used in place of “subject” or “informant” to suggest that the terms of interaction between ethnographers and the people they study are more equitable in research contexts. However, when I refer to more traditional forms of ethnographic research, I use the term “subject” or “informant.” Some autoethnographies that concern themselves with the empowerment of the research participants have been criticized for glossing over relations of power in the field and thus leading to more pernicious kinds of exploitation (Groves and Chang 1999, 238; Stacey 1988, 22). See http://www.omniglot.com/writing/romany.htm. Since in this book I make several references to concepts such as narrative, interviews, life history and life story, and informal conversations, it is important to lay out the similarities and differences between these concepts as I understand them and as I have employed them, both in my research

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and in this book. By “narrative” I mean a form of discourse – oral, written literature, and/or theatrical representation (both fictional and non-fictional) – through which speaker and listener create culture (Klein, 1999). I understand “life history” and “life story” to be forms of narrative interviewing through storytelling (Lindlof 1995, 172–3). In life history and life story interviewing, the interviewer listens to and records the narrator’s account of his or her life (Linde 1993). Life history and life story interviewing are co-created between the interviewee and interviewer through their mutual verbal and non-verbal interactions mediated by the contexts in which they take place (ibid.). The primary difference between life history and life story seems to lie in their approach to time. While “life histories” suggests a biographical framework, life stories are less time bound. I conducted both types of interviews with the Roma women in Elbląg. Finally, by “interview” I mean an event in which the researcher invites the participant to convey his or her stories and experiences (Lindlof 1995, 163). Interviews have some sort of purpose and structure. Usually, the purpose is designed by the interviewer, who consequently exercises greater control over the interviewee (Denzin 1978, 113). During my research with the Roma women, I conducted both semi-structured and unstructured interviews. Semi-structured interviews were often framed by pre-set, open-ended questions that served as a guide in the topics I wanted to explore. In unstructured interviews, I did not have any pre-set questions for the participants to answer but instead allowed them to lead the conversation “freely” while I “prompted” it in a particular direction (Lindlof 1995, 164) or came up with questions on the spot (170). I recorded both unstructured and semi-structured interviews on audiocassettes and in field notes. Meanwhile, the informal conversations that I recorded through field notes took place between the research participants and me during participant observation. These were the most informal, open-ended, spontaneous, casual, and conversational interviews I conducted. While they had a purpose, as both the Roma women and I were aware of the reason for my presence in their lives, and because they were conducted for my benefit, they did not have a pre-designed conversational purpose. Our daily informal conversations flowed without any attempts by me to move them in a specific direction. In this sense the interview responses were shaped – more than our open-ended conversations – by me, and perhaps by what the participants considered appropriate to say in the contexts of our project.

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19 Following the collapse of Ceausescu’s regime, the economic crisis in Romania, coupled with the rise of nationalism, contributed to an increase of prejudice and violence directed against ethnic minorities – particularly Roma – who became scapegoats for Romania’s woes. Massive evictions, restitution, and privatization policies limited the amount of land available to the Roma and displaced entire communities to the margins of cities and villages, where they were victims of frequent pogroms, high unemployment, and minimal access to social protection and health care services. As a result, many Roma fled Romania in search of “better fortunes” (Zoon 2001). Poland was either their final destination or a temporary stopover on their way to Germany (Bartosz 1994, 75). 20 Crehan’s (2002) interpretation of Gramsci’s hegemony largely departs from how the concept has been commonly understood in anthropology. Crehan argues that in anthropology Gramsci’s concept of hegemony has been mainly linked to ideology, neglecting to consider “the importance of the material circumstances in which ideas and beliefs are embedded” (173). Her analysis of Gramsci seeks to re-articulate hegemony in relation to the whole field of power, including “‘practical activity’ and the social relations that produce inequality, as well as ideas by which that inequality is justified, explained, normalised” (174). 21 Shawn and I were to teach introductory level courses in art and culture studies and acting. However, we could adjust the level of the courses according to the experience and seniority of the students enrolled. chapter one 1 Eugenio Barba is an Italian theatre director and theoretician. He created his Odin Theatre in 1964 in Holstebro, Denmark. Barba’s theatre practice – barter – focuses on the ways in which theatre performance can facilitate cultural exchanges with the community at large. In 1979, Barba founded ista, the International School of Theatre Anthropology, where – to this day – he explores the pre-expressive level of the performer’s art in transcultural contexts (Watson 2002). 2 Grotowski (see Osinski 1991) and Barba (1991, 1995) are the progenitors of the sub-discipline of theatre anthropology. In their work they explore what they believe to be the principles of performance that recur across cultures and constitute the foundation of the performer’s art, upon which different genres, styles, roles, and personal and cultural traditions are based.

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3 Conversely, the approach to ethnographic theatre performance inaugurated by Turner (1982) in collaboration with Schechner (1985) – and later adopted by Allen and Garner (1997) – employs theatre performance as a means of documenting and engaging the audience in a learning process about another culture’s way of life. Turner and Schechner practised what they called “instructional” ethnographic theatre with a particular focus on “authenticity” (Turner 1982, 41, 48). I found this approach problematic because it uncritically assumes that the “truth” about another culture is accessible to the ethnographer and can be described, represented, and transmitted through a theatre performance to largely passive audiences. It also fails to problematize the conditions of its own ethnographic representation. 4 Brecht’s (1964) illusion-breaking techniques, employed in Name Day and Name Day: The Defence, included his epic style of acting (see introduction, note 3). 5 Kantor’s illusion-breaking strategies, implemented in Name Day and Name Day: The Defence, included revealing the backstage to the audience by having the director present on stage intervening in the action of the performance, and actors interacting with audience members (Plesniarowicz 1994, 38). In Name Day: The Defence, for example, as the author/director, I stopped the performance in order to “re-work” a scene poorly executed by the actors. Both in Name Day and Name Day: The Defence, the characters referred to me by my real name, interrogated me about the performances’ representations, and accused me of appropriating and objectifying their lives for academic and artistic ends. This was meant to expose the constructedness of the theatre event, and my authority as director/author/academic. 6 Ginsburg (1995) borrowed the term “parallax effect” from astronomy to refer to the intertextuality – or “different angles of vision” – created by juxtaposing different modes of cultural representation such as ethnographic film and indigenous media. She argues that these “different angles” can contribute to a more complex understanding of culture (and the media representations located within it) that is neither stable nor bounded (65, 73). 7 The term “ideology of modernism” emerged with Georg Lukacs’s book The Meaning of Contemporary Realism (1963), where in his polemic “The Ideology of Modernism” he critiques modernist writing and modernist conceptions of realism. Supporting nineteenth-century realism, he was

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critical of modernism’s subjectivism, its denial of history, as manifest in the solitary and asocial hero of modernist writing (21), its abstraction and distortion of reality (22–4), its “obsession with the pathological” (30) and “fascination with morbid eccentricity” (31), and its essentializing of despair, pessimism, and angst (i.e., in the literature of Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka, and James Joyce [36–46]). 8 Realism is a concept “through which we judge whether a fiction constructs a world we recognize as like our own” (Hall 1997, 360). Realist forms of representation “bring into play real-life assumptions . . . about space and time [and] about social and cultural relationships” (Shohat and Stam 1994, 179). A precursor of realism in theatre was Konstantin Stanislavski (1863–1938), Russian theatre director/actor and co-founder of the Moscow Art Theatre (1898), whose theories later formed a basis for the development of “method acting.” Stanislavski’s theory of theatre called for realistic characters and stage settings. The actors were to evoke what he coined as “emotion memory” in order to faithfully represent the characters’ emotions. Stanislavski’s scenography represented reality through “truthful” costumes, props, stage pieces, makeup, and so on to support the actor’s belief in the character portrayed (Wiles 1980, 13–37). 9 My understanding of verisimilitude has been informed by Steve Neale (1981), who borrowed the term from literary history to problematize the concept of realism in film by exposing the social and cultural constructedness of realist forms of representation (36–41). In contrast to realism, Neale argues that verisimilitude refers not to the world as it is, or is not, but to what a culture (usually the dominant culture) believes the world to be, or not to be – what it accepts as “real.” In his view, “cultural verisimilitude refers us to the norms, mores, and common sense of the social world outside the fiction” (Hall 1997, 360; Neale 1981, 36–41). Neale’s notion of “cultural verisimilitude” corresponds with Bakhtin’s (Medvedev and Bakhtin 1978) conception of genre. For Bakhtin, genre is saturated with ideology, because it “enters life and comes into contact with various aspects of its environment. It does so in the process of its actual realisation as something performed, heard, read at a definite time, in a definite place, under definite conditions” (131). Thus, in Bakhtin’s view, genre embodies and presents social relations, norms, and attitudes from a particular point of view (135). 10 Naturalism – a movement in late nineteenth and early twentieth century art and literature, influenced by Darwin’s principles of Natural Science – with its commitment to rigorously faithful representations of reality, can

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be seen as an extension of realism. Émile Zola (1840–1902) was a chief proponent of naturalism in both theatre and literature (Brockett and Hildy 2003, 392–3; Krasner 2008, 24). Zola believed that a dramatist should be an objective recorder of truth who brackets one’s own beliefs and prejudices and represents real – not fictitious – characters in real settings. He also considered a playwright to be a doctor whose role was to expose and remedy society’s illnesses (Zola 1881). In the nineteenth century, melodrama was a popular form of literary and dramatic fiction. It placed strong emphasis on emotional drama, usually had stock characters and a hero who partook in the struggles between good and evil, and often ended happily. With time melodrama waned in popularity. (Bentley 1964, 195–218; Brockett and Hildy 2003, 303–7). However, while the theatres of Grotowski, Kantor, and Szajna do not seek (in the Brechtian sense) the politicization of audiences by inviting them to social critique and action, this is not to say that they have been merely apolitical. Like all artistic practices, when placed in their social contexts, they also have a political dimension (Filipowicz and Tymicki 1987). Filipowicz and Tymicki, for example, argue that Grotowski’s theatre was political because it created important social networks and provided a rare space (specifically, in the Poland of the day) for “spontaneous interaction” between participants (28). Grotowski himself argued that his theatre was always political, because the politicized context of socialist Poland enforced a politically minded interpretation of his theatrical practices (Filipowicz and Findley 1986). Our use of “facial masks” drew from Grotowski’s work with facial muscles to achieve physical expressivity in the actor’s performance. However, Grotowski’s employment of “facial masks” rested on different principles and did not include the same strategy of staccato-legato contractionrelease of facial muscles. Mienczakowski (1992, 1994, 1995, 2000, 2001) creates critical ethnodramas from his fieldwork and interviews conducted in a variety of health-care settings. His ethno-dramas are performed by medical or nursing students to groups of health-care professionals and consumers and then discussed and workshopped in post-performance sessions with both audience members and participants. His ethnographic performances – which seek to faithfully represent the research settings – echo Turner’s (1982) and Schechner’s (1985) commitment to “authenticity.” In his post-performance sessions, Mienczakowski uses Augusto Boal’s (1979) Forum Theatre, a performance that is created in response to a

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particular group’s oppression. The spectators are invited to take over the actors’ roles as the play’s protagonists and improvize alternative scenarios to the original narrative. 16 At the same time he cautions that such a “public discussion” can never be viewed outside of its politics of power, that is to say, the way in which individual performances “enable, sustain, challenge, subvert, critique and naturalise ideology,” and “accommodate and contest domination” (Conquergood 1991, 190). chapter two 1 Poland joined the European Union on 1 May 2004. Since then inflation has soared, and some of the Polish press and politicians have criticized Poland’s accession into the eu. When I visited Poland again in 2005, prices of some grocery articles had risen by as much as one to two zloty per item. 2 While the direct translation from Polish to English is “old woman,” the nuanced connotations of stara baba in Polish culture are left behind. Stara baba evokes negative images such as the ugly, old witch that appears in numerous Polish fairy tales. 3 This part of the research continued through to June 2003 and was conducted while we were also in rehearsals with Hope. I visited and interviewed the women during the day, and our rehearsals were at night. 4 In retrospect I also see this part of the research process as important in further establishing rapport with the Roma women – a part without which the ethnographic performance would have likely not taken place. 5 Specifically, I explained the project to the women, and they then stated verbally that they understood the research protocol and their right to withdraw at any time. 6 While the Roma women predominantly talked about the present in more negative terms than about the past, they did recognize that certain aspects of their lives had changed for the better, particularly since their days of living in caravans. For example, Randia admitted that while life in a caravan had been “nice,” present non-nomadic life was more convenient, as she now had access to such amenities as running water and electricity. chapter three 1 “To sic a person” is translated from the Polish word zaszczuć, which means to “hunt down an animal,” or metaphorically, to “bait someone.”

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The women used the expression in reference to “bad-mouthing people behind their back” and compromising their reputation within the community. 2 Milosc i Nienawisc is a popular soap opera in Poland. chapter four 1 I assumed that the Roma women had other reasons for creating the performance, outside of their commitment to the project or the financial compensation. Of course, one could accuse me of being naive, particularly given that the women would have likely never participated in the project had it not been for the financial compensation. Yet such a reading of their motives would be problematic, because it precludes, in a rather paternalistic manner, the possibility that our participants are capable of using our research projects for their own very specific reasons and benefits beyond those we set out for them. 2 Initially we had Nadzieja’s grandmother ritually binding the hands of Nadzieja and Dennis in the wedding scene; however, later in the process, we decided to expunge the character of the grandmother from the play due to a dearth of actors, and this role was incorporated into Ząfira. 3 The Roma women not only talked about their dogs in rehearsals but also on several occasions referred to their own lives as “a dog’s life.” For example, when Ana confided in one of our sessions that her mother’s mental health had deteriorated so much that she had to commit her to the hospital, and that her sister Nelka’s substance abuse had spiralled out of control, Randia exclaimed, “See Magda, what this dog’s life of ours is doing to us!” 4 The references include: “A dog’s life is better than mine;” “I wouldn’t treat my dog like [my husband] treated me;” “They treat us like dogs;” “Sometimes I look at my dog and I wish that I was him … what a life he has!” chapter five 1 According to Isabel Fonseca (1995), such distrust and fear of Gadjos result from the prevalent belief among Roma that Gadjos are mahrime – polluted – and that by associating with them one risks contamination (12). Stewart (1997) argues that the Roma’s perceptions of Gadjos as polluted are their way of transcending and transferring onto Gadjos the stereotypes of “impure” and “unhygienic” with which Gadjos have traditionally stigmatized them. I believe, however, that while the Roma’s distrust of Gadjos might be about pollution and about the reversing of

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stereotypes, it also constitutes a realistic and concrete practice of selfprotection in a world where associations with Gadjos lead not merely to contamination but also to violence and even loss of life. Interview with Marek (2001). Papusza was born sometime between 1908 and 1910. She was a Roma poet and singer who was convinced by the Polish poet Jerzy Ficowski to record her poems and songs phonetically in Romani. Ficowski translated her poems into Polish and published them in the Polish press. However, Ficowski was also at the time writing a book about Roma and was the government adviser on the “Gypsy Question,” as he officially supported the government’s plan for the settlement of the Roma. Papusza, as his collaborator, was accused by many Roma in Poland of being an accomplice to Ficowski’s and the Polish government’s destruction of traditional Roma ways of life, as well as of betraying Roma “secrets” to Gadjos both through her poems and the stories she told Ficowski. She ended up being excommunicated from the Roma community and lived in solitude until her death in 1987 (Fonseca 1995, 3–9). I am indebted to Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of “symbolic power.” According to Bourdieu (1991), symbolic power is not necessarily a manifestation of recognized authority but rather the power to define the situation: “the person submitting to [it] grants [it] to the person who exercises it, a credit with which he credits him, a fide, an auctoritas, with which he entrusts him by placing his trust in him. It is a power that exists because the person who submits to it believes that it exists” (166, 192). Bourdieu argues that symbolic power is “invisible,” as those who endow others with it are not aware they are doing it, and those who have been endowed with symbolic power are not cognisant that they possess such power to legitimize the state of affairs, because such power has been fostered through habit, instruction, and routine (51–2, 163–70). The Roma women appeared to approve when Ana asserted her authority over the actors. Some even repeated Ana’s interactions with the actors. For example, after Ana derisively imitated Derek’s movements and gestures while rehearsing the dance scene, Ewa walked over to Derek and, in a similar tone, parodied his movements. In other words, Ana set the tone for the women’s interactions with the actors. Ana admitted that she often dressed – particularly if she was trading or fortune-telling – more inconspicuously so as not to be recognized as a Roma.

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7 While the Roma women wanted the performance to celebrate their culture by featuring traditional Roma dance and music, in part because they enjoyed both dancing and singing, in retrospect I also think that this preference might have been informed to a certain extent by what the women believed Roma theatre should be about. In rehearsals the women never discussed how any Roma theatre tradition might contribute to their own artistic vision; on the contrary, they always stressed that they had not seen much theatre of any kind. However, I am aware that they had heard on television about the Russian Romen Theatre, the oldest Roma theatre in the world. As this theatre seeks to educate audience members about Roma culture, history, and heritage by highlighting Roma music and dance, it is possible the women wanted to accomplish a similar task in their own theatre production. 8 It was problematic because it advanced the notion “whereby culture is taken to mean values, beliefs, knowledge, and customs that exist in a timeless and unchangeable vacuum outside of patriarchy, racism, imperialism, and colonialism” (Razack 1994, 896). chapter six 1 This is a popular epitaph commonly seen engraved on the headstones of deceased young people. 2 I did not invite any Roma, as I wanted the Roma women to decide whom they would invite to the performance. conclusion 1 In much of western academic discourse, the social, political, and economic changes taking place in post-socialist states have been largely seen as progressing toward a western ideal of liberal democracy and market economy. However, such linear and uni-directional conceptualizations of postsocialist transformations fail to account for the complexity, diversity, and unpredictability of experiences that characterize post-socialist states; they also propagate a discourse of western triumphalism according to which the “good” forces of western capitalism will conquer the “evil” forces of communism. These attitudes are based on an idealization of western liberal democracies and market economies, which in reality have never existed in such ideal forms (Barsegian 2000; Burawoy and Verdery 1999; Pine and Bridger 1998; Verdery 1996). 2 While it is problematic to draw a definite link between the actions and

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discourses of a particular micro-group in a particular place and time and the macro processes surrounding it, it seems reasonable to make some tentative associations between our interactions in the rehearsal room (micro) and the social contexts (macro) in which they occurred. The actors’ and my understandings of the Roma women’s participation in the project cannot be viewed as deliberately stigmatizing, yet having lived in Poland for many years likely had an impact on how we conceptualized their participation in the project. Feminist theorists critique Foucault on similar grounds. They are troubled by Foucault’s understanding of power as merely dispersed and decentralized. Power, feminists warn, has long been a masculine property, employed to control women (Diamond and Quinby 1988, xiv). Nancy Harstock argues that if “power is everywhere,” as Foucault maintains, then it is “ultimately nowhere” (1990, 169–70), “and domination viewed from above is more likely to appear as equality” (1996, 39). From a feminist standpoint, the two kinds of power – dispersed and centralized – can be identified in present-day society (Diamond and Quinby 1988, xiv). Our joint pre-rehearsal discussions took the form of informal, unstructured – at times semi-structured – group interviews or focus groups. They were what Bingham and Moore (1959) refer to as “conversation[s] with a purpose” (Lindlof 1995, 154). This, however, was the intention of our project, to maximize the women’s participation and expression in the performance by representing the world of the play from their own perspectives – as much as that was possible given the constructed nature of ethnographic knowledge and representations, and the unequal power relations between us. This tactic of repetition was inspired by Kantor’s famous strategy of repetitious negatives, a theatrical technique that transforms the linear progression of life into “frozen-in-time-negatives” that repetitively appear and disappear, eventually fading into “nothingness.” Kantor used this strategy to express the futility and absurdity of human existence (1993, 333). The strategy of montage was also widely used in the theatres of Kantor and Szajna. This is not to deny that exposing and critiquing domestic violence in the Roma women’s lives is important. However, I believe that in order to allow the audience members a meaningful critique of such violence, other forms of violence to which the women are subjected, such as racism and public violence, also must be addressed. Racism and public/domestic

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violence are interconnected because racial prejudice, marginalization, and physical forms of violence committed against Roma constitute an immediate context in which domestic violence occurs and needs to be understood. 10 I believe that most audience members spoke mainly of the performances’ theatrical aspects because of the “uneasy” subject matter. Racism and intolerance were hotly debated topics in Poland at the time, in the media, universities, and the Catholic Church and among politicians. This was the case because after the collapse of socialism, Polish post–World War II pogroms attracted international attention and have been cited as proof of an inherent Polish anti-Semitism (Novick 2000; Sherwin 1997). Some sources partly blame Polish anti-Semitism for Jewish persecution in the twentieth century and identify Poles as Nazi collaborators in the murder of Jews (Sherwin 1997, 16). Many responses have been offered to such accusations in Poland. Some politicians began framing Polish-Jewish relations in terms of Polish philo-Semitism. They represent Poles as hospitable to Jews throughout the centuries and blame the postwar pogroms on the Communist Party which, they argue, forced Poles to carry them out (16–17). Others blame depictions of Poles as inherently anti-Semitic on North American Jewish organizations which, they maintain, do so to counter prevailing stereotypes of the “Jew-communist” in the American consciousness. There are also those who argue that denying Polish antiSemitism and any responsibility for postwar pogroms is nonsensical because, as in many other European countries, there were people in Poland who saved Jews, who collaborated with Nazis, who participated in pogroms, or who remained “neutral” (Novick 2000; Sherwin 1997). Thus, in the context of such a politically charged landscape, some audience members might have been reluctant to discuss racism or intolerance, wishing to avoid potentially perilous confrontations.

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B ib l iog r a p hy

interviews Ana (pseudonym). 2002–03. Interviews by author. Elbląg, Poland. Audio cassette recording. Basia (pseudonym). 2002–03. Interviews by author. Elbląg, Poland. Audio cassette recording. Beata (pseudonym). 2002–03. Interviews by author. Elbląg, Poland. Audio cassette recording. Ewa (pseudonym). 2002–03. Interviews by author. Elbląg, Poland. Audio cassette recording. Krzysztof (pseudonym). 2001. Interview by author, 4 June, Tarnów, Poland. Audio cassette recording. Marek (pseudonym). 2001. Interview by author, 3 June, Tarnów, Poland. Audio cassette recording. Nelka (pseudonym). 2002–03. Interviews by author. Elbląg, Poland. Audio cassette recording. Randia (pseudonym). 2002–03. Interviews by author. Elbląg, Poland. Audio cassette recording. Zbigniew (pseudonym). 2001. Interview by author. 4 June, Tarnów, Poland. Audio cassette recording. Zefiryna (pseudonym). 2002–03. Interviews by author. Elbląg, Poland. Audio cassette recording.

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I nd ex

Abu-Lughod, Lila, 18 Allen, Catherine, 14, 20, 227n3 Amirkhanian, Y.A., 223n10 Amnesty International Report, 11 anthropology: claims of objectivity, 14; emergence of, 14; and theatre, 30; visual, 32 Antonova, R., 223n10 Arias, David Lagunas, 13, 223n10–12 audience: politicization of, 8, 15, 35; post-performance discussions with, 35 autoethnography, 17, 29–37, 178, 224n16; to destabilize power differentials, 17, 178 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 32, 228n9; grotesque in carnival, 32. See also dialogism Barba, Eugenio, 30, 226n1–2

Barsegian, Igor, 233n1 Bartosz, Adam, 10–12, 226n19 Benjamin, Walter, 20 Bentley, Eric Russell, 229n11 Bingham, Walter Van Dyke, 234n5 Blasco, Paloma Gay Y., 13, 223n10–11 Boal, Augusto, 229n14 Bochner, A., 17 Bourdieu, Pierre: and symbolic power, 232n4 Bourne, Eric, 10 Brecht, Bertolt, 137, 154, 188, 222n3, 229n12; a-effect (alienation effect), 123, 184, 222n3; and anti-empathy, 221n2, 222n3; epic theatre, 3, 32, 123, 184, 202, 204, 206, 207, 208, 222n3, 227n4; theatre for social critique, 8, 30, 32, 222n3 Bridger, Sue, 233n1

254 Brockett, Oscar G., 229n10–11 Burawoy, Michael, 233n1 Butler, Judith, 224n13 Calabro, Tony, 222n3 Castaneda, Quetzil E., 18 Catholicism in Poland, 4, 43 Cerwonka, Allaine, 17–18, 196 Chang, Kimberly A., 17, 179, 197, 224n16 Chataway, Cynthia J., 15–16 Cinderella Project–Prometheus Rebound, 99 Cioffi, Kathleen M., 34 Clifford, James, 190 Cohen-Cruz, Jan, 230n15 Cold War, 49 collaborative research, 14–18; in anthropological literature, 16; challenges of, 16, 18; power differentials in, 16–17, 50; power struggles in, 16 communism: collapse of (1989), 10; in Poland, 8 Conquergood, Dwight, 14, 20–1, 35, 233n1; and empathy, 35; and ethnographic performance, 35; and politicization, 35; and theatre performance as participatory observation, 35, 230n16 Crapanzano, V., 49 Crehan, Kate A.F., 24, 89, 226n20 Crick, Malcolm, 49 Crowe, David M., 10 Csepe, P., 223n10 Culhane, Dara, 15 Cultural Centre for International Cooperation in Elbląg, 25, 69– 72; author’s employment at, 25–

Index 7, 36, 70–1, 74, 99, 226n21; and corruption, 69; director, 25–7, 70; ethnographic theatre performance of Hope at, 148–76; and socialist Poland, 69–70; photograph, 26; and post-socialist Poland, 70; power relations in, 69–72; and sexism, 70; work ethos at, 69–70 Dance As I Play You (ethnographic performance), 74–5 D’Andrade, R., 178 Davies, Charlotte Aull, 196 De Soto, Hermine G., 16, 48 Dębica, pogrom in, 11 DeFiore, JoAnn, 18 Denzin, Norman K., 21, 225n18 Deutch, Nancy. L., 18 dialogism, 32. See also Bakhtin, Mikhail Diamond, Irene, 234n4 Dimitrijevic, Branislav, 33 discrimination (against the Polish Roma), 55–8; of the church, 4; contributing factors to, 12; in Elbląg, 43; social forces of, 10. See also Roma; Roma women Dudwick, Nora, 16, 48 Edwards, Elizabeth, 32–3 Elbląg, 5; abb Zamech Ltd, 39, 42; capital of Warmia, 42; children of, 43; and class, 38; culture of, 38, 42; Cultural Centre for International Cooperation in, 25, 36, 42; Daewoo Cars, 42; destruction of, 38; economy of, 38, 42; and education, 43; Elbing

Index (Prussia), 38; Elbląg Energy, 42; Elbrewery Co. Ltd., 42; ethnicity of, 38; Furnell, 42; Galeria El (photograph), 40; geography of, 38; history of, 38–44; Industrial Park (photograph), 41; industry of, 38–9, 42; map of, xii; Old City, 39 (photograph of gate), 40 (photograph), 42; Plastyk, 39; Poland Post, 42; and politics, 38; and privatization, 42; population of, 38; port of, 38; postwar, 38; post-socialist, 42, 70; and poverty, 43; and racism, 43; reconstruction of, 38, 42; socialist, 38, 69–70; and Solidarity, 42; substance abuse in, 43; tramline in (photograph), 28, 36, 38, 44; Truso, 39; unemployment in, 5, 42–3; and violence, 43; and World War I, 38; and World War II, 29, 38 Ellis, C., 17 ethnic minorities: in Poland, 10 ethnographer: as advocate, 97, 140; and artist, 18, 32; as confidante, 52; authority of, 31–3, 48, 141; bias of, 29, 195; complicated position as, 18, 48, 50, 139–47; compromises of, 18; as co-performer, 31; and empathy, 35; as facilitator, 97; “Faustian contract” of (Peter Loizos), 139– 47, 180, 184, 197; interpretive, 14; as juggler of power, 147; as mediator, 97, 180; moral and ethical challenges/decisions of, 18, 50–2, 139–47; and participant(s), antagonisms between,

255 49, 67, 72, 140; and participant(s) as friends, 48–9, 97, 130–1, 140; personal baggage of, 29–37; role of, 14, 16, 94; as source of hope for the Roma women, 65–7 ethnographic knowledge: production of, 31, 181–3 ethnographic methodology, 15, 24; challenging assumptions about, 18, 24; ethnography of discovery, 195–7 ethnographic process, 17 ethnographic text, 6; and accountability, 21; inclusion of participant narrative, 18; use and implications of tense, 20–1 ethnographic theatre: Name Day, 31; Name Day: The Defence, 31 ethnographic theatre production of Hope, 6, 21, 30–6, 51, 68–97; and aesthetic considerations, 92– 5, 100, 186–8; and the “aesthetic expressive,” 32; art vs. mass culture, 120–3, 143–4, 186–8; and audience response, 115, 119, 149, 167–72; author’s direct contributions to, 110–11; author’s post-production reflections on future ethnographic directions, 191–7; author’s reflections and observations on performance and audience responses, 148–76; and Bertolt Brecht, 137, 154–5, 184; characters, 101, 105; choreography/scenography, 75, 99–100, 106, 117; and collaboration, 14, 105–47, 184, 189; and costumes, 112–13, 116; as cultural ex-

256 change, 26; design, 75, 99–113; and dialogism, 32; and empathy, 184; as ethnographic participatory observation, 14, 31, 35; extra-rehearsal sessions, 117; and fiction, 21, 121; and gender, 128; and Illustrative Performing Technique, 186–8; and improvisation, 105, 107–10, 117, 183–4; JeanPaul Sartre (No Exit), 171; and Jerzy Grotowski, 185–7; and Józef Szajna, 185; and knowledge/construction of knowledge, 31, 181–4; and melodrama, 123; and metaphor, 32–3, 122, 185; as methodology, 15, 24, 30–1; and montage, 188, 234n8; and negotiation, 105, 181–2; objectives of, 101; participant roles in, 6, 73, 75; photographs of, 150– 3; plot development, 101–19; and polyphony, 31–2, 185, 234n6; and politicization, 31–3, 136, 138, 188, 190, 234n9, 235n10; and post-performance discussions/conversations with audience members, 35, 168–76, 189; and post-performance discussions/conversations with participants, 172–6; practical considerations, 113–14; pre-rehearsal sessions with the actors, 83–95; pre-rehearsal sessions with the Roma women, 95–7; pre-rehearsal sessions with the Roma women and actors, 75–83; publicity of, 148; and realism, 121–2, 186–7; rehearsals, 98–

Index 147; rehearsal schedule, 76, 98; and reflexivity, 31–2, 111, 137, 148–76, 184–5, 202, 204, 206, 207, 208; and Roma taboos, 116–17, 121; Roma women directing, 106–10, 120–47 ; script/text, 21, 75, 94, 98–119, 201–17; and soap opera, 120–3; studio, 75–6; and to study power, 31–2; to study violence, 14, 35, 77; stylization, 186–7; and Tadeusz Kantor, 184; technical considerations, 113–14; theatre company formation, 68–97; and verisimilitude, 121, 187. See also Dance As I Play You; Conquergood, Dwight; Hope; Horses and Angels; Mienczakowski, Jim; Stoller, Paul ethnographic theatre production of Hope (emergent images/motifs), 77; campfire, 104; celebrations, 103, 207–9; children, 104, 166, 216; coffin, 112, 116–17; dance, 104, 107, 137, 160–1, 208, 233n7; death, 102, 148, 153, 201, 216–17; dogs, 102–4, 111, 115–16, 157–9, 161, 163–7, 204, 207, 209, 211–17, 231n3– 4; domestic violence, 103–4, 110, 162–3, 165–7, 211–14, 216; education 102, 156, 204; equality, 135; familial relations/roles, 106, 108, 114, 155–6, 188–9, 203; fortune-telling, 156–7, 203–4; “free nature,” 104; freedom, 111; funeral, 102, 149, 154, 201–2; hair, 106–7, 212; hope,

Index 160, 213–14, 217; hunger, 103; infidelity, 102, 109, 163, 212; kidnapping, 101–2, 104–5, 159, 166, 207, 216; life story, 102, 114–15, 201–17; marriage, 102, 107–9, 158, 160, 163, 205, 207; meals, 105, 137, 209; memory, 103, 111, 146, 158–9, 162, 202, 204, 206–11, 213; mental health, 105, 115, 146, 161, 163, 167, 211–12, 216; music, 111, 113, 137, 161–2, 208–10, 233n7; poverty, 156–7, 160, 203; pregnancy/childbirth, 105, 116, 163, 165–6, 212, 215; preliminary, 103; schizophrenia, 103, 146, 167, 211–12, 216–17; suicide, 103, 167, 217; table, 103, 121, 158; taboo, 116, 165; tradition, 112, 135, 137, 191, 207–8, 233n7; violence, 102–3, 106–7, 114–16, 162–3, 188, 209–10; weddings, 102, 107, 112, 114, 137–8, 149, 160, 207–9; women’s bodies, 116 ethnography: and authenticity, 33; and collaboration, 14–18, 31; of discovery, 195–7; interpretive, 15; as methodology, 14; and participatory research, 15, 31, 44– 51; “of the particular,” 18; performance, 30–4; and photography, 32; and reflexivity, 15, 29, 32; on the Roma, 13, 223n12; study of violence, 13; and trust, 6–7, 27, 36, 49–52, 68, 72–3, 95–7, 131 European Commission against

257 Racism and Intolerance (ecri), 12 European Roma Rights Center (errc), 11 Fabian, Johannes, 1, 14, 16, 21, 30–1, 182; “denial of coevalness,” 88; and performance ethnography, 31, 35 Farnell, B., 224n13 Farquhar, Judith, 224n13 fascism, 29 field, the (ethnographic): author’s disappointment in, 16, 25, 50, 189; author’s doubts about, 7–8, 27–8, 36, 49–50, 67, 138, 147, 177; challenges of, 14–18, 21, 48–50, 67, 70–4, 93–7, 139–47, 177–97; fragmentary nature of, 196; health risks of, 50; power relations in, 16–17, 32, 49, 66, 94, 97, 120–47, 196–7; language/communication and, 8, 18–19, 27, 49; leaving, 177, 197–9; rethinking, 16, 25, 138, 178–9, 191–7; setting up, 6, 21– 3; shortcomings of, 139, 178–9; starting over, 25, 27, 178; translation in, 18–20 field notes, 6; anonymity, 6; documentation methods, 19–20, 51–2, 148, 177, 224n18; and language, 19; life stories, 51–67, 224n18; pseudonyms, 7, 21, 41, 76; translation of, 20 fieldwork: author’s goals/motivation to engage in, 8–9, 15–16, 29–37, 49 135–6; funding of,

258 25–7, 71–2; “improvisational” aspect of, 18; preliminary, 3, 29– 37; risk, 6–7, 36, 50, 68, 73–4, 96–7. See also ethnography Filipowicz, Halina, 33–4, 229n12 Findley, Robert, 229n12 Fischer, Michael M.J., 14 Fonseca, Isabel, 12, 231n1, 232n3 fortune-telling. See Roma: and fortune-telling Foucault, Michel, 1, 23–4, 196; feminist critique of, 234n4; and ideology, 24, 180; and power, 24, 179, 181, 234n4 Gadjo (Gadje, pl.): 19, 49; as racially inferior, 49, 231n1 Garner, Nathan, 14, 20, 227n3 Gdansk, 5, 38 Geertz, Clifford, 14, 21 Gierszewski, Stanislaw, 38 Ginsburg, Faye, 32, 227n6 Giza-Poleszczuk, Anna, 10, 86 Glass, Aaron, 191 Gozdziak, Elzbieta M., 10 Gramsci, Antonio, 23–4, 196; and hegemony, 24, 180, 226n20; and power, 24, 179, 181 Greenhouse, Carol J., 18, 196 Grotowski, Jerzy, 30, 185, 187, 222n4, 226n2, 229n12; influence on author, 8, 33–4; acting methodologies of, 9, 229n13; and Polish Laboratory Theatre, 222n4; poor theatre, 34, 222n4 Groves, Julian McAllister, 17, 179, 197, 224n16 gulags, Soviet, 30

Index Guy, Will, 10, 13 Gyukits, G., 223n10 Hall, Stuart, 33, 228n8–9 Hallett, Tim: “constructed community,” 178 Haney, Lynne, 12 Harstock, Nancy, 234n4 hate crimes, 6, 11 hegemony, 24; through coercion, consent and force, 24, 180–1; Gramsci and, 24; Henry, Marsha Giselle, 18 Herzfeld, Michael, 1 Hildy, Franklin J., 229n10–11 Holley, D, 11 Holt, Nicholas, 17 Horses and Angels (ethnographic performance), 71–5 Huisman, Kimberly, 18 Human Rights Watch (Helsinki), 11 Humphries, Beth, 16 Huyssen, Andreas, 33 ideology: anti-Roma, 12; Foucault and, 24; of modernism, 33, 227n7 illusion-breaking technique (in theatre), 32, 227n4–5. See also Brecht, Bertolt; Kantor, Tadeusz Illustrative Performing Technique (Teatr Korzenie), 9, 122, 144, 186–8, 229n13; and the grotesque, 34; and “ideology of modernism,” 34. See also physical theatre injustice, 6 interviews, 51–2; shaping of partic-

Index ipant’s responses in, 66–7; methods, 19, 52, 224n18 Jaruzelski, Wojciech, 30 Kabakchieva, E., 223n10 Kantor, Tadeusz, 32, 185, 222n5, 229n12, 234n7, 234n6–8; and Dada, 33, 222n5; and illusionbreaking techniques, 184, 222n5, 227n5; influenced by Constructivism, Dada, Informel Art, and Surrealism, 222n5; influence on author, 8, 33–4 Kelly, J.A., 223n10 Kennedy, Elizabeth L., 15 Kłossowicz, Jan, 34 Kobiałka, Michał, 34 Kraków, 5 Krasner, David, 229n10 Krausnick, Michail, 12 Kuehnast, Kathleen, 49 language: participant use of first native, 19, 49; Polish, 18–20; Romany, 8–19, 27, 49, 99. See also field Lemon, Alaina, 13 Lester, Rebecca J., 224n13 Levinson, Martin P., 224n12 life stories, 224n18; methods, 52, 224n18; recording of, 51–2; Roma, 51–67, 75–83, 100–19, 230n3–4 Linde, Charlotte, 225n18 Lindlof, Thomas R., 77, 182, 225n18, 234n5 Lock, Margaret, 224n13

259 Loizos, Peter, 139 Lucassen, Leo, 10, 12 Lukacs, Georg, 227n7 lyceum in Elbląg: author’s, 9; photograph, 9 Madison, Soyini D., 14 Malesevic, Sinisa, 70 Malkki, Liisa H., 17–18, 196 Marcus, George E., 14–15, 185 Marody, Mira, 10, 86 martial law in Poland, 30 Mascarenhaus, Fernando, 15 Mayall, D., 10 Medvedev, P.N., 228n9 melodrama, 33, 229n11 Mienczakowski, Jim, 21, 35, 195; ethno-drama, 35, 229n14–15; participant empowerment, 35; politicization, 189–90; “sensuous scholarship,” 35 Mława, pogrom in, 11, 54 modernism: theatre aesthetic of, 34, 227n7; and elitism, 33; high art vs. mass culture, 33 Moi, Toril, 33–4 Moore, Bruce Victor, 234n5 Morąg: deportation of Romanian Roma from, 25; ethnographic performance in, 24; Romanian Roma in, 22–5 Myers, Fred R., 185 Myers, L., 10, 185 Name Day (ethnographic performance), 31, 227n5 Name Day: The Defence (ethnographic performance), 31, 227n5

260 Narayan, Kirin, 17–18, 21 naturalism, 33, 228n10 Nazis, 29; concentration camps, 30 Neale, Steve, 228n9 ngos: reports on Roma, 11 Nicola Savarese, 226n1–2 Novick, Peter, 12, 235n10 Okely, Judith, 13, 223n10–11 Olsztyn, 5, 22, 25, 27; Old City (photograph), 41; Roma in, 22 Osinski, Zbigniew, 30, 222n4, 226n2 parallax effect, 32, 227n6. See also Ginsburg, Faye participant (participatory) observation, ethnographic, 14–15, 28, 44–51; performance as, 14, 31, 35, 230n16. See also Conquergood, Dwight; Fabian, Johannes participants: and childcare, 99, 129; collaboration with, 14–15, 31, 81, 105–47, 190; and confidentiality, 50–1, 76; conflicting agendas of, 134–57; developing rapport with, 4–8, 27–8, 44–52, 67, 75–83; doubts of, 69, 72–3, 98, 99; empowerment of, 35, 138, 191; etiquette guidelines for, 76; and informed consent, 51, 76, 148, 230n5; internal strife, 48, 72–4, 82, 92–7, 120–47, 184; and language barrier, 19; morale of, 95, 120–47; narrative of, 18; and non-Roma (students), 74–5, 80–1, 86–7; non-Roma participants’ perceptions of Roma participants, 84–95, 99,

Index 173–4, 180; perceived benefits as, 49–50, 52, 66, 69, 75, 96, 124, 127, 134–5, 173–6; point of view, 15; power relations, 16–17, 66, 72, 80–3, 94, 97, 105, 120– 47, 179–85, 190, 193; reluctance of, 8, 27, 69, 73–4, 95–7; remuneration of, 7, 27–8, 48–9, 73, 99, 134–5; roles, 6, 73, 75; Roma participants’ perceptions of non-Roma participants, 95–7, 99, 124, 175–6, 180; schematic of, 219–20; and socio-economic status, 86–7; voice of, 18, 35 participatory research, 15, 31, 224n14–15 performance, theatre: as means of doing ethnography, 14–15; as mode of ethnographic participatory observation, 14, 31 Pine, Frances, 233n1 Plesniarowicz, Krzysztof, 34, 223n5, 227n5 pogroms in Poland: aimed at the Roma, 11; in Dębica (1994), 11; in Mława (1991), 11, 54 Poland: and anti-Semitism, 82, 235n10; concentration camps in, 30; and the disabled, 44; economy of, 10; the elderly of, 44; ethnic minorities in, 10; and the European Union, 12, 43, 65, 230n1; gays and lesbians in, 44; homophobia in, 44; map of, xi; and martial law, 30; and Nazis, 29; post-communist transition of, 10; post-socialist, 31, 70; postsocialist government of, 10; and poverty, 29; and racism, 87; and

Index sexism, 87; and sexuality, 89; and social assistance, 44; socialist, 29, 31, 53, 69–70; and Solidarity, 30; and the Soviets, 29; and Stalinism, 29; totalitarian government of, 8, 30; unemployment in, 5, 10, 43; women in, 10, 44; and World War II, 29 police brutality: against the Roma, 11, 23 Polish Press Agency (pap), 11 politicization, 31–2, 35, 136, 138, 188, 194, 222n3; and empathy, 221n2, 222n3; non-verbal, 35. See also Bakhtin, Mikhail; Brecht, Bertolt; Conquergood, Dwight Polskie Radio, 11 polyphony, 31–2, 234n6. See also Bakhtin, Mikhail; Ginsburg, Faye power, 31; in collaborative research, 16; reflexive analysis of, 17, 224n16; relations of, 15–16, 32, 49, 66, 178–9; and “silent authorship,” 17; subversion of, 24; symbolic, 132–3, 180, 232n4; as theoretical framework, 23–4, 179–84, 196. See also Gramsci, Antonio; Foucault, Michel; Bourdieu, Pierre Puckett, Lisa Morrison, 11–12 Quinby, Lee, 234n4 Razack, Sherene, 137, 233n8 realism, 33, 121, 228n8 reflexivity, 15, 17, 29, 31–2, 177– 97, 202, 204, 206, 207, 208; and author’s reflections on ethno-

261 graphic performance of Hope, 148–76 ; and Jay Ruby, 32 Reid, Pamela Trotman, 16 research, ethnographic. See ethnography researcher, ethnographic. See ethnographer Ringold, Dena, 10 Robertson, Leslie, 15 Roma: access to education, 11, 53, 57; access to employment, 5, 11, 45–7, 53; access to health-care, 11, 57; access to housing, 11, 45–6, 53, 56; activism, 22; author’s memories of, 9–10; and caravans, 104, 230n6; and Catholicism, 48; children, 4, 10– 11, 13, 44–7, 89–90; community gatherings/rituals, 49–50; and crime, 79, 90–2; deportation of, 23, 25; discrimination against the, 4, 10–13, 43–4, 54–8, 79, 95–7; and domestic violence, 46, 50, 63; in Eastern Europe, 10; education, 46–7, 55; in Elbląg, 43; and emigration, 48–9, 64–6; in Europe, 12; as the exotic other, 57, 137; and fear of, 6, 10, 12–13; and fortune-telling, 6, 9, 22, 28, 35, 43, 45–8, 51, 53, 65, 79, 133; and health, 46–7, 62; and hunger, 45, 53; internal strife, 48, 50; life expectancy of, 11; living conditions, 7, 11, 23, 44–7; marital practices of, 12, 58, 85–6, 90; and mental health, 45–6, 62–3; and mixed marriages, 47, 62; in Morąg, 22–5; in Olsztyn, 22; persecution of, 6,

262 10; plight of, 10, 29; pogroms against, 11, 54; and poverty, 7, 23, 45, 47, 53; and racism, 4, 10–13, 23, 43–6, 54, 57–8, 81; religious customs of, 12, 47–8, 223n8; retaliation against, 11; and prejudice, 58, 95; non-Roma relations, 49, 54, 56, 95–7; and sexuality, 89, 223n10; and social assistance/programs, 45, 47, 55; special education, 11, 23, 46, 57; stereotypes of, 4, 10, 12, 44, 84– 95; studies about, 10–11, (ethnographic) 13; and substance abuse, 46, 63; in Tarnów, 22; and trade, 45–7, 51, 53, 79; and tradition, 48, 58–62, 85–90; and violence, 4–5, 10–14, 23, 52–67, 79; and wealth, 47 Roma women: coping strategies, 77–80, 86, 92; and domestic violence, 50, 59–60, 63, 65, 77–80; and dress codes; and gender roles, 128, 61–2, 78, 86; and homophobia, 128; and hope, 64–6; hopelessness, 53, 230n6, 63–6, 77; and health, 62; and internal strife, 74, 82, 131–3; kidnapping of, 58–9; life stories of, 51–67, 75–83, 230n3; and mental health, 62–3, 74, 77, 115; oppression of, 12, 58; and rape, 59, 82; and resistance, 59, 61–2, 65, 78–80, 86, 92, 124; stereotypes of, 12, 84–95; stigmatization of, 61; studies about, 13; and substance abuse, 63, 77, 86; and suicide, 53, 63; and taboos, 82–3, 223n10; and tradition, 58–62,

Index 85–9; violence against, 3, 13, 15, 23–4, 35, 53–4, 58–60, 63, 65, 77–83, 86 Romania: Nicolae Ceausescu, 23, 226n19; Roma and social conditions of, 23, 226n19 Romany, 8, 19, 27, 49, 99, 224n17 Rosaldo, Renato, 35 Ruby, Jay, 17, 32 Sakwa, Richard, 10 Schechner, Richard, 14, 30, 34, 227n3, 229n14 Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, 224n13 Schneider, Arndt, 18 Schutzman, Mady, 230n15 Scott, James, 86, 92, 224n14 Seal, D.W., 223n10 Sherwin, Byron L., 235n10 Shohat, Ella, 228n8 Silverman, Carol, 13, 223n11 skinheads, 7, 11 Sobotka, Ewa, 10–11 socialism, 29; Soviets, 29 Sparkes, Andrew C., 224n12 Stacey, Judith, 224n16 Stalin, Joseph, 29 Stalinism, 29 Stam, Robert, 228n8 Stanislavski, Constantin Sergeyevich: psychological realism of, 9, 122, 228n8 stereotypes of the Roma, 12–13; men, 12; positive, 12; in western discourses, 12; women, 12 Stevens, Anne, 10 Stewart, Michael, 10, 12–13, 223n10–11, 231n1 (chapter 5)

Index Stoller, Paul, 35, 224n13 Storey, John, 33 Strauss, Daniel, 12 Stuthoff (Poland), 30 Sutherland, Anne, 13 Suwałki (Poland), 47 Sway, Marlene, 13, 139 Szajna, Józef, 185, 223n6, 229n12, 234n8; and expressionism, 33; influence on author, 8, 33–4; and surrealism, 33; and visual theatre, 223n6 Tarnów (Poland), 25; Roma in, 22 Teatr Korzenie (Theatre at the Roots): Illustrative Performing Technique (acting methodology), 9; and Grotowski’s “poor theatre,” 34 theatre aesthetic: author’s, 8–9; autonomy from culture, 33; modernist, 34 theatre, avant-garde, 33; and the grotesque, 34; Grotowski, Jerzy, 8, 33; “ideology of modernism,” 33; Illustrative Performing Technique, 9; Kantor, Tadeusz, 8, 33; of Poland, 9; Szajna, Józef, 8, 33 theatre, physical: 9, 14, 34, 191, 224n13; and construction of ethnographic knowledge, 31, 183; vs. spoken text, 14. See also Illustrative Performing Technique theatre, political, 191; author’s experience with, 8–9, 30–1; and Brecht, 8, 32, 221n2, 222n3; Illustrative Performing Technique, 9; in Poland, 221n2; politicization of audience, 8, 15, 35,

263 221n2, 222n3; as social critique, 8, 15, 32, 138. See also ethnographic theatre Tonowicz, Julia, 42 totalitarianism: in Poland, 8 translation, 18–21; Walter Benjamin on, 20. See also field; field notes Truman, Carole, 16 trust, 6–7, 27, 36, 49–52, 72–3, 96, 130, 180 Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt, 21 Turner, Victor, 14, 30, 227n3, 229n14 Tymicki, Jerzy, 34, 229n12 unemployment, 5, 10, 45–6 University of Manitoba, 9 University of Winnipeg, 9 Verdery, Katherine, 10, 69, 233n1 verisimilitude, 33, 121, 228n9 Vianna, Eduardo, 16 violence: challenges of studying, 13–14; and education, 30, 54; ethnographic study of, 13; familial, 50; physical, 4–5; in socialist Poland, 29, 43; against Roma, 4– 5, 10–14, 23, 52–67, 79; against Roma women, 3, 13, 15, 23–4, 35, 53–4, 58–60, 63, 65, 77–83, 86; and World War II, 29–30. See also Roma women; social memory of, 29; studies about, 10, 13–14 Wałęsa, Lech: on the Roma, 54 Warszawa, 5 Wasserfall, R., 17

264 Wiles, Timothy J., 222n3, 228n8 Willems, Wim, 10, 12 Wodzisław Sląski, 11 Wolcott, Harry F., 18 Wolf, Eric, 21 women in Poland, 44; domestic roles, 10, 44; and employment, 44

Index World War II, 29 Wright, Christopher, 18 Wrocław, 11 Yeich, Susan, 15 Zola, Émile, 229n10 Zoon, Ina, 226n19