Long Live Regina! is a documentary/auto-ethnographic theatre performance based on personal experiences and stories of Roma women about the way they are treated in healthcare and social service institutions. The focus of the play is the everyday, institutional stereotype of the “irresponsible mother”, a label that these women constantly have to fight against.

Eight Roma women are on stage together with one professional actor, Lilla Sárosdi (from Krétakör). The setting is a kitchen, where the women chat as they prepare dishes. Getting ready to celebrate Regina’s birthday is the fictitious frame through which the women’s personal stories are told and performed. The emerging stories reflect their dealings with the welfare system, and their humiliation and marginalization at the hands of doctors, midwives and social workers.

Some stories end happily, with one mother relating how she fought successfully against the authorities taking her children into foster care. Others end harshly, such as the mother who milked herself and took it to the hospital every day to feed her premature child, only to be told one day, without any trace of empathy, that her child had died. Short scenes are tied together through hallgató songs (a genre of Roma music), which both separate the stories and weave them together.

The hour-long performance is followed by a presentation by the authors about the methodology employed to create it.

CREDITS

Actors: Renáta BÁDER, Mrs. Rita HORVÁTH, Zsanett HORVÁTH, Mrs. Vali KÁLLAI, Mrs. Noémi LAKATOS, Ilona ORGON, Anita RÁCZ, Judit SUHA, Lilla SÁROSDI

Digital storytelling facilitator: Anita LANSZKI
Sociodrama leader: Judith TESZARY
Assistant: Fruzsina HÁDA, Orsolya FÓTI
Costume: Gabriella KISS
Professional coordinator, researcher: Kata HORVÁTH
Dramaturge: Eszter GYULAY
Director: Edit ROMANKOVICS

REVIEWS

“The performance culminates in dramatic, uplifting and cathartic moments. Being present is what actually happens on stage and in the auditorium, as well as an inspirational awareness of important stories being told. These stories could repeat themselves anytime, since the world is not going to change in an instant. Roma women from Borsod County, Roma women from other regions, non-Roma women, and even men will continue to suffer from abuse: there will always be pain that needs to be discussed. However, the fact that tonight, in this space, all this can be told, and can be told in full, to an attentive, understanding and empathetic audience, promises a glimmer of hope for normality. This evening is the celebration of normality: the oppressed are given a voice, they can tell their stories and set down their burdens. ‘We no longer have to accept subjugation,’ they imply. At the curtain call, one of the performers gets out her smartphone and starts taking photos. Nothing like this has ever happened to her before. I hope they will continue to play this performance, here and elsewhere in the country. It is one of the most beautiful evenings of the season.” Andrea Tompa, Magyar Narancs

"In May of 2017 Trafó House of Contemporary Arts offered an unusual piece of documentary theatre, Long Live Regina!. The performers (bar one) were Romani women from Szomolya, a small village in the Hungarian countryside. From an aesthetic point of view the performance followed in the tradition of Germany’s Rimini Protokoll, putting everyday people as “experts”’ on the stage, but of greater importance from a Hungarian perspective it demonstrated the right of Romani women to represent themselves. (…) Overall, the project has a therapeutic and community-building aspect, where the output as a theatrical production can be shown to a wider audience.” Gabriella Schuller: A Female Psychodrama as Kitchen Sink Drama: Long Live Regina! in Budapest

SELF-THEATRE/HEARTVOICES

Self-theatre is a set of drama- and theatre-based participatory action research interventions that was launched five years ago. Through cooperation between theatre professionals, social scientists, practitioners in art pedagogy and art therapy, community workers and members of Roma communities, Self-theatre not only manages arts-based projects that raise awareness of the social conditions faced by the participants, but also makes efforts to distribute the “products” in the public sphere.

The HeartVoices branch of Self-theatre was created by a team of 7 professionals and 40 Roma women in Szomolya (North-East Hungary), building on socio-drama, digital storytelling and theatre pedagogy. The resulting play, entitled Long Live Regina!, is an hour-long auto-ethnographic play performed by the main characters themselves. Its main focus is the so-called “irresponsible motherhood” discourse of welfare services and the enduring fight of Roma women to cope with it. 

COPRODUCERS

SZOMARO

SUPPORTERS

EEA Grants, BADUR Foundation