Conversation  - You Didn’t See Anything! with the Roma Theatre Retrospective
Channel: HowlRound Theatre Commons
Date: 2020-09-29

Independent Theater Hungary presented a performance and conversation around You Didn’t See Anything! (Romania) as part of the Roma Theatre Retrospective 2020 livestreamed on the global, commons-based, peer produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Monday 28 September 2020 at 9:30 a.m. PDT (San Francisco, UTC -7) / 12:30 p.m. EDT (New York, UTC -4) / 17:30 BST (London, UTC +1) / 18:30 CEST (Budapest, UTC +2) / 19:30 EEST (Bucharest, UTC +3).

You Didn’t See Anything!
“On the 4th of March, 2014, Daniel Dumitrache, 26 years old, died inside Police Station 10 from district 3 in Bucharest. Daniel was an illegal parking man in the Old Center. When he saw the police patrol car he ran away. This is what caught policemen’s attention. They caught him and took him to the police station with no particular reason at all.”

In 2014 and 2015, Alex Fifea conducted a research on the circumstances of the young man’s death. The play analyses the social processes behind the murder and reconstructs the related dialogues. Testimonies of policemen, opinion of relatives and statements of the media all come to life in this play. Documents and poetry, prose and music help us to learn about police brutality that the members of the most vulnerable communities encounter, showing it through a tragic real-life story.

Written and performed by Alex Fifea
Music: Catalin Rulea
Directed by David Schwartz
In Romanian with English subtitles.

David Schwartz is a theatre director by training and a cultural worker involved in numerous politically-engaged performing arts projects. He’s earned his PhD at the Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj in 2016, with a thesis on socially-engaged theatre. He directed and co-wrote over 20 theatre performances, a short animation film and a documentary film (together with Andra Tarara). He is the founder of the Political Theatre Platform developed in Bucharest since 2013 and the co-initiator of 4TH Age Community Arts project developed together with the seniors of Moses Rosen retirement home of the Jewish Community in Bucharest, since 2009.

About the Series
Although Roma are the largest ethnic minority in Europe, they still experience high level of racism and have to deal with many societal issues. Additionally, Roma are being represented in a very stereotypical way in the media and art world. The Roma theater has more than a century long past with active professional theater groups in many European countries, but unfortunately, they are still hardly known. The Roma Heroes Theater Festival initiated by the Independent Theater Hungary is the only international Roma theater encounter in the World, which have been organized in every year since 2017. Many of the artists and their work are featured in this current series.

Judit Ignácz mostly worked at NGOs in Roma related projects, organizing and facilitating trainings, seminars concerning the topic of racism, human rights and non-formal education. She finished her studies of Master of Public Administration of School of Public Policy at Central European University and became a French and Romani language teacher at the University of Pecs. She also has experience in media and communication. She is passionate about human rights and non-formal education.