| Treasury

mama

dajori

Through the fate of four generations, the performance Mama of the Czech ARA Art Company reveals to us how unfairly burdened the Roma women are by the adversities of history. Four stories, four eras, represented by different writers, based on personal interviews. In the first we get to know the contradictory but predictable everyday life of Czechoslovakia before World War II, then we get a glimpse into the communist era. The third part, set in the ’70s, shows how Roma children were forcibly removed from their families and placed in state care. Finally, the closing story tells the trauma of women who were illegally sterilized in the ’80s and have been carrying this burden to this day. With this play, the company is trying to draw attention to the importance of the issue and at the same time, help the victims to get the compensation they are legally entitled to from 2022 onwards.

"... I will have a pink dress . ... and it will be embroidered with gold roses
... and I will be very wise
... and I will save all the Roma!"

Creators

writer:	Líza Zima Urbanová
director:	David Tišer
cast:	Pavlína Matiová, Michal Žolták
music:	Roman Horváth, Milan Kroka, Tibor Žida
English translation:	James Morgan
by:	Ara Art Theater Company

trailer

background

In the Czech Republic and its predecessor Czechoslovakia, from the 1970s until the mid-2000s, hundreds of Roma women were surgically made infertile after giving birth to their children, without their knowledge.

The fact of the scandalous procedure - the exact nature of which is still in many respects obscured - was admitted by the Czech state in 2005, and former Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer apologised in 2009, but was at pains to stress that it was always a case of individual medical malpractice, not a centrally controlled, systemic crime. The state only took on a slightly greater responsibility when, in 2021, the Czech legislature passed a law allowing women who had undergone forced sterilisation to receive financial compensation of around 10.000 Euro. This was an important achievement in social organising against the systemic racism that affects Roma citizens in almost all walks of life in the Czech Republic.

Reviews

‘Mama primarily seeks to answer the question of how patriarchal attitudes that made women extras in their own lives were passed down through successive historical periods.’

MÉRCE

‘It is not an easy task for an adult actor to play a child role without giving an infantile impression. Matiová jumps from role to role, travels through time and history, grows up before our eyes and then becomes a child again. She tells a story, then pauses with a perfect sense, she plays with the limits of our tolerance. He eats a whole bun with a nice, leisurely gulp, sometimes grinning at us. He is honest and charming, which makes the stories she tells seem even more brutal.’

REVIZORonline.com

Materials to read

excerpts from the play

In case you would like to request availability to the full play and/or the full video about the performance, write an email to info@romaheroes.org and describe the aim of your request!

IN ENGLISH