 Hello! My name is Rosa Maria Costes Cisneros and I am collaborating with the Independent Theatre Hungary. I'm very happy to sit down with Michael Cullens, who is a performer, an author of the work It's a Cultural Thing, or is it? And we'll be talking today about the work. But before we get into that, it'd be great, Michael, if you could introduce yourself, and then link us into the project. My name is Michael Cullens, I'm a member of the Irish travelling community. I've been involved in the acting business since 1986. My first professional job was in 1987 as an Irish traveller actor. And then about, I'd say about 1993 or 1994, I began to write my own stuff about the travelling community and traveller stories and traveller cultures, traveller culture and the way travellers are perceived and treated in Irish society and out through Europe. And so can you tell us... And one of the first shows I wrote was... Go ahead, one of the first shows you wrote. Yes, please. We seem to be just breaking up a little there. The very first play I wrote was a play called Cultural Thing. And Cultural Thing is loosely based on my own story of growing up in Ireland as a member of the Irish travelling community from the early 60s where travellers would have had an umalic lifestyle and would have made a living from tin smitten, chimney sweeping, seasonal work and buying and selling horses, making and painting wagons and doing the markets. And would have travelled from village to village and town to town. And then it comes from the 1960s right through his childhood up to where he's a teenager and then into adulthood. And the experience is then about living the countryside, being forced out of the countryside because social welfare came in. And the tin smitten and the travel way of life was dying out, so they brought in social welfare. And in order to have social welfare you needed a permanent address. So we were forced into the big towns and cities and pushed out the suburbs into these big fields which had no facilities like water, toilets, electricity or refuge collection. And then my family would have moved to Dublin and grown up in Dublin in the field and then having to try and get into school. And because we were members of the travelling community we weren't allowed to mix or weren't accepted into the schools where there was settled people schools as we called them. So they built those freefrabs for traveller schools and they would have been placed at the back of boys schools and girls schools and we would have ended up in a girls school about 30 or 40 travellers. And it was then segregated playtime at the time. We weren't allowed to play in the playground with the settled children. And at that time in society in general there would have been segregated social welfare, segregated accommodation. So basically we were kind of pushed out into the margins of our society and we would have to move up in that. Now in the play itself because you're a child you don't see this. And the way that the story is told it's told with a fun laughter, sadness and sometimes a little bit of music and a little bit of singing in that. So the story is told in a way it's actually told to the eyes of a child. And that's the reason why it works because when I wrote the piece I was saying how do I do this play now without repeating the one thing or trying to get people to feel sorry oh here we go again these poor travellers were treated badly and now they want to tell us what we don't wrong. So what I don't know is I created a young character because everybody at one stage or another was a child and you don't actually see what society does to you as a child you just get on with life you enjoy it. And I have to say even thinking back when I was a child the freedom grown up with all your cousins the sense of the extended family your grandparents were on the side all your cousins were on the side we used to go to the fields playing, climbing trees you had your own din house so it was wonderful grown up it's only when you look back as an adult when you have your own kids and they kind of go oh yeah that was wrong this could have been done better because when it comes to education and employment we were very badly done done by because I would have grew up in a massive extended family and I'd say about 80 maybe 95% of them couldn't really arrive as adults so that means that they couldn't go for employment you couldn't go for jobs that non travelers could go for you know like the settled people's jobs and then when you did go for jobs in the low skilled jobs you couldn't actually say who you are you had to keep your identity to yourself you're afraid that you might meet people who were very nice people who were not members of the traveling community but you couldn't express who you are because you didn't want you were afraid that you might find out who you are and then the prejudice would come out and the discrimination and you'd lose your job so we had that other side of it as well. And it's quite powerful this you know telling the story but through the eyes of a child and you know it's when we're mad you know sometimes I remember someone once told me I was very mad with someone and they said you know Rosa imagine them as a child and when I could do that it's soft in something for me and so it's lovely that you you know you through the eyes of a child it's more accessible the you know the audience might not feel so harangued so kind of overwhelmed by the by the the work that they could then perhaps find something that's relatable in there so it's a lovely twist and in a way to to also offer something to the viewer to the audience. I totally agree with you like when I when I when the when the light went down on my head oh yeah the eyes of a child I knew that I could get away with so much and it could be so truthful because there's a saying from the out of babes and when you're playing the child like you're an adult on stage and then you turn into this child character the audience seem to accept you as the child character and then you can get away with everything and the show is quite funny in like particularly when you have to go to like if you could if you're trying to imagine living in a field with no running water or electricity or toilets and then you had to get up in the middle of the night now you could get away with doing your number two as they say but when you had to do your number one you had to find a place to go and one of the stories in the play was we had these it was in the summertime of the year we had these high nettles so we'd walk into the middle of the nettles and we'd get boards and we'd flatten the nettles and we'd make a den so you could go and use that as a toilet and then in the wintertime the nettles died so you had no place to hide to go to the toilet so you go over to the wall and then you had to bring somebody with you to keep an eye out because you didn't want to somebody catch you with your trousers down and you didn't care if settled people caught you because you didn't know it was the travellers you were ashamed of and now you can imagine a little young person anybody coming there Johnny Johnny is sure no there's nobody coming all right and then this little girl walks out to I seen you shouting at the wall last night it wasn't me it wasn't me do you not shout yourself do you not you know so you're trying to create that image and then the way to close the images if you think it was bad for those children to try and find a place to go to the toilet could you imagine what it was like for our mothers at the time and some of them pregnant and that's how you close the line so you you hooked them as a child and then you let them off as a child you hooked them on the line if you could imagine it was our mothers and then you just go straight into something else and then when I went back to school next day the nun says right children it's your playtime now and then you go back you into another story and I think that's the beauty of doing something like this because it is part of society it is part of who we are it is part of who they are because of the way society was at the time at the time and the way people were treated and not just like the Irish traveling community you had the Roman Egyptians all over Europe you had the Aborigines you had the Native American Indians you had the African Americans you had the working class people in working class areas all over the world all over Europe so you were trying to open up to everybody and I remember doing this show in India and the way people and I done it in Leeds in England as well and I done it in London and I remember that was black people in the audience Nigerians and and some Chinese people and they could actually relate to some of the stories that because because you were the child that they were yes that's how it worked yeah that's how it worked and so these stories you said at the beginning that a lot of them came from your own experiences was that true or was it just other stories as well that maybe people told you and did you kind of make some of them can you talk a little bit about that yeah and most of the stories would have come from my own childhood because I was born in a time where travelers were coming to the end of the nomadic lifestyle so I would have slept in the tent I would have slept in the old barrel top wagon which it's very similar it's not similar to look at the gypsy wagon but it's the same idea as the Romani wagon and then the whole move from from the traditional way of life to being forced into a big citizen town because of social welfare and then being pushed to the margins of society in the field with all these different travelers who you didn't know because travelers never traditionally lived together in big crowds they lived together in their own small extended family which would be maybe four or five families would live together and you had a kind of a circle that you would have traveled around the country because you knew you do the tin smitten and you do your heart stealing and you do your seasonal work so you went around again he got back to where you were staying the first time they were ready to accept you to do something else and then the whole move to Dublin and then the experience of living on a traveler's side with all these different travelers then grown up in Dublin and the word Knacker being used and the treatment of travelers when they went to the shops or went to a restaurant or without a drink and then the whole school experience where you weren't accepted they had their as they used to say their quota or their fair share of the members of the traveling community so they might have two travelers in each class and then the rest weren't accepted and then that whole thing about segregated play times and then when they got a bit older and you had to go for social welfare it was a segregated social welfare system then when you got older and you got married and you were trying to get your family settled in proper accommodation and the whole thing around this the segregated accommodation so there was everything seemed to be set in a way that was pushing us away from who we were and down the road where they were saying it was almost just keep those people out of all area and then you had people saying you know particularly when they came to accommodation that they know the price of the houses and lower the price of land and none of this was ever true and we notice that over the years that if you build a housing estate beside a travel site it gets sold every bit as quick as it would if you built it anywhere else because accommodation in Ireland is so hard to get people don't care they're just glad to be inside their own home and then the whole thing around you know going out with your friends and you play soccer then you grew up and you played soccer with settled people then you go to the pub for a drink and then you be the one to be refused out of 12 young men that looked exactly like you and who you were but because you were a member of the travel community I'm sorry you can't come in here today and then trying to deal with that internally so I would say that the play itself was like therapy for me because every time I'd done it I let something go and I was hoping that people that particularly members of the travel community and the settled community when they would see it they would let something go or accept something you know because the way the play kind of worked was that you enjoy this and then maybe a week this is what I've been told by people who've seen the show a week after something would happen in their daily life and they go oh now I know what he was saying now I understand what the story means but the story could have been really funny or really sad they would pick up on that and I think that's yeah that's that's put to your question yes I would have used enough of my own experience because when I started writing one of the best piece of advice I got from somebody was write from your own, write your own stories write from what's in yourself, write what's in your head and your heart and I would have listened because when I was growing up I couldn't read or write very well I had a great memory it was one of the things that developed from not being able to read or write was when somebody would tell me something I would always remember so when I'd be sitting there and you'd be sitting at the fire as a child or you'd be sitting at the table as a teenager or you'd be sitting at the bar having a pint as a man I'd listen to people talking and I'd take their stories and I always had the ability if I'd done a show in one county and I went to the next county and I usually try and meet traveller families or travellers who were working say within the train and centres or who are youth workers or community workers or if I'd done something I would rope it into the show that night because it was important for that area so the work like it's a a cultural thing in progress man progress man I'd be almost telling another story that might come from the day that I landed to set the show up I was talking to some travellers and the traveller culture is the way that we can hold and tell stories I had so many questions but you've already answered many of them and one of those was about any stories that people might have told you after viewing it because you wrote the play or it was first performed in 2005 and so a lot of time has gone by but as you're saying you constantly are adding things to it and it's changing depending on where you are and who you're meeting and so are you still performing it and do you still kind of respond to the community where you are and it's current the way it's performed and now I would have revamped the show about two years ago because it was a one-hander then it was a two-hander then it went back to a one-hander and because of the situation of young people in Ireland and the whole education system because we have more and more younger travellers going to primary school and secondary school not toward level education yet, very few and there was a couple of things happening in the education system and there was a couple of things happening to young travellers so I rebamped it and brought in a young actor who's my son Johnny and Johnny's just gone 16 now so Johnny would have been maybe 10 or 11 at the time and he would have he was the son and I was the adult so I was still telling my story but I was telling my story to him and then he was telling his story to me in the year 2017 or 2018 so the audience was getting two different stories almost two different worlds of the same show about the travelling community so my story was going one way and we combined it so it was almost like I was telling him my story he was telling me his story and that's how I rebamped it and it we premiered it down in Galway for the first time and it worked very well so both of us were over the moon because obviously when you change something you're always worried because it actually worked very well and that's what we're doing at the moment and yes we're still performing and we haven't performed anything I haven't done anything I'd say 19 months because of covert which is very hard so what I've done was I wrote a script a film script that I wanted to do to keep my mind occupied in these hard times so yes we are we're still modernising it sometimes we go back and find a story that might relate to something that's been done today and then we choose that story as well fantastic and can you tell me a little bit about the title it's a catchy title it's also a quite intense title and it's asking a question immediately so if you could tell me a little bit about the title the title is a cultural thing or is it a cultural thing or is it a travel and progression a cultural thing or is it you know when you're trying to write something it's like another show I done which was about a father losing a son through suicide because suicide is very very high in the travelling community and I was trying to come up with a name for that and I remember walking around and I remember seeing magpies and when I was a child travellers were very busy and you would see magpies outside the door you wouldn't go out and you'd be blushing your face one for sorrow, two for joy and then one for sorrow, two for joy three for girl, four for boy five for something you know but there was a word in it like you would lose if you've seen one magpie you have a bad look for the day and if you've seen two there's one for sorrow, two for joy but that's not fair stories to wait for the next one so I said I seen a magpie landed on a pile on and then I went oh yeah magpies on the pile on that would work because both travellers and settled people would relate to the name and then cultural thing when you talk about culture, Irish culture which Irish culture is a beautiful culture we have a beautiful land we have a beautiful history and then from the eyes of the Europeans or the rest of the world the Irish culture is mythic with leprechauns with Prince and Guinness we're all very highly educated with the Bucketels and then you have the travel community which our culture which was the dramatic lifestyle the tin smitten the romantic stories, the romantic songs the beautiful big extended families living freely out through society no worries everybody gets on well and then you have the other side of it where you have the discrimination the racism, the prejudice the hurt that's caused to people the way people are seen by other members of society and is that or part of our culture? so the line is a cultural thing or is it so which one is it, is that part of our culture or is this notion that we have part of our culture and progress is that the word, you know, a cultural thing now and then a travelling progress is we have never lost or walked away or denied who we were and who we are even though they tried to assimilate us they tried to push us out to the margins of society they tried to block our ways when it came to trying to make a living trying to rear our children trying to have a life and that's where the cultural thing or is it and that's where that title comes from because of the romantic notion of Irish culture and so my final question if you could describe or maybe use three words to describe the play what might you say what three words or phrases might come to mind three words would be entertaining a brilliant story three words would be the three lines I would come up with off the top of my head to explain the three to explain the three questions is this show is being told for the first time by a member of the Nectar minority group who happens to be a storyteller these stories are real stories there are stories that some of the stories are related to the but some of the stories are related to society they're related to other people they're related to other groups like the Roman Egyptians like the Native American Indians if you got somebody to tell you my story from any other community you could tell you that story and I think that's the beauty of that story but being up on stage and inviting an audience into your life what affects you as a young child grown up being able to relate and tell beautiful stories and some of them very hard and very sad stories and having the audience you having the audience in the palm of your hand because every so often I would stop to see could I hear a pin drop and sometimes you would hear a pin drop and that's when you're saying to yourself just from my own perspective of what it means to me is oh yeah they're right there with you I could actually not say anything and I still have them and I think once they come and see the show especially the live show they would feel the energy, the vulnerability and the happiness of that character and I think for me that would cover the three questions is that looking at on Tube is great doing the show online with the circumstances that we're living in now with no choice but you cannot be alive performance they can feel them and they can feel you when you can hear them breathe or cough and they can hear you at the back of the stage and come on very nervously and I think all that adds to the show and to the stories I hope that was the question we were asked it's a lovely way to end the conversation and the stories and the places that you've toured the work and where you've shared the work and you know your vulnerability and your sharing of your story is inviting people to share theirs but reflect on their own so thank you so much thank you so much very welcome thank you and I love the idea of telling the story through the eyes of a child and so I you know we can go out into the world kind of remembering that rediscovering the world through the eyes of a child remembering the good and the bad but also through the eyes of a child so thank you so much Michael thank you so much for sitting down with us and for sharing you're more welcome