 Hello! Good afternoon! My name is Rosa Maria Costi-Tisneros and I am collaborating with the Independent Theatre Hungary. I'm actually subbing with Martin Ilesh from Independent Theatre Hungary and Tamás Cegedi and we're here today to talk about Chameleon Girl and Tamás is the director of the work and Martin was the writer. So it's a lovely combination that we have here today gaining insight into the project. If we could start perhaps with both of you introducing yourselves, that'd be great. So give us and also where you are right now because we're in different locations. So Tamás, would you like to begin please? Thank you! Hi everyone! I'm Tamás Cegedi from Hungary. I live in Budapest and I work as a director but sometimes I work as an actor and usually in my weekly days I work as a drama teacher in a primary school close to Budapest in a segregated school where there are so much Roma children and I work with them in the days. I work with them more than two years and sometimes I feel like as a writer too in the past I wrote some plays and in the close few months in the past I wrote and directed a play as a puppet theatre and I made puppets too. Oh lovely, that's lovely. So you're starting to write a bit more you're saying and yes and speaking of writing let's go to Martin who can you introduce yourself please? Yeah, hello, I'm Martin Elish. I also live in Hungary, Budapest. I have also quite different works so I'm also the operative leader of the MNC Theatre which means also management, fundraising, communication and all of these operative things and I also participate in the artistic work usually as a dramaturg or writer or assistant and I also work in educational programs, as a trainer or in creative methodologies or things like that. Lovely, thank you. So you're both in Hungary and can you tell me a little bit about this work, Chameleon Girl? For those who don't, who haven't seen the work, can you just give us a brief overview of the work? Is it a solo work? Does it have many actors? I think it'd be really great to hear from both of you. Yeah, maybe I should start as a writer so so we've been organizing the Roman heroes festivals in the frame of which we are also having discussion now in the retrospective of the festival since 2017 and after the first year we started to have workshops bringing the stories and the focusings of the different plays in different communities and also gathered hero stories of young people and based on the stories which we collected in Hungary and also in Belgium we thought we should make a new play and like bringing together the different stories but putting it in like one character because also because of financial and professional reasons the first two years were only monodramas and with all that there should be like one special person, Chameleon Girl, who can also feel the feelings of others, getting the memories of others also in the family or the friends or in school and through the eyes of this young girl we can show very diverse stories of young Roma people which we collected through workshops. And I read that it was you kind of described it as a superhero story so can you tell me why you think or what makes it so superhero like in your mind did you go in thinking that this girl was going to be such a strong figure or did that develop with time as you were writing the work? Yes because you know the hero is the focus of our work in the theater and we are looking heroes in the gypsy community in the past and in the present because it's so important in the children and the youngsters to find heroic stories near many bad stories which comes from the news, comes from the television, from the Facebook and everywhere and it's so important to get good inputs for the youngsters, for the children and for everyone to find a hero in your community it's so important and in the Chameleon Girl why she is a superhero because she has a super talent to change her to change her outfit but not really she can go inside other communities going in other figures in her life she could change many things to find the positive way for the other people so and perhaps in the young ages can be super talent for everyone so this is one of the message of the story everyone has super talents at least you are young you have a super talent because you have you have the youngsters you have the young ages and you can do anything you are so flexible you can learn everything what you want and this is one of the message maybe can be the second message of the story you can learn everything what you want and the other super talent of the Chameleon Girl and the third super talent in my mind as I feel to get the decision in your life you have to get your decision in your life not your parents not your teacher not your friends you have to get your decision of your life and this is one of the the most beautiful moment in the story when the Chameleon Girl gets her decision and can you maybe frame a little bit why it's so important to have a role model like Chameleon Girl not only for Roma but for young Roma why do you think it's important that young Roma or all Roma or anyone but especially young Roma kids see this play or see this work in my mind it because in Hungary and not just in Hungary in Europe in Eastern Europe it's it's a so strong traditional way for the young stars from the young Roma women get married in her young ages and make family in her young ages and in one hand it can be very good it can be a beautiful story if you if you find your place if you find your pair for your life and you can get married and you can get make family you can have children and everything but in another hand it can be a bad story because if you want to want to be more educated if you want to make your make your perspective wider you have to you have to you have to take more time in your life to base in your life and it's it's it's important and I would like to get back to the to the to the decision to make decision yes then this is why it's so important so it's okay if you have to make family in your early ages because it can be a beautiful life stories and it's okay too if you have to to make a base for your life for your career for your studies so and in the Camileongar story it's it's a little bit different from the others because in the in in these stories in the real life the the the real Camileongar had a baby and she she carrying the baby alone without her husband without the father of the baby and some some years later she she she's went to the school and made her studies later similar or parallel with the with the with the children carrying yes yes yeah when you mentioned Rosa that why is it important to have role models it's important to mention that we in the independent theater we always want to show diverse models and not to show that this is a good direction or that is the good direction so for example this story that there is a school girl who is proceeding in her studies and suddenly she decides to keep the baby and stopped doing the studies is usually like a bad story or portrayed as a bad story because usually all the intellectuals tell to the young young girls that you should continue study and don't get married at a too early age and so on but at the end of the day you have to make your own decision and it's either not good if your decision is only pressed by your community or family but it's either not good if it's pressed on you by the i don't know university or any anywhere else and by the by the communities we hold workshops in this first year there were also many university students roma university students who had many pressure on them so for example they felt sometimes that they are too far away from their communities that they are not considered as real roma anymore because they live like white people at the university they are still considered as different and they had like diverse identities so why i should be so much like this or like that and also in the story there are the roles of the two sisters one of them is having like a traditional life living in a countryside with family and another one went to the town got degree and is successfully on a career but didn't have a family and from the point of view of the chameleon girl we seize pros and cons on both sides so we don't want to push anybody to continue studies without real decision or to keep the baby without real decision and what was a very interesting feedback for me at one of the audience discussions because we had always audience discussions also university young roma cave and one of them a guy said at the end that i realized that i'm an asshole because in my family i'm always the good guy and all my other brothers and sisters who make different lives they don't get enough focus and this is also like an important self reflection that okay there is not only one good day and there is not only one role model you should follow but in a normal society you can choose among many role models and you can still mix them and you can still make your own decisions and that's really powerful i think in the the celebrating diversity which you started the conversation saying that you want to find many roma heroes of all backgrounds and that was one of the things i loved about the work is that i could see bits of myself in many of the the characters and those decisions you know as we're growing we're also always faced with many decisions so it's it's great that you know the work can speak to so many people um and did you go in when you were writing thinking i want to touch on these topics or was that kind of through the process of developing the character because you know sometimes we have an idea okay i want to write about uh i don't know school and then you you develop and develop a character around that so for you can you talk a little bit about that process for you yeah so we had some stories which were already very strong for example there was a story of a great trend uh mother and father the father was brought in russia during the war and the grandmother figured out to follow kin and bring back and finally she died in the in the whites in the cold winter but the grandfather came back and went to her every week to the cemetery which is like a universal story of love which is not like a stereotypical neuroma story for example this so for example there was a tale that there are two sisters and one of them likes a man and another one also starts to meet this man but didn't know that another one also likes her and finally she says okay i don't do anything with this man but leave it to my sister which is also a very universal story of generosity there were also stories when when there were also some uh critics came from the roma students that they have to go to courses where they are told how they should be like proper roma like wearing skirts learning a language which they don't speak and so on for example it was also important or many times they mentioned stories that they weren't let in these goals because they are roma so for example these stories of discrimination were also important but we still didn't know what will be the end of the story and we had a cooperation with the flanish uh flanish government and we hold the workshop in in belgium and we also wanted to bring in some story from there and there we got the story of a woman who decided to keep the baby and finish the studies and actually we had also a kind of dilemma that is it good to communicate such a story but then we thought no we don't do censorship this story found us we should also speak about this hero so actually we had so actually i think the stories found us and we didn't look for stories to create a message which we already already created in advance in our mind yeah yes and it's lovely that you know as you're saying the story found you and and how then you just offer a platform through the theater and through you know directing and acting and writing through share those stories and i think that that's a powerful tool for looking at some of these social political and also celebrating you know the diversity of the community because the the roma community is often put into very specific boxes and that diversity like any community um and so it's lovely that as you say you're not censoring or being a gatekeeper um and so i'd love to hear a little bit more about any memories you have of the work being performed or the staging of it the process of it um something that comes to mind it could be good or bad maybe something challenging that you might remember about uh performing or sharing the work with the public or with the actors as well um yes it it was uh it was a good process for me and for the others in the group because there was Emilia Lovas she was the actor in in in in this process but there was much more people in the group uh who who work on it uh Alina Vince was the um was the um photo photographer and visual effect uh assistant manager in the stories and Martin was the writer and the drama tour of the story Dorotjo Matravedi was the director's assistant and it was a very very good job was work together uh uh roma and non-roma uh man and women to work together on these stories on this story because uh it in my mind it's not just uh story of uh roma girl it's a story of uh young woman woman and it is uh it is so universal story to find your way to find your place in your life so when when we start to work it was it was hard for me too because that was the first time when i when i directed uh monodrama and uh it was it was a good good challenge how to how to do it do it good how to make it professional and that that was the first time for Emilia too to playing in a in a monodrama and it was so hard to to play because you have no partners on the stage and the only one partner of the stage was the technique the uh on the in in the in the performance so it it was uh so so so hard work uh to make a live organism uh in in the in the actor between the tech between the technical part of the performance so it was it was uh so so so hard but it was so so good process for for for us um i i i i think uh in in the in the um in in in our work was the best moment when i i had had to open my mind because uh at the first time i i had a very strong idea how i want to make it uh i would like to make a big uh uh bigger bigger part for the technique and i i wanted to make uh the the the voices the the the atmosphere and every every audio visual effects you know in one track and i wanted to Emilia had had to learn these effects time to time to the seconds of the performance and it was so hard for an actor to to learn everything to seconds to seconds to the performance and it it was a phase to the to the live playing it's uh it's it's so hard to to make a live playing in the theater if you if you have a machine in your other side in your partner if you have have a machine so i i had to open this this idea and i had to change this idea and after after it it it it it it it worked good and after Emilia had the performance after after after she get the performance perfectly well it's very similar to comedian girl who also has to change and has an idea and then it has to make a decision and so it also made you as a person have to be more flexible so yeah yeah lovely lovely and Martin do you have any more memories or something that you might want to share something that felt a surprise maybe about the work yeah yeah you mentioned this thing and maybe we didn't mention that this is not actually answer for your question but you mentioned now that this chameleon effect and we mentioned only like very positive things but which was also in our minds and which is also comes up in the story it's like how you can assimilate to the others because chameleons many times assimilate for example it was also in the story that on one day she she heard it from some woman that you are not a good person you are just a chameleon then she can change the color of her hair which is not a big thing with head hair coloring and so on but only like naturally and this is only like a very small thing that that how you can look like roma or no roma what happens if you look like roma or not with your dressing with your hair color and so on like this and this topic is also many times gotten up and many times young people young roma people after the performance also we hear it back from communities that they mentioned that yes i'm also chameleon and also on a positive side and also of this challenge that i also want to assimilate or be good for this so that but i also have the super power because actually we many times think about this challenging situation of minorities as only a negative thing but if you if you are able to you know to change something in different communities and situations you are much more flexible and you are much more uh you know powerful than the people who are always the same you know i i was born in a family in a town in the middle class and i died there actually i had never connected anyone else and how powerful is it if you can change your effects and your relationships and i can speak in this way when i'm home with my family and i can behave this way at the university and behave that way with my friends at the party but this can be this is not a problem this is not like an identity problem because many people many times think okay i have to change but now it's colorful you can be also as one person be like different in different situations and as the world changes all the time it's maybe the biggest power we can have any kind of adaptivity or flexibility well i'm i'm you know it's it's quite fitting tamash that you're in front of this beautiful green natural you know background and it's a lovely i think example of what you're saying martin where you know you have these greens and these different shades but together it really offers this beautiful scenery and it is you know melting into each other but also you can look at one tree and and value that tree for itself and i think it's a lovely metaphor for the work that you guys have put together and you know and also the difficulty tamash when you were talking about the actress and and her kind of being the only one and that vulnerability and that you know it's scary to be also one and to be different but to also try to navigate the different environment so it's a lovely i think example of something we all continue to go through from a young age to an older age and it's it's a beautiful i love the title i'd love to know a little bit more about the title if that came just one day and you said yes this is the name of the show or if it's came from one of the stories that you heard from the from the families and from the community martin do you know the camellia and girl itself as the title it wasn't in one of the stories exactly actually there is a i think there is a superhero of this marvel word which is like camellia or i think something like this but i'm not very familiar of this topic but i heard about this and then i i was thinking or we were thinking together about this character and we thought that yeah it's good why we don't why we don't have a roman superhero which is like an everyday girl but she still can have like other things like getting your mind in one second when it comes down change the color of her hair when it comes down and so it came it came like this that these real situations and challenges and values and this superpower can fit together very well yes it's lovely it's lovely maybe one word about amelia that uh we started to work with her when she was very young like 15 and uh and involved her where tamash was also director's assistant that was directed by roti gobalat or a professional leader uh as a very young girl and then she became a actor and for long years we didn't work with her but then tamash said uh invite her back because actually she was already in the mainstream theaters and we thought okay she's fine we don't she doesn't need her support anymore or cooperation but she was very happy to come back and to perform finally in a play which is about her stories as well which is not like a musical and not to play again uh roman brostichute or something like this but a much more uh deeper story and since that she uh also said that she wants to uh uh direct and uh she also directed a new performance so she's already also not only actor but director about uh a roman musician woman who lived in the 18th century and who is a very uh famous here and uh so this first girl's stories uh had also more focus in her very early oh that's beautiful it's really quite beautiful um tamash i don't know if there's anything else that either you want to add about the work or about a memory or anything um about the production yes um i i as i as i remember because uh you know it it was uh some some ages earlier uh i i think that that was five years ago when when i directed this play maybe 2015 i think no 18 18 only three i think hopefully it makes us feel like it's a long time yeah so uh as i as i felt it was it was a very very very good chance to work together again with emilia uh as as martin said and and it was it was a very very good uh learning process for me uh but not just learning about the theater learning about uh how to thinking how how we are thinking about women how we are thinking about in in a traditional way from the women how we are thinking if uh if we want to uh be uh uh um uh uh a good man how we are thinking from the women in a normal way normal way so it is it is a good uh uh it was a good process for me and and it it as i feel it's not ended i i i want to work on it uh uh because i think it's it's so important how we are feel what what what what what what what we are wanted to think uh in in our uh community not just the roma community the whole community what we are wanted to think uh about each other the women from the man the man from the women so it is it is so important and it was uh it was a so good uh start point for me to start thinking on it and it is good to to see back to this process how how i work with the this uh group i uh free free girl in the group and um and and it was it was so nice because uh they they sometimes they had the leader of the process because as i as i think on of of my work i if if i am a director i i'm i i i i i i i i i mustn't be a leader of uh uh in in every time sometimes i i i can get the feeling of the the leader to to the others in the process so if i if i have a question and and i thinking as a man uh i i had to get the the the leading of this question the leading of this process to to get for for one for for for the the others in the in the in the in the process because uh they are the other side of this uh thinking so they they had to uh get this answer of some some questions so uh i i have to be more flexible when i when i thinking of my work as a director so now i i'm i'm learning this uh in in my life yes and i think it's a lovely um um you know earlier in the conversation we were talking about kind of the process that we're always kind of learning and the flexibility of our minds of the traditions of the culture um and you know it's a great example here's a story about this woman this girl who's going through also this process but actually the writer and the director are men and it's it's a you know both of you are also reflecting on gender and female issues and it's not a woman only issue it's a universal human rights um uh topic that we all need to reflect on and it's we're all responsible for that so it's a lovely i think you know we often hear oh something should only come from one community but here's a really beautiful example of roma non-roma women and men coming together and and this powerful work can can be produced and shared and gets people to reflect you know you said martin earlier when you had feedback from an audience member saying i was an asshole and you know and you know and that's we want our work to to move us to to help us think to reflect and so it's yeah i'm just it's really i feel it's a wonderful way to to celebrate chameleon girl and come you know how we're all maybe a bit of chameleon girl so thank you yes martin yeah yeah just one closing uh sentence that uh uh since that we also used this uh performance in uh in our educational program and similar educational program started also in uh in romania by the chieftain in italy by uh rampa finestina and in uh spain by ayumi and uh most of them also focused on chameleon girls so uh probably the story was also relevant in other communities and thank you very much for the possibility yeah no thank you thank you both for for sharing and for you know offering us insight into that process because it's such an important i think you know it's an important story but also to gain an understanding of your perspective and your process in it um so thank you thank you both for being and sitting down with me today and yes thank you and i just have to end on looking at the beautiful mountain view that you have tamash so yes it's lovely thank you bell thank you thank you so much