 Hello, my name is Rosa Maria Costich-Cisneros and I am collaborating with the Independent Theatre Hungary. I'm extremely privileged to sit down with Michaela Dragón today who will speak with us about who killed Somnagrancha. It's a work that I know that Michaela has been very involved with and I'd love to learn more about your role in the work but if we could, before we talk about the work, if you could tell me a little bit about who you are and your background. So I am, I try to say this differently. So I am a Romani actor, the member of the Romani theatre company, Julipen. We are an independent theatre company based here in Bucharest and in all these years we have been creating a lot, many Romani feminist theatre productions. So we are the first theatre company here from Romania and we work on contemporary issues. We write our theatre shows. We are a very diverse collective. And the company is based in Romania, correct? Okay. Yes, we work here in Bucharest. We don't have a space because there is no support from the state. So we have to work in an independent regime but it's a theatre group made up by professional Romani actresses. That's fantastic. So there's a whole group of you that have been creating work, performing work and writing work. Is that correct? Yes. Right. Okay. And you mentioned Romani women. Is it only Romani women? No, we are the founders of the theatre company. Me and my colleague Zita Moldovan, we founded the theatre group. And afterwards we invited all the Roma actors that we knew from Bucharest. So basically in our group are working over 10 persons, over 10 actors, between 12, 15, yes. Wow. Wow. And so can you tell us a little bit about the work that who killed Somnia Grancia and your specific role within that production? So I'm one of the authors of the theatre play. Basically the play was written in the collective and it's again a play that is based on reality but besides del Duma, it's everything, the script is fictional, only the story is real. So it's based on the story of the Somnia Grancia that was a real person, a Roma girl from a Roma-Hungarian community from here from Romania because we have a big Hungarian community here. Many of them they are Orissa Roma and unfortunately Somnia had to commit suicide and before to do this gesture, this tragic gesture, she wrote on a wall, I am the school. So and this thing happened 15 years ago, something like that. And because my colleague, one of the actresses from the theatre company Zita Mardovane, she's also the moderator of the Roma TV show from here from Romania. So she's like a Roma star. She investigated the case at the moment when it happened, so she was in the community and investigated why the girl committed suicide because everyone, you know the Gadget and the Roma people, everyone blamed their parents that didn't want to send her to the high school. She and wanted her to get married because she got at that age when it's supposed to get married. Again, we were obsessed with this idea of talking about early marriage because it's very tragically many situations and this one, this case of Somnia Grancia was, wow, yes. So I think she had a message for us when she left her last message, I am the school. I think she had a message for her community, for her society, for all the girls. And we also wanted to bring more context because the Senza, how is the word, the Senza nationalistic press? Yes. Sensualization of it. It's so difficult. It's difficult, yes. We should do a theater warm up exercise. Yes. So the press at that moment, you know, wrote about the case in a very sensationalistic way. And like, what a shocking, like a Roma girl, she committed suicide because their primitive parents didn't want her to go to the high school and so on. And actually we wanted to give more context and we started this research. And we wanted to show how the whole society failed a Roma girl, you know, not only her community or her parents, but also the school that segregated her and she confronted a lot of racism from her teachers, from her colleagues because she looked different because she had to wear only long skirts. And so on. And everyone looked at her like, you know, like something like an alien. And we just created the script, the fictional script, giving more context to the whole story. And yes, and presenting also like the situation here in Romania regarding the segregation of Roma children in the school and in education. Because again, one of the most, one of the biggest attacks about us is that we don't go, we are not, we are not educated. We don't want to go to the school and so on. And this is the only discourse that we hear like go to the school, go to get your education. It's like you have to go to the school in order to receive rights, you know, and be respected as a person. But people, they don't think about the racism in the schools, the segregation, the lake, lake of privileges that the Roma, Roma children, they don't have because they live in poverty and education is a luxury. So basically, who killed Somnagranja is a story about how society fails Roma children who don't have a chance to education, actually. And that's a really powerful message to be offering, you know, and using also theatre to do that. And it's, I think, difficult to commit to writing something that is so also polemic, you know, especially if media and mainstream society has heard the story in a very specific light and here you're offering another way of looking at this that some might say could be confrontational, but it's not. It's about reflecting and saying we all played a part in this and how could we do better? And what is the next step rather than blaming? It's about, okay, what could we learn from this? And that's quite powerful. And it's a message that is not always received. So can you talk a little bit about maybe some memorable moments or something that you maybe stands out for you? Yes, in the work or writing the work? Yes, it was one memorable moment when we performed in a city here in Romania where the most of the Hungarians, the Hungarian minority is living here in Romania and the north of Romania. And we performed in a theater there and a colleague of Sona. He was among the audience and it was incredible. It was incredible because he left us a message talking to us about the Sona, how ambitious she was, how special, how genius she was. And it was incredible to read this letter that his colleague from high school leave it for us for the actors after the show was finished. And we really hope that we honor the memory of Sona and her message is brought forward. And many Roma children who don't have access to education hears her last message. And people, again, people empower, questionate and reflect about this. And talking about messages and honoring her message, what would be your message that you would like, whether Roma or non-Roma, to know? I think my message is when we talk about education and specifically among Roma people, we also have to get used to talk about Gaje being educated and getting their anti-racist educations because it's very important for us, you know, the education not to happen on one side. And this is a problem here in Romania because we don't get any anti-racist education in schools. We don't learn about Roma history. We don't learn about Roma culture even if the Roma community here is the biggest minority, the largest minority here in Romania. So we live together and we don't know each other, you know, like majority, they don't know so much about us. They only borrow or the stereotypes about us because it's easier, but it's really an effort. And they have to make this effort. They have to get this education. They have to give us spaces to educate them, you know, to offer them an anti-racist education when we have, when we don't feel that this is a pressure on our shoulders because also I think it's not our job, you know, to do this education. They should educate themselves to know more about us. So I think when we talk about education, we also have to talk more and more about this idea of non-Roma people getting educated about who we are, about our oppressive Roma history, especially here in Romania where there was five centuries of slavery, of Roma slavery. So I'm fed up of hearing about you as a Roma. I should get educated. No, you as a Gaje, you should also, you know, get your education. Absolutely. And it, you know, as I think the title of the work kind of really puts that out there, who, you know, and we're all responsible in some way and all play a role. And on that note, I'd like to just say thank you so much. And I love this message of being part of the future and that we all play a role and that it's important that we all reflect, educate ourselves, but also be mindful of others and not always, yeah, think about the, that it's a blame game or that it's so kind of easily divided that way because we're all interconnected. So thank you so much. Thank you so much, Mihaila. Thank you. Thank you.