 Hello, welcome everyone. My name is Rosa Maria Coste Chisneros and I am collaborating with the Independent Theatre Hungary. I am in the UK but I'm sitting across from dear friends and I would say primitas y primitos y tías y tíos that are in Spain. I'm very happy to sit down with Sonia Carmona Tapia and Jaime Vicente Borges who are here to speak about the profunda dignitatis. Thank you so much for sitting down and sharing and talking about the work with us today. If we could start with you introducing yourselves, that'd be lovely. Great, thank you. Thank you for having us and I am Sonia Carmona. I'm originally from Granada even though I was born in Germany in Köln because my parents were immigrants there but I've also lived many places. I left for the US when I was 17 and came back when I was 21 and settled down in Sevilla where I live right now. I'm a theatre director and an actress. It's lovely, very global, very lovely mix there. So many world views and perspectives. It's beautiful, I love it. Yes, yes. Okay, my name is Jaime Vicente Borges. I'm a filmmaker from the public television from Andalusia and I write about theatre, diverse dramaturgies or whatever texts, especially texts about theatre. Yes, and it's a lovely kind of duo both of you have here. And so if you could tell me a little bit about the work, the profunda dignitatis, that'd be great because I'm not sure if everyone might have seen the work. So if you can just give us a little overview and then your own relationship with the work. Were you an actress in it or a writer or maybe both because oftentimes people are quite involved in the work in many ways. But do you want to start? Because he is the author. Okay, I'm gonna see if I can set the volume a little bit higher because he says he doesn't care too well. But basically what they want to know is a little bit more about the profunda dignitatis. Yes, this is a special text because this is not play about historical life. This is the point to begin and it's a different story. It's an intellectual and mental process to get a new stadium to understand these psychological lives of two historical characters. So this is an emotional trip. It's very important for I think it's very important, the reality perhaps, but I think it's very important for the audience to understand this is not a biopic about two historical characters. It's an emotional trip about these two historical characters. And the characters are? And the characters are Emilia Fernandez, the fair kid's woman, beatified by the Vatican because she was a victim of the in the Spanish Civil War, a victim from the regime of the republican government. So and the other character is Gabriela Otega is represented by the Franco regime after this city, Spanish Civil War in the post-war. Okay, I mean, it's a process of confronting these two Spanish, Spanish is more or less this one. Yes, these two Spanish strong Roma women that in different approaches, they were both faced to a war that was not their war. Yes. Because whose war is any war anyway. Exactly. And I think that's very clever and really kind of draws you in to a moment because as you said, we're looking at their emotional kind of journey. And that journey, I think is very human, you know, and having this range of feelings and reactions to different scenarios is a lovely focus. Often the, you know, there's a kind of intention, maybe we could say on telling the historical story and that's fine. But as you said, this is very different from that. And this is about that emotional journey, which, you know, immediately for me, at least when I watched it kind of drew me in and say, okay, I can relate to that. And Sonia, could you tell me a little bit about your relationship or your role within the work? Well, I was the actress and also directed, which is very difficult. But it was a very personal work, really, because I think Jaime, when he wrote it, he was also thinking about me and about my personal trip, which is also within the play. So it's not really two characters, really. It is one character that has multi personalities and that embraces the strong personality of Gabiela, who was a very strong woman from a higher class level, and with many inputs from the cultural world in the Spain of that time. And another woman that was a more popular person, you know, like from just a very small area, this Almería's village called Tijola. And she's also a strong woman, but coming from a very poor environment, living in a cave with her husband, who she has just married. And then they have this idea of making this trick so he doesn't have to go to the front, to the war, and then they get caught. And this together with this whole process of blending the characters in another character that is the woman that we meet that comes and it's in prison. This is the beginning, you know, of the play we are faced into a woman that's put into prison. And is this a physical prison or a prison that it's more mental? So it was really fun to produce this play, but at the same time it was a very difficult task because it had many things that really touched me personally because I was going also through a trip, a journey of just recently, like not really finding out, but just coming to a self-settlement with my Roma identity. Because in my house, this has never really been talked about. It was like a taboo theme that, you know, even when we asked when we were little and we would ask, are we Roma or are we not? You know, I remember my mother saying, well, do you want to be Roma or do you not want to be Roma? And I was like, okay, I can choose, you know. Then I didn't want to be Roma because everything I heard about being Roma was very, very negative. You know, I was born in the 70s, well, actually in 1970. And during that time here in Spain, we still had even laws that were against the Roma people, you know, and they were not abolished until 1978. So, you know, of course, and then always, you know, in TV and everywhere, you know, everything that you could hear was really bad information or negative information about the Roma world. So it took me a long time. But I think it's being a really nice journey, or it's being a really nice journey to discover our culture, discover what's within the whole of Andalufia, because I think many of us in Andalufia have a really big, strong Roma background to ourselves, that probably we are not even aware of, you know. And I think that there's something quite, you know, this question around identity and coming to terms with a historical maybe gap in knowledge. And then what is shared is very negative. And there's a tension there. And so you as Sonia as a woman, Roma woman, woman, human are going through that. But then also in the play, you know, there's, there's a tension of coming through and being, you know, dealing with the situations in the historical kind of realities of the war. And but somehow there's a reconciliation in there some way. And it's, this is what is, I think it's so beautiful about the play that there is reconciliation. And also, you know, like, like an understanding of, like, I really loved when I found out that Roma, because I was like, what, what is this Roma thing? We never heard about this here in Spain, here is Kitano, and that's it, you know. And then some people that really mad when you say Kitano somewhere, you know, around Europe or in the rest of the world, but here doesn't have for us that that's really negative connotation any longer. But then when I learned that Roma meant in Roman Roman, it meant human being outside. Oh, this is so beautiful. You know, because this is what I think it is about, you know, we're all human beings. What does it matter whether you're coming from one place? I mean, this is the beautiful thing about it, you know, that you can embrace all kinds of inputs from many different cultures, different ways of looking at life and try to get the best out of them all. Exactly. And so we've heard a lot from your perspective, Sonja, as a director and actress and human as a Roma in the work. Jaime, is there something that you'd like to add about the process of, you know, kind of writing about and, you know, a dramaturg, kind of witnessing this reconciliation that the actors and that the work goes through? Is there a reflection? I think it's very important this this human, profound thing, especially in this character, in this Sonja's character in the play. So because the audience, but everyone has a soul. And I think this is what is important for him or her. And this is, you are real truth about human dignity, profound human dignity. So this is a story about Roma dignity, but also this is the universal, it's not only for Roma people, it's for everyone because this is that human history. So this process is what is important because theater for me, especially for me, is communication to approach ideas about life or about the human events. So this is what is important for me. And so can you talk since we're on the topic of the title, can you tell me a little bit about the title and where that came from? Was it from the very beginning that you said, yes, this is the title? Or did that come as you were writing or as you were maybe reflecting on the relationship with Sonja and Sonja's character? Can you tell me a little bit about that? Well, we work always together. It's not only about my idea, original idea. This is not our usual method. So we work always together. So when she proposed me this first challenge, because it's a challenge for us, but especially for me, to write is about these two strong, very strong Roma women. It's the beginning of a process allowed to put inside me. It's very, very difficult for me. It's very, very difficult to put these emotions. It's not the life. What these two strong women, strong Roma women are in her head because they are thinking and they are suffering and they are living their lives. So in historical very hard circumstances everyone in different circumstances, but they are in two moments very, very hard for Spanish people in general, but especially for these two women, because one is a very high-class woman with this is a friend of the of the queen or the family is a very important family from Toreros and the world and so it's a very particular and significant person. It's not a regular person. It's not a regular person, but the other one is a very regular person. It's a poor woman and it's a love story. It's a very, very sacrifice for the love. I think it's a love story. It's not another question, but it's a very, very heavy love story because it's very difficult to to to die for saving the love. Yes. And I also feel, you know, this theme about love. It's about love for someone else, but also love for oneself. That was something that really kind of kept I kept feeling and it made me reflect a bit on, you know, what what does love mean and how what are these various emotions and anger, you know, when we feel anger, why do we feel it so deeply and because there's something profoundly kind of primal in these these big emotions like anger, love, fear. There's something, you know, like a child. The child goes through so many feelings in one day and that's one of the things I loved about it is that I felt also like a child like permission to to to feel these different things and not not be so sorry about that. But you know, yes, she loves, she loves with all of her hearts and she cries and she's angry and and there's something very important about that message that you can feel things quite profoundly and deeply. And you have the right to feel. Exactly, exactly, exactly. Is there something a memory that comes to mind, maybe audience feedback or just yeah, I'm sure there are many. This show was premiered in the second Roma heroes festival at Budapest in Hungary. So I was really, really, really scared of how the audience would react to this because we tend to think that, you know, that within a different culture as could be the Hungarian culture to us, to us Spaniards that are maybe, you know, on the outside open and touchy and there's a lot of this in the in the performance, you know, touching the people and you know, throwing things at them, getting really close, getting them to the stage. So I wasn't really sure how this was going to work. It was like walking on the edge of this knife the whole time. And to me, when I turned around the first time and I saw the audience inside, when I saw that the audience was right on the palm of my hand, I could relax a little, maybe a little bit too much. Because I'm very used to improvisation. I do a lot of storytelling and many times you have this audience participation and this interaction with the audience. And then I had to keep in mind that we had the third titles and then that we had someone translating into Hungarian the text. And this was like too much. It was just but afterwards when we had the talk, when we had this theater forum after the show, and people had just become like one with me and with the characters. This was really beautiful because this is what I think we always search and long for, you know, this communion with the audience and that you feel like they are part of the project itself. And this was really nice. It was really nice to understand that it's not about, you know, that we are not different in the inside. That we can touch each other, not only physically, but also emotionally. And that was very nice for me at least. And you know, I'm in a way not surprised because there's something, as we've been talking about so raw and so open about these feelings and the way that you communicate that on stage. And you know, it doesn't need a language. It's its own language, those feelings and that energy and that connection, you know, it makes sense to me that relationship that you're saying you created with the audience that they could follow you. And I'm sure some people just maybe even took off the translation and we're just following you because, you know, there's something quite, I think, inviting that you do on the stage to bring people with you on this journey. And you leave something there. Yes, I had a teacher that told us that when we were directing a show, at one point we should think we were deaf and just look at it and see if we could understand what was going on just by watching. And that another time we should close our eyes and just listen to it and see if we could understand it. And then when I came back from US to Spain, it was exactly 1992. And it was the exhibition, the World Exhibition here. And I was working in there. And also I was able to watch so many plays from so many places. And I was so amazed that this was true that you could watch a play that it was in a language that you did not understand at all, not even one word. She could understand what was going on when the play was done in a way that communicated what it wanted to communicate. So if we achieve that, I mean, this is, to me, very, very nice and important because this is a very small budget performance. And then maybe in very difficult circumstances because here, well, you might know, you are also from Andalusia, but things are very hard down here. So it's good that we can come with, it's not about man, it's about, you know, communicating as Jaime was saying, you know, being able to communicate what you want to communicate. And for you, Jaime, is there anything that you'd like to communicate on a memory or something that you recall from the performances or any in the writing or was there moments when you were watching it and thinking, oh, yes. Well, sometimes in the Budapest premiere was amazing to see the audience or with this way to give the word. So very, very, I don't know, cold is perhaps the word, but I don't know, but it's very, very special because we have this way to move the hands or very different. And but at the end of the performance was a very, very special moment because all the people there was, we are very, very impassioned, very hot, very, you know, this expression a lot was very, very important for me. I think theater is action. So when Sonia is on stage with this play is always a very special moment for me because it's the life. You know, this is not a usual moment in the life of this character. No, it's the soul of these characters. It's very difficult to express this character, this only one character about two women, but to get another superior and emotional, fictional character is very difficult to get this position on stage. So when I saw in Budapest this roller ball, about emotions was incredible because when you are writing a text, you know the difficulties this text has and it's very, very difficult to imagine this text on a stage because it's a very, very exigent for the actress in this case. It was really funny when I was learning the test. I would ask my kid, my oldest kid to run the lines with me and he was like, but mommy, this is random. This doesn't have any meaning. This is, how do you remember what goes first and what goes afterwards? This doesn't make any sense. And this also was a challenge, you know, because it did make sense, but it is, you know, it's a surrealistic tradition sense. It's our way to feel. Because no matter how much we try not to have a surrealistic approach to work at the end, almost everything that we have done has this label of being a little bit crazy. Yes, because surrealism is not, for me, it's impossible to have a pretension of surrealism. Surrealism is a consequence. It's a result. It's life. It's a different way to life. And so on this point about, you know, this text and the feelings and the kind of highs and lows or ebb and flow of the work, is there a message that you want people to know about the work? Is there something very specific that you want people to remember about the work? It can be anything, why you did it or what's the message or just something specific around surrealism and, yeah. To me, it is a piece. It is about peace and about, you know, being in peace with yourself also and, you know, not getting into this outside stuff that runs you into fighting with each other or to being in conflict. That, you know, when you achieve this peace within yourself, then you can have this self respect, this dignity, this profound peace and that you can embrace, you know, that you can embrace the others in yourself. That's what's important to me in play. Yes, I agree. Sonia, this is the main question. It's about to recognize peace in myself, this peace, this human, this human being. And also because these are two Roma women, what's important for me also is that, you know, because in the process of making someone, you know, the goatscape, we humanize the people. And this is what's important, you know, to see the human beings behind these characters. Yes. And that, you know, that it could be anyone. Yeah. Another detail about the two women, they choose, they are not in a river that is fluendo, you know. They choose. Every one of them choose his or her future. Yeah, they will. I would say that they take decisions. They choose really. Yeah, let's notice the circumstances are justified, but they are consensual. They could. Yeah, have taken another decision. They're faced with a very difficult decision, both of them. And both of them take the decision that self respects themselves. Yes. The dignity wrote. They choose the dignity of world. Yes, yes. And I think there's, you know, we started the conversation with talking about, you know, war and that there's no ones really war, but the wars happen and kind of reflecting a little bit on that. And so it's a lovely kind of full circle, thinking about decisions that people make. And you know, I believe that people don't say, I'm going to make a bad decision today. You make a decision and it happens to maybe not be the best one. But you, you know, if you're true and as you said, if you're the dignity, if you maintain that dignity with the decision and know why you did it, then you can continue and as maybe it evolves or as life happens, you can then maintain other decisions. And it's not about this kind of binary of good or bad or right and wrong, but that it's a flow and it's, it's, there's a human side to that. And that it's not about one emotion, but the range of emotions. And I, you know, I really see that in the work that it's about all of it. And, you know, Sonia, you said earlier that one of your messages is about peace and that people, you hope that people see that this is also about peace. And, you know, and I think that's a lovely message to us as we come out of COVID, as, you know, theaters are opening as the world is kind of still dealing with this crisis. And that all of this chaos, we still have a choice in finding that peace and finding some profound kind of to make a decision on how we want to be in the chaos. And so I, you know, I thank you for that because I feel that that's really important right now that even though we can't control the circumstances or the environment, we have a, we still have a choice in there. And, you know, and I know that that's also true for Roma, you know, as a community, we're very resilient, we're very in the moment as well. And people don't always see that or if they do, there's a bit of threatened by that kind of ability to just be in the moment or to be in the feeling. So I think that the works has so many layers to it that speaks to so many different sides of ourselves, our psyche, our bodies, our world. So thank you so much. Thank you for sitting down and sharing with us and helping us peel the layers back to the profunda limitatis. So thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.