 Although Roma are the largest ethnic minority in Europe, they still experience high level of racism and have to deal with many societal issues. Additionally, Roma are being represented in a very stereotypical way in the media and art world. The Roma theater has more than a century long past, which with active first professional theater groups in many European countries, but unfortunately they are hardly known. The Roma Heroes Theater Festival, initiated by the Independent Theater Hungary, is the only international Roma theater encounter in the world which have been organized in every year since 2017. Some of the present artists and their work are introduced in our series. And today, my guest is Sebastiano Spinella, the performer and writer of the play called The Children on the Wind, and Ursula Mainardi, the co-writer. Welcome, hi. Hi. How are you? Fine, it's still summer. Yes, it's hot here. Yes, I really like the background, it's super nice. We are in the countryside in the middle of Italy. Nice, nice. Okay, so my question would go basically to both of you. Could you please summarize very briefly what the play is about? How did the idea come? What inspired you when you were writing it? Okay. Yeah, the play is about my personal experience during my life, about theater, my experience to theater, how I became a professional theater performer, and how this profession actually led me to work later on in my life with the Roma community, with youth from Roma community, especially a little Roma community that lives in the suburb of Rome, the capital city in a legal settlement. We call it so even if it's not so legal. And my experience during this work with the community and with the youth of the Roma community. And what inspired me? Well, the inspiration came especially from the leaders of the independent theater, Hungary, in part. And the greatest part was from this lady here, Ursula Mainardi, that pushed me actually and helped me to write down the performance, because you see my main specialty in theater for many, many years has been related to clowning, miming, music. A lot, I'm a musician. And especially, let's say, physical theater, physical language. So I was not so used to text. And in this was a great help Ursula, because she's a storyteller, you see. And so she pushed me and helped me into writing, into writing the story. The other part was Rodrigo, especially, and Martin from the Independent Theater in Hungary. Because you see, I am not born in a Roma family in the typical way, let's say. I'm born in a normal society in Italy, in Sicily. And my family, they doesn't really know, well, now they know, because of me, but till a certain point they avoid to tell or to recognize their Roma roots, their Roma origins. How I found out was through my grandmother, my grandmother told me this or let me understood that we had Roma roots, Roma origins. And so I kind of choose later on in my life to recognize and to deal with the Roma roots. With this, you see. So when Independent Theater contacted me, I told them that I could not really, I could not really speak as a Roma citizen. But after they, I told them my story, they recognized me as a Roma and they pushed me into telling the story. Because as me, there are many, many people in the world that also are of second, third, fourth, fifth generation Roma, but this memory has gone lost. You see the Roma people, the Roma community came to Italy in the 13th, 1400s. So it's about 600 years ago. And we have many communities in Rome, in Italy, all over Italy actually. And also one thing that convinced me in the end was that my family name, Spinelli, Spinella, is a common name through the Roma community in Italy. Yeah. So this was my input to work on this. And Ursula, she got charmed by my grandmother's story. And so she decided to help me. Yes, that's true. When he told me about this special meeting with his grandmother when he was a child, it was very touching for me because I was already working with Roma children. And they are also very devoted to their grandmothers and grandfathers. And so I found in this relationship something very interesting and deep. And this is the beginning of the story. That's it. Thank you. Do you have a favorite part in the play, which is like very close to you or because it's like very challenging or yes? Yes. Like I was saying, the first part about this meeting is one of my favorites. And it's really the heart of the story, I think. The golden art of the story, the meeting with the grandmother. And the other part is how the children are taken in the camp and accompanied. Followed to the laboratory to make music and to be together for their identity in a group. Because you see, besides this theater work, we do work with the Roma youth. We teach theater and we teach music. So this is our relation to the Roma youth. Well, I like all the play. It's substantially, it's about my life. And yeah, somehow it also helped me writing this story about how to recognize myself and kind of synthesize what I've been doing in my life and where I'm going to. Thank you. Can you also share a few sentences? Sorry. Accident. So can you have a cut? No, no, no. It was just, you know, like, I don't know, something fell off the shelf. So it's okay. So could you please share some sentences about your artwork? What are your principles when you are creating art? What are the important points that you are always paying attention to or keeping in mind when you are creating art? About storytelling, I can say something. About making art. No storytelling is also, of course. Yeah. I think what it's important is for me is that art in general and theater and storytelling permit to have a real process inside, on one side, and maybe if it's a good work to have a process with the people who are there in presence and receive your art. That's the most important thing for me. I don't know why you want to do that, of course. Okay. For me, for me, you see the first 10 years of my profession, I mainly worked in the street. So I had my public was the people of the street. And this was the best school for me because in the street, people doesn't have to pay a ticket. They don't have to stop if they don't want. They choose to stop and to be there because they like you or because they like what you are doing. So I had the experience of the magic of this gathering of people when people gather in a circle around you and you are leading a kind of ritual where people come, laughs, experience, exchange your poetry and they take home, when they go home with the impression you have left in them. So in this, I recognize the strength and the power of theater and music too because music is part of theater. And later on the next 10 years, I work in the institutional theater. It means I was in the street, some big director saw me working in the street. They think I'm good and they take me into the institutional theater. And for many years I was there working and I realized that there was a lot of theater that was only done for entertainment without any real depth, without any real educative purpose rather than just entertain. Where I think that theater has a power and it is about giving people a different point of view on life and to spread knowledge and consciousness. And so when we work, we often work together with Ursula, when we work at our performances we always take care that truth and knowledge and consciousness are blended and are the heart, the soul of the work we propose. Thank you. You mentioned already many very interesting things about Roma identity and the struggle of recognizing or also admitting the identity. I would ask you just shortly what do you think about what are other societal issues that affects Roma than in Italy and also what do you think about the representation of Roma in media or in the artwork, in theater or in art in general? That is the situation of Roma in Italy. Okay, you see here in Italy we have a very singular situation around the Roma community. You see there are the Italian Roma which are mostly of Sinti roots, Sinti origins. They are spread a little bit all over Italy and much of it has been absorbed in the main society but much of it is also keeping a strong identity. You see there are circus people and they also do markets, they also do fairies around the country. I would say that they are absorbed in the society and they don't live so big struggles as other Roma communities. The other Roma communities we have here are immigrants, especially from the Balkans, from Serbia, former Yugoslavia and so on, from Romania also. They live a very difficult situation as they were rejected from the start because of their different ways. Most of them they live in shacks and favelas built around the suburb of the cities. Then later on in the 90s the government has taken action on them by building what they call legal camps which are actually slums where the Roma people are confined with very little access to school, sanitary and social help. Because of the high degree of school it's quite low education, a lot of poverty, so they have difficulties getting into the work market and also in schools they are kind of holding back mostly because the school in Italy is in great difficulties and they don't have the energy to deal with children that are slower in learning and they are not slower in learning because they are not clever. It's because they need a different timing and a different way of teaching. The pedagogy must follow a different lifestyle that the Italian school don't take into consideration. So the situation is not good at all. Also every time we come near political votations often when something bad or wrong happens that involves Roma people they would use this as a scary situation to make the Roma people being the guilt of any kind of wrongdoing that is happening in the country and so on. So there is a lot of discrimination there is a lot of isolation even though these immigrants these Roma immigrants many of them are here since several generations they are here maybe third, fourth, fifth generation they are born in Italy but depending on where you come from you have no right for citizenship so you have these young people that have gone to school that have reached the legal age 18, 19 but they still don't have the citizenship even if they are born here sometimes they even risk to be expelled back to the original country of their grandfathers where they have never been I work with young people that have never been out of Italy or never been out even of the city of Rome but still they don't have the right for citizenship and this brings all the other problems together work, school and relations social relations so this is the situation what we do we try to help young people especially young people because with adults and older people it's difficult to change their mind to change their usual ways but young people, children they are very receptive and they want to experience they want to know and theater and music is very good fun is active, is positive while it is also educative so while we help them through this activity of theater and music we don't really want to make them to become artists if they don't desire that of course there is always some most talent people they might become musicians or theater actors but this is not the aim the aim is to use theater and music as a tool of self-consciousness because it helps a lot theater helps a lot to recognize your personality and build a positive personality music is also very good for that and for working of the mind at the same time we try to give them something about their culture that is traditional culture that is lost now in the new generation for example traditional fairy tales about Roma people they don't know the children don't know that that histories or music also because there is a stereotypic idea about Roma musicians for example but now there are no more musicians sometimes but in the camps nobody makes music they put radio stereo music or if someone makes music it's not traditional so to refine this background for them because there is a gap because when they have come here the grandfathers through the generations that was born in Italy you see the young people now they hardly speak Romanes they might speak a little bit of the language where they come from say Serbian or Romanian but the Roma language the Romanes it's lost as it's lost many other things of their culture so if you would ask a 15 years old Roma for example if you would ask him what is Roma he would not be able to answer he would not be able to explain how he had come to live in the situation he is so we work on that too to make consciousness about the origins when you are in, why you are in this situation and what most important what you can do to get out of this situation to make a better life of yours thank you it's a very important work and I think it's very useful and necessary in Roma communities my last question would be but I'm addressing to both of you what are your future plans or goals in your life in your career what are the things that you want to implement or still achieve it's a strange moment because you know there is a little stop now so we dream some projects but we have to wait because you know theater and music is based on contact education about with art in general it's based on real contact body contact so at the moment we have some problems to go on but we want to try to not to lose the relationship with these people with the children who grow up very fast and there is a moment at 12 or 13 years old that it's very hard to continue to have their confidence their fiducia confidence yes so they grow up fast we have to work now in the present if it is possible to continue with the work on the group and to work on inclusion also so not only Roma group has been made in the past but mixing children Roma and not Roma this is a dream, not easy but this is my dream at the moment yeah you see I was invited by the independent theater in Hungary that was two years ago and it was and it has been difficult two years because situation, political situation social situation is not getting better it's not getting better Italy is not getting better anywhere even with the European community and its program about integration and inclusion of the Roma community in the European process of unification it's not working they put a lot of money but money get lost are lost somewhere that nobody knows it becomes payment for bureaucracy but very very little arrives actually to the hands and in the benefit of the Roma community so when two years ago I was invited it was a moment where I was giving up I was kind of tired after 15 years working on trying to make better conditions on these people and not having any I say any results actually things getting worse and worse I was very tired so when the independent theater invited me I wrote this play and this play was kind of a point of okay I write this and this is my story and after this I don't know if I will continue work on this matter of the Roma inclusion now after meeting the Hungarian people and realizing they have put us in connection with several other countries and realizing that each country has is a different situation about the Roma actually finding out that in Hungary many Romans they go to university this was a great discovering for us because we could tell the young people here the young Roma here about that and that would be a great new for them because most of them they don't even reach the secondary school they only do the primary school you see not because they don't want to study but because they are put in a situation where in the end they reject and they just give up because too much social difference too much social distance and too much isolation the work that we are doing with the independent theater and the other Roma theater groups in Spain, in Romania England, Ireland these have give new hope these have give new perspective and new possibilities before we worked on numbers in that we try to include as many children and youth as possible with a little organization so we could work with around 10, 15 children or youth every year this what we are doing now we had to less down the number of people we are working only with a little group of 3, 4, 5 but with a more intense and more deep work and as they become they are mostly adolescent and young adults, as they become adults they are changing also the minds of their fellows of their peers, of their families they are bringing the message inside their community to make the change in the generations to come because you see a situation that has lasted more than 1000 years you cannot change in 1 or 2 or 10 years it will take time but it needs also a change in the society in the main society as long as the main society doesn't change and make a better society with people having all equality and same rights to work against poverty and give people the minimum ethical help in their lives then the Roma situation will not be able to change so it's a work about working yes with the Roma community but also work with our society to change thank you very much for sharing your views your thoughts, challenges you have and thank you for the discussion thank you Julid I have a question after now you can see the performance called Children of the Wind written by Sebastiano Spinella and Ursula Mainardi and performed by Sebastiano Spinella enjoy the show have good fun