Giuvlipen 3.23

for EN scroll down:
Giuvlipen ("feminism" în limba romani) este o companie de teatru înființată de actrițe rome. Spectacolele noastre vorbesc despre femeile rome și vor să facă vizibile experiențele lor comune: impactul rasismului individual și sistemic, impactul sexismului asupra vieților lor, hipersexualizarea și exotizarea, confruntarea cu patriarhatul din comunitățile rome. Giuvlipen este un teatru cu și despre femeile rome. Spectacolele noastre folosesc un ton personal și mecanisme comice pentru a discuta situații grave aparent fără ieșire.

Giuvlipen (meaning feminism in Romani language) is a feminist theatre group with, about and for Roma women, with the goal of contributing to the empowerment of Roma women in their living communities. Our group creates theatre performances based on life stories of Roma women, about their difficulties living between a traditional patriarchal community and a demanded integration into the dominant (oftenly racist) Romanian community. By the usage of theatre we intend to bring on stage the main issues that Roma women have to deal with everyday.

Our project focuses on Roma women that are facing early marriage, lack of education and the restrictions to achieve proper education, Roma women who are facing evictions, lesbian and transgender Roma women: women who are not taken into consideration in society and are rarely listened to. We think that this is an important project nowadays, when racism and intolerance against Roma people is increasing in Europe and we can feel this backlash in our everyday life.
As Roma women, we want to make our own voices heard in our own communities and in non-Roma society and to help other Roma women to make their own voices stronger. We try through performances (that we write, produce and perform), to bring Roma women together and create a Roma sisterhood.
We wrote, independently produced and performed several theatre performances based on the lives of Roma women and involving other Roma actresses: Del Duma: Talk About Me (four real stories of Roma women facing early marriage), Sara Kali: The Dark Madonna (invocation of the Roma saint Sara Kali against anti-gypsyist hate speech), Razzing (about evictions of Roma people in Bucharest, written and performed together with evicted Roma women, most of them under 30, and their children), Gadjo Dildo (about the hypersexualization of Roma women by non-Roma men, heteronormativity and sexuality issues in Roma communities).
Our projects address women's mobilization through theatre and performance, awareness raising through arts activism, creating a space for discussions concerning feminism, LGBT and Roma rights, actions in communities that do not have access to outside critical discourses on issues that affect them but also addresses a larger non-Roma audience which lacks Roma women's perspectives.