Not only Roma artists, for not exquisitely Roma audiences. Between 2015 and 2023, we offered several hundred performances, concerts, exhibitions and many other programs in 26 Roma villages and urban districts of Borsod County in North-East of Hungary. Join our multidisciplinary art festival! The entry to the events is free of charge, but the non-locals are wellcome to pay an average entry fee, or register for supporter status.
This year's TeatRom festival will be marked by an unprecedented calm of support. The programmes and events have been planned, but in order to bring them to Farkaslyuk, Csokvaomány and Szendrőlád, we need community support.

If you would like to make the unique TeatRom festival happen again this year, please support us with a donation! Support our festival, support our survival!

Euro
Bank account number: 10918001-00000037-75400028
SWIFT code: BACXHUHB

Forint
Bank account number: 16200209-17072825
SWIFT code: HBWEHUHB

  

The name of the festival is a result of a joint decision, the village coordinators decided to send this positive message of a healthy, modern and equal European minority. TeatRom - on its former name Made in Gypsystan from 2015 - has mainly been the encounter of amateur groups mentored by Utca-SzAK artist community. However, throughout the years also professional Roma artists and internationally ackowledged street theaters joined the initiative.

Despite the fact that visibility provides new aspects to TeatRom, the underlying aim remains to be the same: fostering the personal and community development of this multiply disadvantaged region of Hungary with the means of Applied Arts.

For the people living in these towns the main deficiency is the tremendous lack of confidence. Staging own stories helps articulate problems on a small community level. The performances of adolescents and teenagers, as community services, do break the overall passivity of the Roma minority and lead to intrinsic activities. Theatre is an ideal field to train competences, personal human skills such as intra-group co-operation, moderate competition, conflict management etc. Daily creative process in a non-hostile group climate helps the underprivileged to develop voice and self-confidence.

Exclusion is present on both sides - not only the majority lacks openness to mingle, but also the Roma communities are closed towards the majority and sometimes even to each other. Facilitating multiple encounters is the best way to foster inclusion. Theater mainly connects by creation and performance.

The performing art collectives have a fermentation effect in the segregated communities. The feeling, the non-hierarchical manner of decision-making amongst youngsters shall be contagious. The dignity of creativity and the earned success as positive examples might attract more settlements into the network of TeatRom in North-East of Hungary.

Expanding vision and mobility for the younger Roma generation shall contribute to a healthier and more equal status within the whole of society, becoming equal citizens actively practicing democratic rights and duties, while the elderly generation's understanding on collective decision-making processes is shaped in the vicinity of democratic art groups.

TeatRom serves direct social inclusion on several layers:

• personal, group and family level by shaping the inclusion-culture of the group members,
• village level by performing stories of the community to the community,
• regional level by exchanging local performances,
• connecting schools with youngsters, following their inclusion in Miskolc and beyond,
• larger national scope by including urban audiences in rural ambient, and providing high-end cultural performances to Roma audiences,
• national level through the extended press visibility of the festival.

About UtcaSZAK

We are theatre artists namely directors with “social development specialization”. It is important also for the Roma communities to understand the quality of help we are able to offer. We need to build trust by differentiating ourselves from schools, social institutions – generally from all sorts of authority.

"As the initiator of Utca-SzAK projects, I was always guided by deep love of theater, by the conviction that theatre is the strongest tool for learning and teaching humanness out of all educational forms.
Throughout the past 15 years, I proved situations in which unprivileged kids, lacking basic competences, showed the signs of high emotional intelligence and intellect. I've often seen group of youngsters experience a sort of group growth in performance situation. I know hundreds of young Roma who felt privileged being Roma in our democratic group frameworks and this experience was life-changing for them. I'd like to work with my team to prove that the power of dramatic arts is capable of influencing society far beyond the time of the performance." by Balázs Simon