Rose drama and caravan to Gypsies, 1992 and 1993

Once the children taking part in the activities of the Borderland Center, after the cycle of stories about different national and religious minorities in Poland, were asked to write a script of the drama that would focus on the culture of the minority group that they choose. Most of them chose Gypsies. Then there was Small Trip East: touring Sejny region with a horse and coaches, meetings with the people, and art work. It had been one of the paths that led to creating The Rose drama. 

The main character is a young Gipsy, wandering through Belarusians, Polish, Lithuanian and Jewish villages trying to find his lover who had been kidnapped by the witch. 

It took a lot of time to prepare the spectacle. Children learned about the Gypsy culture, their ceremonies. They were taught to dance by Tamara Demeter, a famous Roma artist, who came for dance workshops from Moscow; Stanislaw Stankiewicz, a Polish Gypsy was a teacher of singing. 

Première took place on December 12, 1992 in the White Synagogue in Sejny. Bożena Szroeder directed it as well as wrote the script and designed the costumes. Wojciech Szroeder invented the scenography and arranged the music. Polish, Roma, Russian and Lemkos folk songs were used for the performance. 

The young actors: Monika Abramczuk, Kinga Bagan, Tomasz Czeszkiewicz, Weronika Czyżewska, Marta Jurkiewicz, Sebastian Karłow, Małgorzata Lewandowska, Agnieszka Szyłak, Elżbieta Witkowska. The actors were accompanied by the band: Wojciech Szroeder, Paweł Szroeder and Józef Stankiewicz. 

Then Ethnographic Museum in Tarnów invited children's theater group. Young actors spent several days in Tarnów and the area (January 23-30, 1993). They performed Rosa a couple of times. The most extraordinary was the premier in Gypsy settlement in Maszkowice. As Bożena Szroeder recalls it: 

"After première we traveled a bit with our spectacle. In Tarnów i did something dangerous that transformed into an adventure. I told driver to bring us to the Gypsies, to Maszkowice. nobody awaited us there, but after a while the crowd appeared on the snowy road. The woman on one side, the men on the other side. I say: we want to play a spectacle for you. They ask: - What spectacle?, - Some theater piece. 
They cleaned some empty little cottage. It was freezing, some woman brought the fire on the frying-pen. 

The whole village came to the cottage, about 120 individuals, and we were only 20. At the end we did not know who were the actors, and who were the spectators. When one of our girls dropped the shawl, the Gypsy women would pick it up. They would rub their freezing hands and sing with them. It was a good meeting. We promised to come back. And for four years in a row, in summer holidays, we would go there, from one village to another. Our children and Gypsy children took part in common art, music classes, they would play children's games together, and observe each other. Nobody else visited mountain Gypsies before. Or if - only out of nosiness, and then he would escape, chased by his own fear. We stayed and learned from each other." 

On December 8-18, 1993 children's theater went to Switzerland and played its spectacle in Protestant churches and Steiner school. 

Małgorzata Lewandowska, one of young actresses, wrote about the trip to Switzerland: 

"On Friday we performed for the first time in Switzerland. It was very pleasant, everybody enjoyed and were having good time with us. We discovered that the Swiss were very nice people. 

There is something like eurhythmics school where children learn to play some instrument first, then moving according the rhythm of the music, and singing, and only after three years they learn to write and read. One of such schools exists in Zug, its full name is Rudolf Steiner Schule. We played our second performance there, and children of different races were there ... 

Sunday in Switzerland was different than our Sundays in Sejny, because instead of resting on seventh day, as the Bible says, we decided to work to make the Swiss merry... The show took place in the town of St. Gallen in a catechism-lectures room. The floor there was very slippery because they had polished the parquet very well. Fortunately nobody fell down - not during the performance. But after, when one of the girls was running out of the stage, she slipped and did fall down like a piece of wood. It was funny, though." 

Swiss newspaper "ZN. Arena" wrote about the spectacle on December 14, 1993 (the article For the peace in the world. The Borderland presents Polish drama about Gypsies).