Mujeres gitanas y exploraciones del arte teatral

Click here for the link to the documentary I watched a few days ago that I loved and really made me think.  I found it on www.rtve.es which is my favorite source for television and I thought I'd share it with readers here -- it was a recent airing of the show "Documentos TV" on Spanish television and in case the link doesn't work you should be able to search the "a la carta" section of the rtve site for the show name, and the episode name was "Una casa para Bernarda Alba".

It shows how a gitano slum outside Sevilla, Spain, was the source for a whole cast of "La casa de Bernarda Alba", a Lorca play, put on by a nearby theater.  The producers went through the neighborhood and talked to every family and introduced themselves, and got unexpectedly high interest in their theater program by the gitana women there.  They ended up going beyond an acting workshop and put on a whole production that eventually toured to other Spanish cities and was slated to do shows in Mexico and Germany in 2011.

The documentary tracks the progress of the show and gives insight into the lives of the cast -- traditional, typical gitana women cleaning and cooking and feeding babies in their makeshift shacks that let water pour in every time it rains.  It was such a great example of how things change when you bring art into life, and of how art is accessible and important to all, regardless of economic and social status.  Many of the women actors were illiterate, had never heard of Lorca (which, in Spain, is saying something), and hadn't even understood what a play was before getting involved.  (Can you imagine learning your lines without being able to read??)

Women are infinitely strong.  We care for our children while husbands are in jail.  We make ends meet when it seems there's nothing.  And then, in the midst of that, an opportunity to practice art comes along, and instead of turning it down because we are already weighed down, we take it on because it is the life and soul of our perseverance.  It gets us out of the house, it gives us freedom, allows us to provide income to poverty-stricken households.  That documentary was such a great insight into the vast spectrum of women's realities, and how art can be powerful and grounding no matter where you are in the spectrum.  It reminds me what dignity is.  Yes, women are infinitely strong.