Theatre show gives Roma and Gypsy families a voice

Gypsy and Roma community worker and advocate Juice Vamosi (left) and theatre producer Javaad Alipoor

A new show in Bradford is to highlight the struggles faced by Roma and Gypsy communities.

A Flag Large Enough, taking place at the Theatre in the Mill, will celebrate Romani culture with traditional songs and dance.

But it will also chronicle the community's historic struggle with racism and marginalisation - as well as its own splintered sectarian relations linking back to historic caste systems.

Co-creator Juice Vamosi said the aim was to help families "achieve social inclusion and become happy British citizens in the future".

Gypsy and Roma families rehearse for the show in Bradford

Mr Vamosi said there are thought to be around 5,000 families of Gypsy and Roma heritage - hailing from countries like Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and the former Czech Republic - living in Bradford.

Mr Vamosi, who co-created the show with Bradford artist and producer Javaad Alipoor, said his mission was to combat "anti Gypsy-ism".

"It is a specific form of hatred targeted at Gypsy people all over the world. There is no education about our people, our history, our language whatsoever," he said.

“Our ancestors left India roughly 1,000 years ago at different times, and they migrated different routes, always looking for a new home country, but we've never been welcome anywhere, really.

“We are [also] bringing together different Roma groups to learn about each other through art, Romani groups that would never mix with each other, and have lots of prejudices against each other.

"So it's unbelievable that we managed to get here. These Romani families, many of them are illiterate and it's really challenging to work with them, but they're really excited about the performance opportunity."

Children practise their moves for a dance performance celebrating Gypsy culture

To put the show together, families took part in workshops exploring different arts and performance methods to bring their experiences to life.

Mr Alipoor, who specialises in co-creating theatre and art with marginalised and deprived communities, said he hoped the project would support the "transformative" work of Mr Vamosi's charity KaskoSan and help give a voice to "a community that faces some of the most vicious racism in Britain".

"Some of the communities that Juice works with are only just coming and carving out a space culturally, politically, and so on in this country and we wanted to make a piece of work that really spoke to some of those stories - the struggle against racism that a lot of newer Roma migrants face, and the huge history of cultural resistance that they've been through."

He added: "There is a huge amount of cultural life in this community.

"Whatever other issues they face, there's a music scene, there's a dance scene and so on. And really we're just trying to open up a little bit of cultural space for folks from these newer communities."

A Flag Large Enough will be staged at the Theatre in the Mill from 19:30 BST on Thursday.

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