From the article published on February 2, 2017, in La Voz del Sur
When it rains, Rocio Montero Maya, 56, spends the night dozing. She gets up constantly. She checks that water has not penetrated the tin roof of her shack. She frantically checks the beds where her seven children, her legion of grandchildren, and her six-month-old great-granddaughter sleep. In the summer, with the humid, hot, and sticky climate, hungry rats come out at night to get the best of a buffet of garbage and waste. Sometimes they bite some of the 200 children who live in El Vacie, the largest and oldest shantytown in Europe. At night, you can see the lights of a nearby Carrefour, which for years has prevented many of the inhabitants of this Seville settlement from entering. Below, among mud, scrap, and plasterboard, is the San Fernando cemetery. A brutal metaphor, a wall that recalls the virtual wall that oppresses the Roma community of about 600 people, 90 shacks, and 60 prefabricated houses.
It seems unthinkable to escape from this theme park of misery. Here every possible ambition for social improvement has disappeared and electric light is taken as it comes. Almost ten years ago, theater arrived here, offering a distraction. Not only to escape, even temporarily, from that well of exclusion in which the Roma of Seville reside, but above all to highlight and amplify their cry, which demanded dignity. It’s not the Stanislavsky method, nor Grotowski’s theater. The voice of these six Roma women flows from their unconscious without premeditation. Unconscious. It’s community theater. A form of theater that has attracted a lot of attention with the play The House of Bernarda Alba. In 2009, the TNT Theater Research Center, the space set up by Ricardo Iniesta – founder of the Atalaya company – arrived near this marginal settlement and decided to recreate the universe of Lorca’s Bernarda Alba starting from the daily life of the women of Vacie. The success of the experience was overwhelming. So much so that now Rocío has abandoned the clothes of Bernarda Alba and wears those of the mayor of Fuenteovejuna, the classic of Lope de Vega. The text is set in the reality of a Roma market, full of clothes, and tells of a city on the margins of society that decides to rebel against injustices, prejudices, and abuses of power. It started from imagination, fantasy, and the contributions that these women themselves gave.
“This is very interesting and very difficult at the same time for them, because suddenly, there is a huge change from the stage to returning to their shantytown. But they feel useful and feel they can give life to a space of freedom” […]
INTERVIEW WITH ROCIO MONTERO MAYA, PROTAGONIST OF FUENTEOVEJUNA
The interview was published on September 30, 2017, in Amarí, a Roma cultural magazine.
What motivated you to start this project, not being a common thing in your environment?
It’s that when we started working, we didn’t know what it meant to do theater. We started with workshops and with Silvia, the girl who was there. We started with a group of Roma women: many left and some of us stayed because we were interested in doing that workshop. We wanted to know what would come out of us, because we had been locked in the shacks for a long time, without being able to go anywhere, and so I said to myself: “let’s see what comes out of these workshops…” and at the end of the workshops some left and others stayed, my daughters stayed, my sisters-in-law, some nieces stayed and she [Silvia] proposed we do a play. I said: I’m not doing a play, I don’t know how to do it… I didn’t know what it was like, I had never been to the theater and then the Roma don’t do theater, they can at most do something flamenco, a dance, something like that, but not theater. But then Pepa Gamboa arrived and said: “yes, we will do a play”. And I said: “me?, I can’t do it because I can’t read or write”. Yes, that’s how it went: she proposed it to us and we did it.
How do you do a play without knowing how to read or write? It’s already difficult if you know how to do it, but if you don’t know how to do it…
By memorizing things in your head, by heart. I repeated the sentences, I repeated them many times. When I was at home, I repeated them by myself; then I went to Carrefour and repeated them there too, and then I washed and repeated them, and I cooked and repeated them… my husband asked me: “girl, darling, what are you doing that you’re muttering all the time?” and I “well, I can’t read or write, I have to learn things by heart!”
Did your family help you?
Well, they didn’t help me, but I brought the script home and my daughter read what was written until…
It was an evolution for you, you grew as a person, because now you know you can act and feel fulfilled?
Yes. When I’m in the theater, during the show, yes, but not at home, at home I’m the same, I’m always the same… But when I’m in the theater, on stage, and people applaud me, yes, yes, then I feel powerful. My daughters are there, with me, they are actresses and they are very good. So, yes, I feel powerful, but when I’m in my shack I’m always the same.
Have you encountered any obstacles in doing this project, coming from your environment, your family or the women around you?
I don’t care what they say, if they tell me what to do, I say: “mind your own business and let me live my life, I do what I want. It’s me who has to decide, no one decides for me. My children are happy, my husband and my family too and me too. I don’t care what people say.
Of the two plays you have performed, The House of Bernarda Alba and Fuenteovejuna, which one involved you the most?
Well, Bernarda Alba. I felt very proud because that was a more Roma work. It seems more… but I’m also proud of this work because, even if it’s a tragic and ancient play, it’s very beautiful. Bernarda Alba is a very famous play. We traveled and every time we sold out and there were always people who couldn’t get in and stayed outside wanting to see the show.
What do your granddaughters think when they see you act?
I told them that, when I’m gone, they have to go on, not think about me but about them, that they are grown up, that they can read and write… that they study and do what they want, that they become artists or whatever they want to become.
If you could go back and choose, would you have tried to pursue a career as a professional actress?
Yes, as a professional actress, but what I would have liked to do was go further, I wanted to feel more powerful, not like I feel when I’m in the shack, and that people seeing me would say: “look at this woman: think about what she was and what she has become now!”. Well, some people already tell me that, because when I go to Carrefour they recognize me and say: “you’re great, look how far you’ve come”. And I tell them: “yes, when I’m in the theater it’s fantastic, but outside no”.
Have you encountered many obstacles in doing the play?
No, many Roma come to see me at the theater and my relatives have also come from Santiago because they saw it on TV and said: “she’s my cousin, we have to go see her!”. They came from Santiago, from La Coruña and they were proud to know that they have an artist in their family.
