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Paper short abstract

Randia’s Quiet Theatre: Performing Care and Activism with a Romani Elder examines performance ethnography and autofiction as political sites for imagining alternative futures, articulating more-than-human ethics, and enacting practices of worldmaking.

Paper long abstract

Drawing on my book, Randia’s Quiet Theatre: Performing Care and Activism with a Romani Elder, this paper examines performance ethnography and autofiction as political sites for imagining alternative futures, articulating more-than-human ethics, and enacting practices of worldmaking in contexts marked by discrimination and exclusion. I focus on dramatic storytelling sessions with Randia, a talented Romani storyteller and performer, which aimed to document her life as an elderly and disabled woman in post-EU accession migration-era Poland. Randia, the mother of eight, saw many of her children move to England, and when old age and disability prevented her from fortune-telling, she became a “prisoner of the fourth floor”—a condition defined by loneliness, lack of basic amenities, silence, and the absence of “quiet care.”

In our dramatic storytelling sessions, Randia stepped into her characters, and the roved—between the past, the present, and the future, between different locations, and between the world of the living and the world of the spirits. Through performance, her characters changed history and the lives of others. They could even undo death. I argue that Randia’s performances were a form of quiet activism—a mode of listening and being present—that rehearsed alternative lives, worlds, and futures for herself and her loved ones. She articulated an ethics of care among individuals, communities, and spirits, grounded in collaboration and shared vulnerability. Ultimately, I examine the potential of performance ethnography as a means of intergenerational knowledge-sharing that imagines a world where elderly can live dignified lives.