Staging the Romani Queer Revolution: New Approaches to the Study of Romani Queerness

Abstract

I In this paper, I provide an intersectional analysis of Roma Armee, a theatre play staged at Berlin’s Maxim Gorki theatre. I wish to challenge preconceptions and representations of Romani queer and feminist identities by investigating the personal narratives and self-envisioning of queer and feminist Romani performers. While there are notions that Romani queers live only as victims, perpetrators of violence, or unwitting exoticized objects of desire for mainstream queer consumption, I favour a more complex image, showing how some Romani queers articulate their own sexuality, race, class, and agency. I look at how these articulations are met in some Romani communities, and by majoritarian audiences in Berlin and Stockholm, in order to problematize the complex nature of being a minority within a minority. I end with remarks on the revolutionary potential of the play, by arguing that the play creates spaces for healing and can be seen as a significant contribution to an epistemic and ontological shift when it comes to Romani queer and feminist knowledge production.