Hot Blood and Black Pearls

Socialism, Society, and Authenticity at the Moscow Teatr Romen

Bibliographic Data

ID4552807
AuthorsAlaina Lemon (corresponding author)
Year1996
Volume48
Issue4
Pages479-494
Publication date1996-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueTheatre Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0192-2882 • E-ISSN: 1086-332X
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/tj.1996.0086
OpenAlexW1986431876
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited8

Hot Blood and Black Pearls: Socialism, Society, and Authenticity at the Moscow Teatr Romen Alaina Lemon (bio) In early 1992, at a Sunday matinee performance of Gypsy at the Moscow Teatr Romen (Romani Theatre), one spectator out of a small audience of Russian pensioners humming along to familiar melodies exceeded their nostalgia by trying to physically enter the mythic past occurring on stage. 1 He drunkenly stumbled through the dark down the central aisle, waving his arms and crying out the name of the main character: “Budulaj, Budulaj!” Ignoring the stairs at the side, he swung his leg over the front to climb onto the stage, and tried to embrace the actor playing Budulaj. Without breaking character, the actors improvised an exit and an usher led the believing drunk down from the stage, past the marble proscenium arch carved with airplanes and war heroes. 2 [End Page 479] Besides illusory links between life and art (as made by a drunk who transgressed the proscenium), and more crudely concrete ones between state hierarchies and cultural activities (as indexed by proscenium carvings), real connections exist between performance and social life. The Teatr Romen is a site where social categories as well as cultural stereotypes are publicly reproduced. Their force is strong, much stronger than in North America or the rest of Europe—hardly a day passes without a Gypsy ensemble on television, as musical backdrops or cameos in film. Budulaj is only one of these types, the hero of a Soviet novel written in the 1960s that was adapted as a play at the Teatr Romen, a film, and then a television series—all titled simply Gypsy. Budulaj is a decorated veteran of the Great Patriotic War (World War II) who travels about the country by motorcycle seeking relatives. On stage or screen the Russians he meets are shaken in their prejudices about Gypsies by his proletarian good sense and literacy—he joins a collective and reads books. But Budulaj also tap dances and glares at people from under thick, dark eyebrows, remaining somehow still a “typical Gypsy.” It is this typicality, signs of his primitive difference and “closeness to nature,” that Russians appreciate most of all. In a spin-off TV series of the late 1970s (The Return of Budulaj) Budulaj loses his memory of individual biographical events. It is when he is silent, communing with horses, water, or fire, when he plays a tune on his harmonica, that Budulaj remembers his “true” Gypsy self. Budulaj may have been a Soviet patriot, but his Gypsiness conforms to older, pre-Soviet genres that define Gypsies as apart from society or the modern nation. Neither Roma nor Russians usually recognize how such images complicate Roma’s social position; instead they justify marginality as born of an innate Gypsy proclivity for antisocial rebellion: “Gypsy Freedom.” A quite tangible real-world effect of performance is that it has become a kind of occupational ghetto for Roma in Russia. Besides playing Budulaj or some other permutation of “The Gypsy,” with song in his blood, there are few ways to be a public person as a Rom. For Roma who are non-performers, showing some kind of relation to performance (claiming relatives at the Teatr Romen, for example) and its tropes is among the few legitimate forms of cultural and symbolic capital. The very occupation of performer is numbered among the types represented onstage; offstage, the ability to perform is listed among the traits of the “real Gypsy.” It is an occupation that Gypsies are supposed to excel in, to be born for. Still, in part because theatre is framed separately from the rest of social life, even though performance is considered the appropriate occupation for a Gypsy, Romani performers are suspected to be ersatz. Indeed, many people tried to discourage me from beginning research at the Teatr because it produced “kitsch,” and the actors there were no longer “genuine.” Romani performers are understandably anxious in the face of this discursive paradox and speak of experiencing cultural identity “complexes.” They have a high stake in distinguishing “real” from “pseudo” Gypsiness; backstage and at home, performers who became field consultants took pains to make sure that I, the

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Character (mathematics · Drama · HERO · Literature · Visual arts · Balkans: History, Politics, Society · History · Romani and Gypsy Studies · Social and Cultural Studies

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