Lea Lovag, actress, 34 living in Budapest in the '90s
The Chair of The Entrance Examination Board at The Institute of Theater and Film of Bucharest in the '80s (It could be on tape recorder)
The Director of the play "Mom' We Are Too White To Be Gypsies?!" produced in 1997 (Preferably a woman. It could be on tape recorder)

Act Two

Scene One

Lea: "Within our snow-bound hut of earth, with tears and groans my wife gives birth, the winter wind also weeps, only weeps - it cannot speak. I watch with my two kids apart, and God is wandering through my heart.

My woman weeps in night 's dead place, a deep pearl lake blurs around her face. Please God let the morning rise, bring some light to my two eyes, and let me see my lovely light: the face of my small new-born child!

So tortured is my woman 's cry, her shrieking reaches to the sky, calling out her mother 's name - for her help, but how in vain. Holy Virgin I beseech thee, from your lily throne to reach me!

And now our house has one soul more, my God please help us to endure! Water is my wife 's desire - all her blood has turned to fire; I 've no vessel to bring it in, oh, why am I as poor as sin?! I 'll bring some water in my hand, or in my black-as-black night hat. At the well the wolf is laired, waiting with his sharp teeth bared! The sun is up, the hour has come, his wolfish mouth is bloody foam.

With my hat I scoop the water, cold my head, I start to shiver. By my side a shadow glides, wings behind; its hair is white, further on on the rack of dawn, my mother 's dead face looking on." ... (silence)

Voice: (hurrying her up) Text, text, text...

Lea: I hail from Transylvania. When we were small we were told that our mother was Hungarian and father Romanian, and that their marriage proved that people of different ethnic background can get along together under the guidance of communism.

"But I always felt something wasn 't quite right." We attended Romanian school for it went without saying that intellectuals, like our parents had ambitions for us, are intellectuals just with a piece of paper saying that, so to get that paper you had to attend Romanian schools and not to complicate your existence with bilingualism which might give you a funny accent. So Romanians we were. Then straight after the fall of communism in '89 I registered as a student in Hungarian Studies, I "became better myself" but "still something was missing, and I didn 't know what..."

What if you are raped and become pregnant and you have no choice but keep the child... and the child is a wonder of love and beauty and suavity and joy?! Should you hate the child? A child is a child even if undesired. I love Romania... maybe as you love your crippled child. At least being assimilated prevents me from teaching my child about how great our nation is, whichever that might be, how exquisite our hospitability and cuisine and humor are. All cultures boast about something that makes them feel superior to others...

But back to my testimony. As a child, whenever our room was untidy, my mother used to call us Gypsies. Whenever I was quarreling with her, she accused me of being as gross as a Gypsy. For her my hippie-like manner of dressing with large skirts and big hair was Gypsy, she was not happy with my boyfriend because he was as dark as a Gypsy. Right after my son was born, she asked me impatiently on the phone if his skin is white or dark!

"Then one day..." I started to inquire about my ancestry and tried to trace my genealogical tree, my mother told me with a frail smile that her father 's father was a... Gypsy! But we, her children, she added nervously, shouldn't tell our father. We were all excited.

"I always thought that my aunts and uncles were dark!" laughed my elder brother.
"So your grandmother was a noble and she married a Gypsy! Was she lame or something?" I asked.
"She was pregnant. This life is a big shit."
"And the baby died. You shouldn't tell your father!" My mother looked haggard.
"So she left him."
"No, they had five children. What are you up to?" She panicked. "You shouldn't tell your father that I told you!"
"What about him? Is he a Romanian? Our family name is Hungarian!" I went on.
"Actually he's half-Hungarian, a quarter Romanian and a quarter Svab - a variety of German, but when Transylvania was given to Romania your grandfather got Romanized and forced to become an Orthodox together with his whole village of Lutherans and Catholics. Otherwise, he couldn't have kept his job as a schoolmaster, and he had 11 children. So his name got a Romanian spelling."
"And my father is such a fierce Romanian patriot!" It was laughable to me. "Why don't we speak Hungarian?"
"Your father is weak at languages. So we chose to speak Romanian at home."
"When I was at the kindergarten I spoke fluent Hungarian!" remembered my brother.
"Yes," my mother said. "But one day you came home beaten and you swore not to speak Hungarian any longer for the children made fun of you, shouting 'Hungariass-Bungariass, spear in your ass!' So I decided to stop teaching you Hungarian... You talk as if you don't know how it was to be a Hungarian in Romania! But I hate Hungarians too! They are as bad as Romanians. When I was little, the Hungarian police kicked our family out of the house because we were poor and couldn 't pay the rent! We were 16 kids out in the cold winter.... Father didn 't have a license as a blacksmith, so for a piece of paper they kicked us out."

I was confused. I couldn't identify with the Gypsies I saw on the streets or at the black market, who were dressed with no color coordination, wearing plastic slippers, annoying you if you passed by with their trafficking in cigarettes and food. They were the first ones in front of the grocery stores with the endless lines, bringing all of their large families. We couldn 't stay for hours in line as they did, since they didn 't have jobs. They bought the scarce food and then sold it to us at double the price.

But one-eighth of my blood was Gypsy whether I liked it or not. For a while I kept it as a secret. When my friends talked or complained about Gypsies ' insolent behavior, I agreed with them. Or even worse, I was the one who expressed racist resentments.

Sometimes it was romantic to think I am a Gypsy. I blamed my adolescence rebelliousness, my apetite for night dancing and traveling, for strolling into the woods and bathing in the sea on my herritage. It was laughable but see actually most of my boyfriends as it proved were to some extent assimilated Gypsies. My most loved Romanian actor turned out to be a passing Gypsy too!

Then later on, when a curly viola player asked me to marry his black eyes, I braced up and I confessed to him that my great-grandfather was a Gypsy and he should think his proposal over. He said his grandfather was also a Gypsy. But next morning he said it was just a joke. Anyway our son has velvety dark eyes and cries when I tell him he is a Gypsy. "Why do you say I am a Gypsy? I am a good boy, I wash my hands and finish eating my meals..."

I was surprised when after few years more a new friend, a German whose grandfather, some said, was a nazi officer during World War II, learned Romani and wanted to be a Gypsy when we met, I asked him to introduce me to one of his Gypsy girl friends, who was a big wig struggling for Gypsy rights. She was a student in law and journalism. I never met a Gypsy intellectual before.

"Very nice girl, and pretty." This sounded strange to me! A German, a Westerner who was suppossed to be much more refined than me, a poor Romanian, was lowering himself to the company of a Gypsy woman!
"What poor taste you have, they are ugly people." I didn 't tell him I am a Gypsy too.
"Are they?" he asked me smiling mildly.
Then I thought: "I 'm not ugly. My mother and all my aunts were beautiful and special when young, they are more Gypsy than I, so it follows that Gypsies are not all ugly."
His friend was not only pretty but she had such a gift for speech that she gave me goose pimples with her talk - this was well before I also started to go to conferences on human rights and polish myself a bit.
"I 'm happy to meet you," she said warmly. "For our common blood made you meet me, and you are dear to me for that." She explained that our family was not an isolated case. That many Gypsies were passing, considering it a way of survival. That my parents wanted to protect us. Why should they have to be heroic? They were as heroic as any from the history book. They endured hunger, fear and humiliation protecting their children for a better future.

Then after two years at a creative writing workshop I met Sekou Karaja, an Afro-American poet. I wanted him to teach me how to act since he was also a "member of an oppressed group." I didn 't want my son to tell me later: "Mom ', this Gypsy stuff gets on my nerves. We are not Gypsies. We are too white to be Gypsies." I wished him learn to be at peace with himself. Sekou encouraged me: "You should tell your story. Then others will also tell their stories. And in the end things will have to change." So...

Voice: Is this fragment about yourself?

Lea: Partly... (worked out) See, people tell me I present myself at the beginning in one way and it turns out after a while I am a different way... that I am basically dishonest... it 's embeded in me. I am always something other than one thinks, because I'm not only one thing. I'm "partly". When I am with Romanians I 'm more of a Romanian, when I am with Hungarians, I 'm Hungarian, when I 'm with Gypsies I am a Gypsy, all the time I'm lying and I'm not! And I always feel uneasy because I know they hate each other. All the time I am one thing at the surface and a different thing deeper! I smile timidly at you, you think I am sheepish, no? but actually I coldly watch your weak points. You humiliate me and I look humble and patient? I am actually planning to turn back your cruelty but I don 't know how yet.... to make you suffer as much as you made me... It 's horrible to be like that.... We should respect everyone 's human rights not just because it's right to do so, but because otherwise we give birth to monsters. I am endangered if I don 't respect you... (she sights) If I get the part, I am not dark-skinned but in ten solarium sessions I can catch up.

Voice: Not to worry.