Sofia, July 31, 2019
On the last day of July the Roma neighbourhood Fakulteta in Sofia was visited by William Shakespeare and Miguel de Servantes. We started with the best – Romeo and Juliet and Don Quixote. The Roma actress Natalia Tzekova staged a funny and educational performance with the participation of talented children and youth from the neighborhood in which the art was intertwined with social and health related messages. Romeo and Juliet demonstrated the benefits of family planning, contraception and health education and spoke in verse about the harm of school dropout, early marriages and children having children. The participants performed short sketches which contained the same messages, debunked myths and demonstrated how powerful personal example is. Don Quixote explained some of the community specificities which started a short discussion on stage who should take example from whom about health and health prevention. In between sketches and play scenes the participants shared their own personal stories about health and family planning. At the end of the play as a recap of what was presented they raised a few banners with messages on the same topic”: “I have dreams and goals”, “I am not an incubator for babies”, “Ask – someone will tell you”. The audience appreciated the messages and the element of humor in the sketches and play scenes.
The event was part of “My body, my rights” project, funded by the MSD for Mothers social responsibility program, which is implemented in Bulgaria, Serbia and Romania with BFPA working on its Bulgarian component. The goal of the theatre is through the means of the visual arts to disseminate important social messages in a comprehensible way to the widest possible audience which in this case understood and appreciated them as well as the humor of the whole performance. As usual, the little actors from Fakulteta were mesmerized by the stage magic and only time will tell if any of them will follow in the footsteps of Natalia herself, as most of them said. We wish them success and also to pass on what they learned from this performance. During the next months such performances will be held with the participation of Roma youth from Montana and Yambol under Natalia’s skillful guidance.
