Talking Human - Zigeuner-Einsamkeit auf Englisch

Talking Human is both entertaining and deeply confrontational: through humor and irony, it highlights familiar situations that expose the uncertainty and fears underlying social prejudice. It functions as a kind of “Gypsy for Dummies” class, where the Roma perspective is not an end in itself, but a tool for a shared journey of self-reflection. “More than once I’ve struggled with the dilemma of how Gypsy I actually am as a half-Gypsy, whether I really have enough connection to all this… These are my memories, my own lived experiences, but I think that if there is one thing that truly applies to all Roma people, it’s that we all know what it’s like to live as someone excluded…” (Kristóf Horváth) Kristóf Horváth, known to many simply as “Actor Bob,” examines the social and personal workings of shame in his stand-up performance, structured around memory and the processing of memory. He raises the question of how much individual memories belong to the self, and how much they belong to the collective memory of the Roma community. In his performance Talking Human, which can be seen as a precursor to this piece, Kristóf explored the relationship to his Roma identity that he learned from his mother; in the present performance, he expands this further through the tools of stand-up comedy.