Set among the vibrant and defiant Romani community, Roam is a contemporary “fortune tale” dramedy featuring a pop-rock-Romani fusion score that explores what happens when a culture based on movement is forced to stop in hostile territory.
NYC Reading Cast
The Team
Rupert Hands
Director
As Director: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (London Palladium/Tokyu Theatre Orb); Wendy and Peter Pan (Leeds Playhouse); The Society for New Cuisine (Omnibus); Otto Weidt (Workshop, Leeds Playhouse); Global Majority (Touring Workshop); Dirty Hearts (Old Red Lion); Blackbird (The Other Room); The Secret Garden (Ambassadors); High Society (ArtsEd); Songs For a New World, Six Characters in Search of an Author, Oh What a Lovely War, Candide (all Mountview); Carrie, Edward II, Spring Awakening, Company, Between Riverside and Crazy (all RWCMD). As Associate Director: Evita (Palladium); Sunset Boulevard (St.James, Broadway/Savoy); Cyrano de Bergerac (Playhouse/Pinter); King Lear (Duke of York’s).
The PAst
Roam previously had a workshop and staged reading with the Giuvlipen Theater Company, the preeminent Romani theater company in Romania, and the National University of Theatre and Film in Bucharest.
Working with Roma musicians and actors helped shape the show’s musical vocabulary and infuse the story with authentic representations of Romani life and the types of persecution they still face today.
Following their time in Romania, the team visited Dachau Concentration Camp, where the Romani were interred and executed alongside Jews, political prisoners, and members of the LGBT community.
It is estimated that between 25-50% of all European Romani were killed by the Nazis during the Porajmos (their term for the Holocaust which means “the Devouring”), as a percentage, only second to European Jewry.
