Overview

Throughout Poland, tens of thousands of elderly people live with disabilities in four-storey walk-up apartment buildings. In many cases their children have emigrated; they live with loneliness, a lack of basic amenities, silence, and the absence of care. They are known as ""prisoners of the fourth floor."" In Randia's Quiet Theatre Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston mixes autofiction, ethnography, and theatrical improvisation to unravel the politics of aging in Poland. At the centre of the book is Randia, a Romani fortune teller, storyteller, and performer confined to her fourth-floor apartment in old age. In interviews, Randia's identity is fixed: she tells of the hardships she faced as a Romani girl and as a wife, mother, and grandmother whose relationship with her family was shaped by separation, sickness, and death. But in storytelling sessions staged in her home, Randia steps into characters and is freed: her tales move between the past, the present, and the future, across life and death; her characters look after one another and change history. Kazubowski-Houston finds in Randia's performances a quiet activism through which she envisages alternative lives and articulates an ethics of care among individuals, communities, and spirits. Interwoven throughout Randia's Quiet Theatre are Kazubowski-Houston's own stories about caring for her elderly and disabled mother, making the book a collaborative, reflexive, and complex creative work. It reveals how ethnographers and their interlocutors can stand on more equal ground. Ultimately it is a profound reflection on how the elderly can live with dignity and how we can care for each other.

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9780228024781

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Reviews

""Randia's Quiet Theatre is a powerful work that shows how theatre and performance can lead to cross-cultural connections, self-knowledge, and even survival."" Ioana Szeman, University of East Anglia ""An intellectual feast, this book is truly compelling. Kazubowski-Houston's work is touching, with a powerful ability to transgress traditional boundaries between object and subject of research."" Michał P. Garapich, London Metropolitan University

“Randia's Quiet Theatre is a powerful work that shows how theatre and performance can lead to cross-cultural connections, self-knowledge, and even survival.” Ioana Szeman, University of East Anglia “An intellectual feast, this book is truly compelling. Kazubowski-Houston’s work is touching, with a powerful ability to transgress traditional boundaries between object and subject of research.” Michał P. Garapich, London Metropolitan University

Author Information

Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston is associate professor in the Department of Theatre, Dance & Performance at York University and the author of Staging Strife: Lessons from Performing Ethnography with Polish Roma Women.

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