To get people to talk to each other

New York, USADecember 9, 1995
Robbie McCauleyPlaywright, director, actor
In America I had been working with black and white people trying to get them to talk to each other. We came up with stories as a way to get people to talk to each other.
When I came to Prague, I became interested in doing the same thing with a group of Czech and Romany people and that’s how we came up with the Stories Exchange Project.
I was trying to get the people whose interest I had sparked to enter a process to work with me that had to do with using their culture as a way to dialogue with others about their culture, especially for the Roms, because the Roms are people whose story isn’t heard a lot in that society.
In the Stories Exchange Project people collect stories form other people that they know, interview people of their communities, people that they work with. And that happened for about a year, collecting stories. And there were monthly meetings of the core group.
Prejudices between people, harsh discriminations between people don’t have to be. And I think that culture can help people see that.