ABSTRACT

TNT El Vacie, a Spanish theatre company of Roma women founded in 2009 by director Pepa Gamboa, has been acclaimed for their unique versions of Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba and Lope de Vega’s Fuenteovejuna. Despite the success, the economic gap between these performers from a marginalised group and their privileged middle-class audiences remains intact, as the actors continue to live in slums. The work of TNT El Vacie raises questions about the role of social theatre in helping communities in situations of exclusion and the risk of fetishising poverty and difference as spectacle.