{"product_id":"randia-s-quiet-theatre","title":"Randia's Quiet Theatre","description":"\u003cp\u003eThroughout 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.\"\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn \u003cem\u003eRandia's Quiet Theatre\u003c\/em\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eInterwoven throughout \u003cem\u003eRandia's Quiet Theatre\u003c\/em\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"McGill-Queen's University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54846622663000,"sku":"9780228024781","price":33.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0278\/1295\/4195\/files\/9780228024781_624174d1-3d99-4b8f-85e5-385168d3cfcb.jpg?v=1779863458","url":"https:\/\/agendabookshop.com\/products\/randia-s-quiet-theatre","provider":"Agenda Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}