Muriel Miguel

Last updated

Muriel Miguel
Born
Muriel Miguel

(1937-08-15)August 15, 1937
Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Occupations
  • Director
  • Choreographer
  • Playwright
  • Actor
  • Educator
ParentElmira Miguel
Website www.spiderwomantheater.org

Muriel Miguel (born August 15, 1937) is a Native American director, choreographer, playwright, actor and educator. She is of Kuna and Rappahannock ancestry and was born and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. [1] In 1976, Miguel founded the Spiderwoman Theater with her sisters, Gloria Miguel and Lisa Mayo (born Elizabeth Miguel). [2] The Spiderwoman Theater was the first Native American women's theater troupe to gain international recognition, and remains the longest continuous running Native American female performance group. [3] Miguel has directed nearly all of the Spiderwoman Theater's shows since their debut in 1976, and currently serves as its artistic director.

Contents

Early life

Miguel was born in Brooklyn, New York. She is the youngest of three sisters. Elmira Miguel, her mother, was a member of the Rappahannock tribe of Virginia. Her father was a Kuna Indian from islands called Kuna Yala (also known as Guna Yala), off the coast of Panama. [4]

In elementary school, Miguel was taught that Native American culture was "dead." In response to this, she created the Little Eagles with her friend Louis Mofsie. [4] The Little Eagles unified Native children and urged them to embrace their culture. They met in a church basement and performed traditional songs and dances. The Little Eagles remains active in New York City, and is now known as the Thunderbird American Indian Dancers. [5]

Miguel went on to study modern dance with Alwin Nickolais, Erick Hawkins and Jean Erdman. She was an original member of Joseph Chaikin's Open Theater along with Sam Shepard, Megan Terry, Peter Feldman, and Chaikin himself. [6]

Career

The Spiderwoman Theater

In the early 1970s, Miguel began working with women of diverse backgrounds and prioritized storytelling through "sound, movement, moments, and breath." [4] She asked Lois Weaver and Josephine Mofsie Tarrant for personal stories and created a piece combining Weaver's dream of making love to Jesus, Tarrant's story about the Hopi Goddess, the Spider Woman, and Miguel's story about the Sun Dance ceremony. Determined to connect their stories together, Miguel engaged in the process of storyweaving, unifying the three stories into one performance. This method of storyweaving would become a pillar of Miguel's style. [4]

In 1976, Miguel's sisters, Lisa Mayo and Gloria Miguel joined the group. Along with Pam Verge, and Lois Weaver, the sisters formed the Spiderwoman Theater. Much of their focus was centered on questioning gender roles, cultural stereotypes. Aiming to bring the issue of violence against women to light, their first work, Women in Violence, premiered at Washington Square Methodist Church. [7] Muriel wanted to work with the anger and complex emotions regarding the "Indian situation," the Indian Movement, and the violence experienced throughout her life. [8] They took Women in Violence to the Nancy Festival in France, becoming the first feminist theater group to participate. In 1977, they debuted their second play, The Lysistrata Numbah!, storyweaving Aristophanes' Lysistrata with stories from the different group members. [9]

The group eventually split, with Weaver leaving to create the performance troupe Split Britches; the three sisters continued creating pieces as the Spiderwoman Theater. [10] As a theatre and performance group, the sisters recognized the need for Indigenous stories to be told and heard. Utilizing their signature storyweaving methodology, they became a pillar in Indigenous arts and theater. Other shows put on included Trilogy: Friday Night Jealousy, My Sister Ate Dirt (1978), Cabaret: An Evening of Disgusting Songs and Pukey Images (1979), Oh, What a Life (1980), The Fittin' Room (1980), Sun, Moon and Feather & Split Britches (1981), I'll Be Right Back (1982), and many others. [9] A majority of these pieces aimed to question and challenge gender roles, racism, classism, and sexual oppression.

Miguel continues to direct pieces for the theater and serves as its artistic director. [6]

Teaching career

Miguel was an assistant professor of drama at Bard College, and an instructor of Indigenous Performance and Program Director for the Aboriginal Dance Program at The Banff Centre for the Arts for seven years. [11] Miguel also worked with inner-city Native youth on HIV issues, and developed shows for The Minnesota Native American AIDS Task Force (now known as The Indigenous Peoples Task Force). [11] She works as an instructor of Indigenous Performance at the Centre for Indigenous Theatre (CIT), also serving as a Program Director for the CIT's three-week summer intensive. [11] Miguel also facilitates Storyweaving Workshops across the US, Canada, and Europe. [12]

Writing and Choreography

Miguel choreographed Throw Away Kids and She Knew She Was She for the Aboriginal Dance Program at the Banff Centre. [2] Miguel is also known for her one-woman shows, including Hot' N' Soft, Trail of the Otter and most recently Red Mother. [6] Hot' N' Soft, included in the anthology Two-Spirit Acts: Queer Indigenous Performances, is notable for its themes of lesbianism within the Indigenous community. [13] A lesbian erotica and trickster story, Hot 'N' Soft touches on taboos within the Native lesbian community, citing her own sexual awakening and experiences throughout the piece. [14] Writing this piece, Miguel asserts her identity within the two-spirit, lesbian, and queer Indigenous communities.

Other

In 2019, Miguel directed Marie Clements' play The Unnatural and Accidental Women as the first presentation of Canada's National Arts Centre's Indigenous Theatre department. [15] [16]

Honors

In 1997, Miguel and her sisters were the founding contributors to the Native American Women Playwrights Archive at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Consequently, they received honorary Doctorates of Fine Arts at Miami University for their life's work and contribution to theater. [2] Additionally, she was selected for the Native and Hawaiian Women of Hope poster by Bread and Roses International Union's Bread and Roses Center that same year. [6] In 2003, Miguel was the recipient of the first Lipinsky Residency (feminist in residence) for San Diego State University Women's Studies Department. [6] In 2010, Miguel and her sisters received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women's Caucus for Art. [2]

Miguel is also a member of the National Theatre Conference and in 2015 attended the Rauschenberg Residency. [6] In 2016, Miguel was named a Guggenheim Fellow. [17] In 2018, Muriel received an award of $275,000 via the 2018 Duke Awards. [18] She received the 2019 Distinguished Career Award at the Southeastern Theatre Conference. [2] Miguel was featured in the 2022 book 50 Key Figures in Queer US Theatre, in a chapter written by theatre scholar Christy Stanlake. [19]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cherríe Moraga</span> American writer and activist

Cherríe Moraga is a Chicana feminist, writer, activist, poet, essayist, and playwright. She is part of the faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara in the Department of English. Moraga is also a founding member of the social justice activist group La Red Chicana Indígena which is an organization of Chicanas fighting for education, culture rights, and Indigenous Rights.

Marga Gomez is a comedian, writer, performer, and teaching artist from Harlem, New York. She has written and performed in thirteen solo plays which have been presented nationally and internationally. Her acting credits include Off-Broadway and national productions of The Vagina Monologues with Rita Moreno. She also acted in season two of the Netflix series Sense8. At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Gomez pivoted to adapting and presenting her work for live streaming. She has been featured in online theater festivals from New York to San Diego, as well as a five-week virtual run for Brava, SF where she is an artist-in-residence. She is a GLAAD media award winner and recipient of the 2020 CCI Investing in Artists grant.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lisa Kron</span> American actress and playwright (born 1961)

Elizabeth S. "Lisa" Kron is an American actress and playwright. She is best known for writing the lyrics and book to the musical Fun Home for which she won both the Tony Award for Best Original Score and the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical. Fun Home was also awarded the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2015 and the 2014 Obie Award for writing for musical theater.

Ana Maria Simo is a New York playwright, essayist and novelist. Born in Cuba, educated in France, and writing in English, she has collaborated with such experimental artists as composer Zeena Parkins, choreographer Stephanie Skura and filmmakers Ela Troyano and Abigail Child.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pamela Sneed</span> American poet and artist

Pamela Sneed is an American poet, performance artist, actress, activist, and teacher. Her book, Funeral Diva, is a memoir in poetry and prose about growing up during the AIDS crisis, and the winner of the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for lesbian poetry.

Alina Troyano, more commonly known as Carmelita Tropicana, is a Cuban-American stage and film lesbian actress who lives and works in New York City.

Sharon Bridgforth is an American writer working in theater.

Kristyn Dunnion is a Canadian fiction writer and performance artist. She has published four novels and a short story collection to date. Her short fiction appears in literary journals, including Grain Magazine, The Tahoma Literary Review, and Cosmonauts Avenue, as well as in several anthologies. Dunnion is the 2015 Machigonne Fiction prize winner for the short story, "Last Call at the Dogwater Inn," published in The New Guard Volume V. For several years she performed cabaret shows under the name Miss Kitty Galore, and was the bassist in the all-female heavy metal band Heavy Filth (2008-2011). She currently plays bass in the Toronto-based rock band Bone Donor. Her more recent literary work is aimed at an adult audience, but earlier writing was primarily intended for young adult readers. Her writing incorporates aspects of science fiction, punk culture and horror literature, although she has also published several stories in anthologies of adult erotic literature.

Split Britches is an American performance troupe, which has been producing work internationally since 1980. Academic Sue Ellen Case says "their work has defined the issues and terms of academic writing on lesbian theater, butch-femme role playing, feminist mimesis, and the spectacle of desire". In New York City Split Britches have long standing relationships with La Mama Experimental Theatre Company, where they are a resident company, Wow Café, which Weaver and Shaw co-founded, and Dixon Place.

The Hungry Woman: A Mexican Medea is a play by Cherríe Moraga. The play, published by West End Press, was first written in 1995. It includes aspects of Coatlicue, an Aztec goddess; the play Medea by Euripides; and La Llorona.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lois Weaver</span> American actress

Lois Weaver is a Guggenheim-winning artist, activist, writer, director, and Professor of Contemporary Performance at Queen Mary University of London. She is currently a Wellcome Trust Fellow in Engaging Science. Her work centers on feminism, human rights and possibilities for public participation. Active for over four decades she is the founding member of significant New York theatre companies Spiderwoman Theater (1975), Split Britches (1980) and WOW (1980). Weaver came to London to take on the role of artistic director for Gay Sweatshop Theatre Company in 1992. She lives in New York and London.

Spiderwoman Theater is an Indigenous women's performance troupe that blends traditional art forms with Western theater. Named after Spider Grandmother from Hopi mythology, it is the longest running Indigenous theatre company in the United States.

Monique Mojica is a playwright, director, and actor based out of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She was born in New York City, but came to Canada as founding member of Native Earth Performing Arts.

WOW Café Theater is a feminist theater space and collective in East Village in New York City. In the mid-1980s, WOW Cafe Theater was central to the avant garde theatre and performance art scene in the East Village, New York City. Among the artists who have presented at the space are Peggy Shaw, Lois Weaver, Patricia Ione LLoyd, Lisa Kron, Holly Hughes, Deb Margolin, Dancenoise, Carmelita Tropicana, Eileen Myles, Split Britches, Seren Divine, and The Five Lesbian Brothers.

Dress Suits to Hire is a play written by Holly Hughes and originally performed by the Lesbian and Feminist performance group, Split Britches. It premiered in 1987 at Performance Space 122 in Manhattan's East Village. The play is essentially a lesbian love story told in the overheated style of film noir, also drawing upon images from pulp fiction; The show has been revived several times since its premiere, with the original cast of Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver (Michigan) reprising their roles. The show won OBIE Awards for both Shaw and Hughes.

Monica Palacios is a Chicana lesbian American playwright and performer, specialising in Chicana, queer, feminist, and lesbian themes. She has charted the intersection of queer and Latina identities in Latinx communities, with their mutually marginalising impact. A trailblazer stand-up comedian in the 1980s and 1990s, Palacios is now better known for her work as an award winning playwright and activist. Her works are taught in many schools and colleges, where she has served frequently as a director of student theatre.

Shobhana S. Kumar, an Indian female entrepreneur, who started India's first online queer (LGBT) bookstore, Queer-ink.com.

Early Native American culture was rich with ceremonies, rituals and storytelling. The stories that inspire Native American theatre have been around for hundreds of years, but did not gain formal recognition by colonial America. This lack of recognition lasted until the 1930s when Lynn Riggs, a playwright of Cherokee descent, brought Native Theatre into the spotlight through the Six Nations Reserve Forest Theatre in Ontario. Through these events, Native Theatre has been introduced to mainstream society and contemporary Native American Theater was born. Indigenous American cultures have been a major aspect of Chicano drama.

The Native American Women Playwrights Archive (NAWPA) is a collection of manuscripts and related items pertaining to Native American women in theater. It was established in 1997 at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio and is located in the university's King Library. The archive is a repository for Spiderwoman Theater and contains promotional and personal documents associated with the theater troupe and its members.

Hot Peaches was a drag theatre company in New York City that would put on one play a week, active from the 1970s-1990s. Hot Peaches was founded by Jimmy Camicia in 1972, who encountered a group of drag queens and began writing work for them to perform. Their work has been described as "political camp, dominated by drag".

References

  1. ↑ "Muriel Miguel on Native American Authors | ipl: Information You Can Trust" . Retrieved May 20, 2021.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 "About". Spiderwoman Theater. Retrieved May 20, 2021.
  3. ↑ "Spiderwoman Theater". hemisphericinstitute.org. Retrieved May 20, 2021.
  4. 1 2 3 4 "Muriel Miguel: Tell Stories That Are Important to You". issuu. Retrieved May 20, 2021.
  5. ↑ "Thunderbirds". Thunderbird American Indian Dancers. January 14, 2011. Retrieved May 20, 2021.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Muriel Miguel". Spiderwoman Theater. Retrieved May 20, 2021.
  7. ↑ "Labor Arts". www.laborarts.org. Retrieved May 20, 2021.
  8. ↑ "NAWPA: Spiderwoman Theater". Miami University Libraries: Walter Havighurst Special Collections & University Archives.
  9. 1 2 "Previous". Spiderwoman Theater. Retrieved May 20, 2021.
  10. ↑ Peterson, Jane T. (1997). Women playwrights of diversity : a bio-bibliographical sourcebook. Suzanne Bennett. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. ISBN   0-313-29179-9. OCLC   35128075.
  11. 1 2 3 "John Simon Guggenheim Foundation | Muriel Miguel" . Retrieved May 20, 2021.
  12. ↑ "Muriel Miguel | Biographies". nac-cna.ca. Retrieved May 20, 2021.
  13. ↑ "Hot 'N' Soft". hemisphericinstitute.org. Retrieved May 20, 2021.
  14. ↑ "Hot 'N' Soft". hemi.nyu.edu. Retrieved May 20, 2021.
  15. ↑ Saxberg, Lynn (September 15, 2019). "Theatre review: The Unnatural and Accidental Women stuns with ambitious, powerful show". Ottawa Citizen. Retrieved September 7, 2022.
  16. ↑ Friend, David (September 3, 2019). "'It's about time': Ottawa's Indigenous Theatre prepares to launch". CTVNews. Retrieved September 8, 2022.
  17. ↑ "SPIDERWOMAN THEATRE'S MURIEL MIGUEL ON MATERIAL WITNESS". MUSKRAT Magazine. July 25, 2017. Retrieved May 20, 2021.
  18. ↑ Editors, American Theatre (June 26, 2018). "Muriel Miguel and Rosalba Rolón to Receive 2018 Duke Awards". AMERICAN THEATRE. Retrieved May 20, 2021.{{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)
  19. ↑ Stanlake, Christy (2022). "Muriel Miguel". In Noriega and Schildcrout (ed.). 50 Key Figures in Queer US Theatre. Routledge. pp. 165–169. ISBN   978-1032067964.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.