By Joyce Kryszak
Buffalo, NY – Ujima's artists in residence, the Spiderwoman Theatre, winds up performances of "Persistence Of Memory" at Theatre Loft this weekend.
Although they will be leaving the local stage, the longest running feminist performance group in existence is just getting started on an agenda that continues to challenge audiences.
Muriel and Gloria Miguel, and Lisa Mayo have spent the better part of their lifetimes sorting out memories.
The sisters are the children of a Rappahannock-Christian mother, and a Kuna Indian father from the San Blas Islands off the coast of Panama.
As girls, they grew up in an Italian neighborhood of Brooklyn - of all places. And, despite lines about forgetfullness throughout the play, there is little the three don't remember about the pain and confusion of growing up Native American and female.
Gloria recalls a school photo of herself - a sad looking little brown girl in a sea of smiling white faces.
"I keep that photograph in my apartment," said Gloria. "And my little niece, who was six at the time, came in she saw that photograph, and she looked at it and she was holding it, and she showed it to me and said to me, 'that's you Aunt Gloria.' And I said yeah. And she said, 'then you understand how I feel."
It is overcoming that isolated image - and carrying on a heritage - that has tranformed the nearly twenty-seven year old theatre group into the voice it has become today.
But, the group's founder, Muriel said in 1976 they were speaking for many.
"We were African American, Native, white, gay, straight, divorced, fat, skinny, young, old...we were everthything, said Muriel."
Through the years, life changes and losses changed the make-up of the group. Muriel said what was left were the three sisters, and two common threads that would be woven through all their work - the stories of women and of Native Americans.
Lisa said she only agreed to a six week run with the fledgling company. But Muriel was passionate about tackling rapidly emerging social problems. And Lisa said they were problems that could be found very close to home.
"She was saying we have to do something about the violence in our life. So I said to her I have no violence in my life," said Lisa. "And she looked at me like I was nuts and she said are you crazy?... because I had stuffed all that stuff down and didn't want to deal with it."
And so began the work of nearly three decades for the professionally trained peformers. But Lisa said their work truly crystalized after a visit to their father's native home of Kuna.
There the grown girls heard a persistent memory - a song of creation. It was, amazingly, the same familiar tune sung to them as children by their father in Brooklyn.
"The Kunas have this thing, it's called the Daughters from the Stars, that we come from stars, we come down on golden plates, " said Lisa.
"And with my father singing that song, that's what he was telling us in Kuna. But it wasn't until I was fifty years old that I got the really big understanding of what that thing meant. And that's what storytelling is."
Muriel said the theatre, named after the Hopi goddess Spiderwoman, prides itself on the intricate weaving of stories and songs and poems, images, movement and feelings.
"We go in with all our hands, and bodies and feet and eyes, and touch everything at the same time," said Muriel.
"One of the big critisisms about Spiderwoman is that there is too much going on. And we say, yes, because that's the way we look at life. A lot of things go on at the same time."
But Muriel adds that sometimes trying to tackle multiple issues - particularly those of women and Native Americans - has, at times, come into conflict.
"In the Native community, sometimes the lousiest thing you could do to a woman, men were calling the Indian way," said Muriel.
"To say something...they would turn around and say, 'You're a white woman. You're acting like a white woman. You're not acting like an Indian. You're a bad Indian!"
The three women said that reconciling what it means to be Native American can, at times, be painful. They said alchoholism, and now drug addiction, continue to cast shadows on the spirit of their people.
But Gloria said tracing the pain, back through the generations, can help create persistent, healing stories for the future.
"If we understand how and why, the generation now can understand and perhaps heal it in families...the alcohol, and what it does to families," said Gloria.
"If they can listen to the ancestors, and listen to their pain, and understand that pain, it would heal the kids today. It's a start, you know?"
Spiderwoman Theatre continues with performances of "Persistence of Memory" locally at Ujima's Theatre Loft on Elmwood only through Sunday. But their work, and their stories, promise to continue far into the future.