About Me:

Monique Mojica (Guna and Rappahannock) is an actor/playwright and artist-scholar passionately dedicated to a theatrical practice as acts of healing, of reclaiming historical/cultural memory and of resistance.

Spun directly from the family web of Spiderwoman Theater, her first play Princess Pocahontas and the Blue Spots was produced in 1990. She is the co-editor, with Ric Knowles, of Staging Coyote’s Dream An Anthology of First Nations Drama in English, vols. I & II.

A co-founder of Turtle Gals Performance Ensemble, Monique has taught Indigenous Theatre in theory, process and practice at the University of Illinois, the Institute of American Indian Arts and at McMaster University.

She founded Chocolate Woman Collective in 2007 to develop the play Chocolate Woman Dreams the Milky Way that premiered in June 2011 and was created by devising a dramaturgy specific to Guna cultural aesthetics, story narrative and literary structure.

She was most recently seen on stage in the re-mount of Chocolate Woman Dreams the Milky Way presented by Native Earth Performing Arts and in the role of Goneril in the NAC’s production of King Lear.

Upcoming projects include Side Show Freaks

Occupation:

actor/playwright

Contact Information:

olowaili.m@gmail.com

Research Interests:

Indigenous arts & culture. cultural recovery through the performing arts, healing arts and hemispheric networking

Publications:

Forthcoming: "Verbing Art" in "Me Artsy" an anthology of essays edited by Drew Hayden Taylor, a) Douglas and McIntyre (2013) Ltd., Vancouver, 2015

“Chocolate Woman Dreams the Milky Way” Indigenous North American Drama: A Multivocal History, Birgit Dawes ed., SUNY Press, Albany 2013
“In Plain Sight: Inscripted Earth and Invisible Realities”, New Canadian Realisms, Roberta Barker and Kim Solga eds, New Essays on Canadian Theatre, Vol. Two, Playwrights Canada Press, Toronto 2012
“Stories From the Body: Blood Memory and Organic Texts” Native American Performance and Representation, S.E. Wilmer, ed., University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 2009
“An Invocation/incantation for the Women Word-Warriors for Custom-Made Shoes”, and “Chocolate Woman dreams the Milky Way” First Voices: an aboriginal women’s reader, Patricia Monture & Patricia D. McGuire, eds., Innana Publications and Education Inc., Toronto, Canada, 2009
“Creation Story Begins Again: Performing Transformation, Bridging Cosmologies” , with Ric Knowles and “Chocolate Woman Dreams the Milky Way”, Performing Worlds Into Being: Native American Women’s Theater, Ann Elizabeth Armstrong, Kelli Lyon Johnson and William Wortman, eds. Miami University Press, Oxford Ohio, 2009
Staging Coyote’s Dream An Anthology of First Nations Drama in English, Vol. 2, edited by Monique Mojica and Ric Knowles, Playwrights Canada Press, 2008
“Chocolate Woman Dreams the Milky Way”, Collective Creation, Collaboration, sand Devising”, Bruce Barton, ed. Toronto: Playwrights Canada, 2008.
“ETHNOSTRESS: Women’s Voices in Native American Theatre, Footpaths & Bridges: Voices From the Native American Women Playwrights Archive”,ed. Shirley Houston-Findley & Rebecca Howard, University of Michigan Press, 2008
“Stories From the Body: Blood Memory and Organic Texts”
alt.theatre, vol. 4, no.2 & 3 May 2006
“I Am Sad Still”, Remembering Women Murdered By Men, Memorials Across Canada, The Cultural Memory Group, Sumach Press, 2006
“Of Borders, Identity and Cultural Icons: A Rant”
Canadian Theatre Review, Volume 125, Winter 2006
“Paco and the Shoes” and “I Am Sad, Still”, She Speaks monologues for women, compiled and edited by Judith Thompson, Playwrights Canada Press, 2004
“Paco and the Shoes” from The Scrubbing Project, Beyond the Pale, revised edition, Dramatic Writings from First Nations and Writers of Colour, selected and edited by Yvette Nolan, Playwrights Canada press, 2004
Staging Coyote’s Dream An Anthology of First Nations Drama in English, edited by Monique Mojica and Ric Knowles, Playwrights Canada Press, 2003
Aboriginal Voices Magazine, contributor vol. 5 #1, Jan.1998
Toronto Pow Wow Newspaper, co-editor, Premiere Issue, Nov.1997
“This is for Aborelia Dominguez”, Beyond the Pale/ Dramatic Writing from First Nations Writers & Writers of Colour, Nolan, Quan, Seremba, eds., Playwrights Canada Press, Toronto,1996 “Communications in a Nation Under Siege: The Mayan Struggle” (article) The Runner Vol. #1 Issue #3 Summer 1994
A Fast Growing Mold Bitter As Shame
Commissioned by the Great Canadian Theatre Company for Stolen Lands: 1492-1992 and published in: Gatherings III, Greg Young-Ing, ed. Theytus Books Ltd, 1992
Princess Pocahontas and the Blue Spots was first published as a featured script in the Canadian Theatre Review, #64 Fall 1990, and is excerpted in: Canadian Native Anthology, Daniel David Moses, ed. Oxford Press, 1992
Princess Pocahontas and the Blue Spots/Birdwoman and the Suffragettes: a Story of Sacajawea
Women's Press, 1991
Native Theatre Issue guest editor
Canadian Theatre Review #68 Fall 1991

Affiliation:

Chocolate Woman Collective

Link:

http://chocolatewomancollective.blogspot.ca