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chapter 5 Stories from the Body Blood Memory and Organic Texts Monique Mojica i am going to attempt to describe a very important aspect of where my work comes from. Within Turtle Gals Performance Ensemble, Jani Lauzon, Michelle St. John, and I are keenly aware that it is the part of our process we have inherited from Spiderwoman Theater. And it is the most difficult to talk about because of its intangibility and because of its relationship to the spirit world, its connection to the land, its emotional bond to place, and its link to the healing arts. I am talking about the stories I carry because they have been passed on through my blood, encoded in my DNA. My fellow Turtle Jani Lauzon uses the phrase, “Our bodies are our books.” I would build on that thought to say that our bodies are our libraries —fully referenced in memory, an endless resource, a giant database of stories. Some we lived, some were passed on, some dreamt, some forgotten , some we are unaware of, dormant, awaiting the key that will release them. Of course I can’t and won’t attempt to offer any “scientific” proof of this. However, along with my work as a performer, I am a certified Pilates instructor and I work with bodies other than my own. During the course of my training, I was struck by the way every person’s body tells a story. Each injury, physical or emotional trauma, muscle imbalance, torsion of the spine or overstretched ligament tells a story. Our very breath, how it is held or released, our ability or lack thereof to connect within and be in our bodies, all tell a story. Our bodies house a collection of experiences as clear as tattoos on our skins. Mining my body for these organic texts has become the primary source material for my work and I continue to be fascinated and surprised by it. When we work we use a process of deep improvisation. We stand in 98 Monique Mojica an empty room, witnessed by a director or by fellow ensemble members. We establish a world or a situation and we enter it with a specific question or task in mind to source information about it: what it looks like, smells like, who was there and what was said. The role of the witness is not only to watch and listen, but to tether the improvisers to the physical world. These improvisations result in raw texts that, because they are organic, often have no linear logic. It is not unusual for us not to know why an image or a character or place appears in our initial improvisations. Given enough time and trust, the reason an image persistently presents itself will eventually be revealed. Here are some examples. Turtle Gals has developed a new play called The Only Good Indian . . . , which charts the history of Native performers in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows in the 1880s, through P. T. Barnum’s side shows, the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair (and other expositions), the silent film era, vaudeville, burlesque , and Hollywood. Now, although we were aware that Teddy Roosevelt had used General Philip Sheridan’s proverbial quote “The only good Indian is a dead Indian” (the original quote being “The only good Indians I ever saw were dead”) and that he had been instrumental in convincing J. P. Morgan to finance Edward S. Curtis’s photographic expeditions documenting the “vanishing race,” we were astonished when he relentlessly showed up in our deep investigations. What was Teddy Roosevelt doing in our play?!—a play created by Native women featuring our unsung predecessors from over a century ago? We then made some discoveries through more conventional research: the Internet, the library, and research shared with scholars such as Christine Bold of the University of Guelph. We uncovered that it was Teddy Roosevelt who flicked the telegraph key that turned on the lights at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair where Geronimo, among others, was on display. (“Don’t tell me that the lights are shining anywhere but there.”) Roosevelt had to grant special permission for Geronimo to be present because he was a prisoner of war at the time and arrived at the fair in shackles. Roosevelt’s wife, Edith, received one of our central characters, Zitkala Sa (Gertrude Bonin)—a prominent Dakota writer, orator , and concert violinist—in the White House. He was president when another of our central...

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