MillerComm event

Actor/ playwright/dramaturg Monique Mojica’s (Guna and Rappahannock) theatrical practice is centered in land-based embodied research and the development of culturally specific Indigenous dramaturgies. She is passionately dedicated to a theatrical practice as an act of healing, of reclaiming historical/cultural memory and of resistance.

Her first play, Princess Pocahontas and the Blue Spots was produced in 1990 and is taught in curricula internationally. She was a co-founder of Turtle Gals Performance Ensemble with whom she created The Scrubbing Project, the Dora-nominated The Triple Truth and The Only Good Indian. In 2006, she founded Chocolate Woman Collective to develop the play Chocolate Woman Dreams the Milky Way, a performance created by devising a dramaturgy specific to Guna cultural aesthetics, story narrative and literary structure.

Monique has taught Indigenous Theatre in theory, process and practice at the Institute of American Indian Arts, McMaster University and is a former co- director of the Centre for Indigenous Theatre, Toronto. She has lectured on embodied research and taught embodied performance workshops throughout Canada, the U.S., Latin America and Europe. She is a member of the new Indigenous Dramaturgy Circle at Tarragon Theatre, Toronto, and was the inaugural 2023 Wurlitzer Visiting Professor at the University of Victoria’s Theatre Department.

As an artist/scholar, Monique is the co-editor, with Ric Knowles, of Staging Coyote’s Dream, vols. I & II and of the upcoming volume III, co-edited with Lindsay Lachance. Newly released is Chocolate Woman Dreams the Milky Way: Mapping Embodied Indigenous Performance, written with Brenda Farnell (U of Michigan Press, 2023).

Monique performed in Kaha:wii Dance Theatre’s world premiere of Re-Quickening choreographed by Santee Smith, and with the National Arts Centre Orchestra in I Lost My Talk as part of the Life Reflected series. Most recent performances include: My Sister’s Rage for Tarragon Theatre, The Unnatural and Accidental Women at the NAC, and Izzie M.: The Alchemy of Enfreakment written by Monique with a diverse creative team. Monique has collaborated with Santee Smith since 2013 as the dramaturg for Kaha:wi Dance Theatre’s tryptic, Re-Quickening/ Blood Tides/SKe:NEN and forTeneil Whiskeyjack’s Ayita for Edmonton’s SkirtsAfire Festival. See also: https://nac-cna.ca/en/bio/monique-mojica