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Muriel Miguel
(Kuna/Rappahannock)
Muriel Miguel is Kuna and Rappahannock. She
is a founding member and Artistic Director of Spiderwoman Theater,
the longest running Native American feminist theater group in
North America , touring internationally for 28 years.
Last summer, she was the Program Director for The
Aboriginal Dance Program at The Banff Centre where she
choreographed Throw Away Kids in 1999 and most recently
created a new choreography, She Knew She Was She. She has
directed for Nightwood Theatre in Toronto.and in the fall of 2002,
directed The Scrubbing Project at Factory Theatre with
Turtle Gals Performance Ensemble.
Muriel was an original member of Joseph Chaikan's
Open Theatre, one of the leading alternative theatre groups in New
York in the 60’s.She studied modern dance with Alwin Nickolai at
the Henry Street Playhouse and is the co-founder of the
Thunderbird American Indian Dancers in New York City.
She originated the role of Philomena Moosetail in
the Rez Sisters ;also, Aunt Shadie in The Unnatural and
Accidental Women for The Firehall Arts Centre in Vancouver and
Spirit Woman in Bones: An Aboriginal Dance Opera at the
Banff Centre 2001 Summer Festival. Muriel has also been the
creator of two one woman shows, Hot' N' Soft and Trail
of the Otter. In March 2003,she was the first Lipinsky
resident at San Diego State University Womens’ Studies Department
where she wrote and presented the first draft of her new one woman
show, Red Mother.
Muriel was an assistant professor of drama at Bard
College for four years. She teaches on an ongoing basis at the
Centre for Indigenous Theatre in Toronto and taught at the
Aboriginal Arts Program at The Banff Centre for the last 7 years.
She has developed four shows for The Minnesota Native American
AIDS Task Force working with inner city native youth on HIV/AIDS
issues.
In 1998, Muriel was selected for the Bread and
Roses International Native Women of Hope poster. She has also
been awarded an honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from Miami
University in Oxford, Ohio, the site of the Native Women's
Playwrights' Archives. In 2002, she received a Fleck Fellowship in
the Arts from the Banff Centre to complete work on Persistence
of Memory, Spiderwoman Theater’s latest show.
