Final Five Questions with Muriel Miguel
Native Director and Founder of Spiderwoman Theater
Muriel Miguel, whose mother was Kuna and father was Rappahannock, is the Artistic Director of Spiderwoman Theater, the longest-running Native feminist theater in the Americas. She has been working in the world of experimental theater since the ’60s, when she was an actor in the Open Theater, a pioneering avant-garde ensemble founded by the visionary director Joseph Chaikin. When Spiderwoman was formed in 1975 by Muriel and her two older sisters Lisa and Gloria, she conceived of it as a direct push back against the sexism that she says was plaguing the American Indian Movement at the time.
She is is an award-winning activist, artist, director, choreographer, actor, and educator who has worked and toured extensively and across the globe. As part of her creative journey, Muriel developed the art of storyweaving, which is Spiderwoman’s signature Indigenous performance practice. For decades she has remained active in the training of Indigenous actors and dancers in this culturally-based method, having facilitated storyweaving workshops and residencies in conservatories and universities across North America and Europe.
In addition to her honorary doctorates from universities in the US and Canada and Native American directorial projects in both countries, Muriel also serves on the NYC Cultural Affairs Advisory Commission. It’s been her continuing mission to further the reach and access of the arts within Native communities but to also share her vast experiences and stories with other people and cultures as well. Here she answers five final questions about important lessons she has learned as an artist and what success has meant to her over the years.
1. What job within the arts do you feel is the most undervalued and why is it so important?
The stage managers. Everyone depends on them. They are the communications center of a production. They are the people who are in between all the people — actors, director, designers, technical personnel, promotion and administration — in a production. They are the listeners. They have a lot of the responsibility and not much of the power.
2. What does success or “making it” mean to you?
I have always used stories in performances since the early days when we were doing shows with my sisters. I later realized that storytelling was a powerful way to communicate everything about my artistic practice and my culture. That is my work, that is how I create, that is success for me.
3. What frustrates you most about how the business has changed since you started?
Everything is much more commercial. For instance, it is not easy to just get a theater or a storefront to perform in, a place where there is less pressure, just to rehearse and to create. One has to be much more careful about unions, they are at every level of work. Product is more important. There are no Native theaters in the city after so many years working here.
4. Describe a personal lesson that took you awhile to learn or one that you are still working on to this day?
I occasionally am asked to work in big theater institutions, but the experience is always unsatisfying. I am asked, and I am excited, and I am lured in. Oh boy, Oh boy, Oh boy! It appeals to my ego, but it never works out for me. This is a lesson I am still learning.
5. What’s the most useful advice you’ve received AND how have you applied it to your life or career?
My sisters were 11 and 13 years older than me. They always told me that I can do anything, that the sky was the limit. That gave me the confidence to just go for it and follow my ideas, and I did. Advice also came from Joe Chaikin, who taught me to listen, listen, listen. Because I am immersed in storytelling and working from those stories, that’s what I do everyday. And Julian Beck from Living Theater told me: “Muriel, sometimes a rugelach is just a rugelach.”
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