An Evening With Gloria Miguel

by Steve Elm

Her voice is deep, glottal; the accent brushed with the unmistakable color of New York City . Her face, set and full of character, gives so little away. It’s in the eyes. They pierce, as if they know your secret. Then, Gloria Miguel’s face opens up with a wide, mischievous smile, and she points to me, “You’ve lost your boyish good looks.” “Goddamit, Gloria, you’re pushing it!” I reply, laughing, as I settle down on her settee.

When I first came to New York City to pursue a career on the stage, I fell under the spell of the Spiderwoman sisters. Director Muriel Miguel, and her sisters Lisa Mayo and Gloria Miguel, were already the stuff of myth prior to my ever seeing them. As a student in England I heard tales of the huge influence these crazy women had on the international theatre scene of the 70’s and 80’s. I heard how they traveled through the US and Europe , bringing a unique kind of uproarious, anarchic, and deeply felt theatrical experience to delighted audiences. I learned about their feminist background and philosophies, how one was an out lesbian and the others not; how they really were sisters and that they all had kids and were native New Yorkers. Native New Yorkers. Yes, these wonderfully crazy women were Indians!

Spiderwoman Theatre is the longest running women’s theatre company in the business and the only Native troupe of its kind. I sought them out when I moved to the city and when I found them, they welcomed me as if they already knew me. They wanted to know my history, my craft, my plans… And when I was in my first New York show, they introduced themselves to the folks as my “aunties.” So, it was with great pleasure that I soon found myself friends and often colleagues of these special women, and it was with great pleasure that I sat with Gloria on a rainy autumn night in her West Village apartment.

Packed with photographs and mementos, the flat is cozy and flushed with a soft, almost dark light which befits the subject. Of the sisters, Gloria is striking in that hers is an almost chocolate hued skin, where Lisa and Muriel have more cream in their complexions. This difference is what set Gloria apart from the rest, and what also set Gloria on her journey from dark Red Hook to the bright lights of New York City .

"I was the darkest of the three of us. This is the 1940’s, Brooklyn . People were so damned prejudiced. I went to Manual Training High School in Flatbush. They didn’t know where to put me. There were Irish, Italian, Norwegian, a handful of blacks. They’d stare at me. They’d ask “who are you?” It frightened me. It made me shy, introverted. People say I exaggerate, but I know this. I felt it.”

The Miguel’s father was Kuna, their mother, Rappahannock . At the time there was a small but active community of Indians in Brooklyn , and many of them were involved in medicine shows and other types of entertainment. Young Gloria took solace in music, singing theological music at Warren Street Methodist Episcopal Church. “I had a deep voice and they put me in the boy’s choir. I rebelled. I wanted to sing opera. My mom was able to put some money together for lessons - thirteen dollars a lesson then. That was a huge amount. I tried to get in to Julliard, they said I had a good voice but my academic background was for shit.” She laughs and continues, “I sang my heart out through my teens. Soon I was a soprano, then a lyric soprano. I ended up being a mezzo”.

Gloria wasn’t the only of the sisters taking lessons. “I took Muriel, who is eleven years younger than me, to Henry Street Settlement for twenty five cents a dance lesson, piano lessons, which she hated. I took her to her first opera at the Met. I didn’t want her staying home.” Gloria proudly points out that she was the instigator for her sister’s eventual career in the theatre.

Still, the music and the lessons weren’t enough. The feeling of being other was constant. “I wanted to be in a place where I wasn’t looked at with this ‘where did you come from’ attitude. I had to get away from it. But, how could I make a living? I was such a bad student.”

At the same time, the war was ending, the world was opening up, and Gloria wanted to experience more than what Brooklyn could offer. Within a few years she had found a job as a nursery school teacher with her own career girl’s apartment on 16th Street in Chelsea . She was living the life of a single girl in Manhattan and soaking up all the city had to offer. “I was meeting all of these people. I guess you would call it all pretty semi-Bohemian. People were introducing me to new ideas, new thoughts. I went out looking for these people, people interested in the arts, theatre, music. I went out seeking intellect. And, I did find it.” Gloria looks me straight in the eye and with a slow chuckle adds, “Oh, and the men. I met all kinds of interesting men. Conscientious objectors, ex-theologians, Trotskyites. We had free love in the forties and fifties, let me tell you! Once, I was sneaking into this apartment with this white guy and a neighbor called the police. This happened to me! ‘What is this dark woman doing with this white man?’ Well, the policeman arrived and said there was no problem here.”

In fact, Gloria fell in love with a Trotskyite; a Jewish refugee from Paris named Mathis Szykowski, with whom she married, had two children (Raphael, a social worker in Minnesota, and Monique, a Toronto-based actress), and began a life as an academic spouse.

While Mathis taught French literature at Oberlin College in Ohio , Gloria worked as the director of a local nursery school. Tired of not performing, she applied for and got an Indian Education grant to study drama at college. “I quit teaching and went to school for three years. It returned me to my main focus: drama, theatre and music.”

After her divorce, and with the children older, Gloria found herself drawn to the arts even more. Her sister Muriel was performing with the seminal underground theatre company, the Open Theatre and there were other Indians in the city with the same dreams and needs: to belong to a community committed to exploring and creating art. At LaMama Experimental Theatre Company, Kiowa playwright Hanay Geigomah had formed the Native American Theatre Ensemble. Gloria remembers, “I was in 49 at LaMama. Hanay was real tough, but he liked me. It was all Indians in the cast. It was great, and people liked it. There were other shows, Body Indian, Grandma and Grandpa, which I was in. It was a great time. Pena Bonita, David Montana, Billy Merasty, Donna Couteau, they were all involved. The Colorado sisters were around (later to form Coatlicue Los Colorados Theatre).”

Meanwhile, the sisters formed a new company called Spiderwoman Theatre. With Muriel as director, they debuted in 1976 with Women and Violence and soon became a major force and influence in the theatre of the time. The sisters began to mine their own lives - as Indian women and sisters - for material, thus creating a style and focus in their work that is often painful in its honesty, but always joyful in its sheer commitment to the art of performance. Though they often invited other women to join them, the core of the company has remained the three sisters. Each sister brings an individual presence to the celebratory collective Spiderwoman. Each sister contributes her own perceptions and experiences to their work.

Gloria, sitting in her living room, smiles as she talks of the adventures she has had as a Spiderwoman, but her voice grows forceful as she says, “We fought for recognition. We had to fight to be recognized as Indian artists. Many of the young people don’t know this, all the work we had to do. Now, there is a lot going on for Indian actors, a lot to do…but I still wonder why an Indian actor can’t simply play the girl next door, you know? It’s still a fight”.

As the evening nears an end, I ask Gloria what the most important thing about being an artist is for her. Without missing a beat she says, “Just being on stage and performing is the biggest thrill in my life.” To the young actors just starting up, she says, “You should be helping each other, finding the integrity to start a community and trying to keep it going.”

Thoughtful words from a veteran. And a wonderful evening with Gloria Miguel, a one of a kind girl next door.

-Steve Elm

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