"Mud Offerings" by Natalie Goodnow '07

A solo play written and performed by Natalie Goodnow '07
Southwestern University
Tuesday, April  4, 2012, 5:30PM
Sarofim School of Fine Arts Building, Heather Hall

This performance is sponsored by the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, the Feminist Studies Program, the Theatre Department, Kappa Delta Chi sorority, and Latinos Unidos

A question and answer session will follow the performance.

This piece is a solo play unraveling the culturally complicated truths, lies and mythologies of women's spirituality and sexuality in contexts of violence and betrayal.

ABOUT NATALIE GOODNOW '07

Natalie Goodnow '07 is a nationally recognized teatrista, teaching artist and cultural activist from Austin, Texas. She performs, directs and writes; she's been practicing some combination of those forms for seventeen years, and began teaching through and about them eight years ago. She specializes in the creation of original works for the stage, as a solo performer and in collaboration with other performers and playwrights, both youth and adults.

Goodnow’s work is dialogical in both its process and product, using performance as a tool with which to engage communities in conversation. Natalie explores the relationships between people and places, in terms of relationships to community, to the Earth, and to our own bodies.

Natalie studied Theatre, Spanish and Feminist Studies at Southwestern University.

Read a news story about Natalie and her play: "Activism through theater"

ABOUT MUD OFFERINGS

La Virgen de Guadalupe, also known as Our Lady of Guadalupe, is revered as the Mother of Mexico, and embodies both the Nahua Tonantzin and the Catholic Virgin Mary.  She appeared on a winter morning in 1531 (just 12 years after Cortés had arrived to Mexico’s shores) to a young indigenous man, Juan Diego, on the hill of Tepeyac – just outside Mexico City.  Upon seeing her, Juan Diego went to the local archbishop, Fray Juan de Zumárraga, who demanded proof of her presence.  Juan Diego returned with a cloak full of flowers.  When he released the edges of the cloak, the flowers fell to the ground and revealed an image of the Virgen imprinted on the fabric, proof that she had appeared.  On that hill, a chapel was built in her honor.

La Malinche is the historic Malintzin Tenepal – a Nahua woman who acted as Hernan Cortés’ interpreter. She is considered the mother of the first mestizo (she bore a child by Cortés) and has been portrayed as traitor and savior, prostitute and desolate victim.  La Malinche has been featured in numerous narratives (poems, fictions, plays, films). The artist activist Cherríe Moraga was among Chicana authors who were critical in reinterpreting La Malinche and reclaiming her as the mother of new and unimagined histories.