The Malaga Ship Performance
Storytelling can be a multipurpose endeavor. The depth and breadth of those purposes came alive on April 11th when the six-foot-three inch Antonio Rocha, who is from Brazil with African and European roots, took the stage at the Center for Faith + Action. He came at the request of the Center
and Repair the Breach NOLA, an inter-faith collective working toward reparations for Black New Orleaneans.
Dressed in black and occasionally swathed in red drapes and ropes, his nimble, graceful body inhabited the spirit of trees, the illegal Middle Passage trafficking of the 1800’s Malaga ship, and the storyteller himself. As he sails through the forty-five minute performance, he doesn’t recite memorized words. He enters various “portals” which direct him to sing, scream, recite little-known history, dialogue with the ship about the horrors she sees, or move in a way that expresses the essence of an overall message.
Related: A Passion for Reparations
In this case the message is the actual experience of what a trafficking ship would see its cargo endure. The Malaga and the storyteller summon the courage to proffer truth-telling across time (1832 – 2025), all the while wishing it could have been different. The hope is that the chain of inter-generational trauma can be broken and healed. Rocha is evidence that it can.
Trauma and Healing
Rocha says “I could not believe the coincidences between the ship and myself. She was built in Maine and went to Brazil to bring to my home country part of my ancestry. I was born in Brazil and came to Maine where I learned to be a storyteller. The more that I read about Malaga, the more I realize I was born to tell her story.”
The story of the Malaga, a 183 ton brig built in 1832 in Brunswick, Maine, came to Rocha in pieces. In 2014 he had the idea of personifying a ship but at this point he was busy with other projects. Trauma also pushed fear into the deeply buried recesses of his consciousness. So he had to stay away from disturbing and violent stories about his ancestors.
His father suffered even more acutely from trauma. Rocha just thought his father was crazy. Family history was never discussed. When Rocha’s repressed fear emerged stubbornly as panic, Rocha thought he himself might be crazy. He barely slept or spoke for long periods. In 2018 it launched him into a four month intensive healing process which began with a psychiatrist’s prescription for sleep and a spiritual visionary’s diagnosis of ANCESTRAL trauma.
His symptoms and his father’s began to make sense to him and he was able to shed the fear as if it were a heavy protective jacket. Now, when he sees that fear jacket lying around in some corner of his psyche, he just talks to it or reasons with it and it no longer takes over.
How the story came
Somewhere around 2020, Daniel Minter of the Indigo Arts Alliance and Kate McMahon, a scholar on Maine’s involvement in the Middle Passage, made Rocha aware of the Malaga. In October of 2021 they provided the space, the data, and a stipend for Rocha to begin to craft a story about the ship. After a month-long artist’s residency in 2021, he had crafted a tragic twenty-minute piece.
In the next few years, as he explored his own history, more about the Malaga, and a deeper understanding of ancestral trauma, he inserted himself and his formative years in Brazil into the story. About a year ago he had a reconciliation dream in which his deceased father was young, vital, happy and loving. Perhaps ancestral healing can go backwards as well as forward.
Currently the piece, which he has performed forty-six times, presents like a one act play ending in hope rather than tragedy. Following the performance Rocha invited the audience of 60 – 70 people into a conversation with him about the story or himself. He answered questions in a candid, thoughtful, sometimes light-hearted way. It seemed like a second act. It felt like he was completely present with everyone in the room and almost devoid of ego. The experience was a collective healing for all of us – oppressors and oppressed alike.
This show earned Rocha an award last year. He was The Maine Arts Commission Performing Arts Fellow of 2024. This was a once in a life time award and it was in great part due to The Malaga performance.
To see his work or book a performance his contact information is Cell 207-329-0849 www.storyinmotion.com or antoniorochastoryteller@gmail.com.
Orissa, what a wonderful piece you have written about the The Malaga story telling event. You brought to light so much that I missed. Thank you for writing and thank you Black Source Media for publishing.