A Scout for Goddess Leadership
Maria Mar
A Scout for Goddess Leadership
“I champion women to drop the old stories of limitations and create the new story of their brilliance illuminating the world. I do this through storytelling as a vibrant, immediate journey of transformation and liberation.” Maria Mar
Maria has helped thousands of women in three continents to break free from limitations so that they can unleash their greatness and embody their life purpose.
A Pioneer in Theatre for Empowerment
Maria Mar in promo shot for the dance-poetry performance “Time of Kisses and Bruises” about love, violence, co-dependence and power in a woman’s life.
Maria is no newcomer to the field of female leadership and feminist theater. She has been a pioneer in the theater movement both in the feminist arena and in the use of theater for social change in her native Puerto Rico and in New York.
In the 70s in Puerto Rico she wrote her feminist play “Chupate esta en lo que te mondo la otra.” The production took place in the legendary Café Teatro La Tea. The performance, one of the first feminist plays of the island, exposed the offensive way women were being treated in the songs of the time as well as the gap between a woman’s reality and how she was portrayed in the media. It was an instant hit, praised by such luminaries as Lucecita Benitez and is still —to this day— talked about by those who saw it.
In the 80s Maria wrote the poetry performance “Sister, Love Thyself” —which she toured through communities and social organizations in New York. The closure of this play included a poetry workshop to help women express and expulse the secrets that were clogging their capacity for self-love. During that tour, women wrote about being raped, being incested, not wanted by their parents because they were a girl, being sexually harassed and abused and about feeling invisible.
Maria Mar with Susana Buendia in “Love that Kills” in PS121, a performance for the education and prevention of violence against women and in the family.
In the 90s she wrote and produced “Womerican/ Mujericana” a bilingual poetry performance with a cast of dozens of Latin American actors from several generations and countries. In “Womerican” Maria unveiled her epic poems about the lives of women in the early migrations to the United States, from Ana, la Costurerato Juana, la despaliyadora. She made visible the up-to-then invisible role of women in the history of migrant workers in New York.
The play included homage to some of the women who had inspired these poems, including Doña Ana, of the Lower East Side, who got carpal tunnel syndrome back when no one knew what that was— from sawing day and night in the infamous sweatshops.
Maria Mar with Tamra Plotnick in “Love that Kills 2” About domestic violence.
This was followed —still in the 90s— with the “Love that Kills/Amores que Matan.” In Amores que Matan I, Maria began this post-modernist play with the poems written by women prisoners during a workshop she had facilitated in a prison for women who had killed their abusers.
In Amores que Matan 2, the sequel, she engaged the Puerto Rican community —from Lower East Side to the Bronx— in donating decoration and arts and crafts. With these pieces she created a giant New York Puerto Rican apartment. When the audience entered, like any good Boricua, Maria’s character received them and gave them a tour of the apartment. As the visit developed, a quarrel ensued and the story of domestic violence behind the happy cultural veneer surfaced.
Next: Healer, Heal Thyself: How dealing with her own wounds and finding her own story allowed Maria Mar to create the theater she had envisioned for years.
