Princess Pocahontas and the Blue Spots

by Monique Mojica

Book Overview

Newly released as a Women's Press Classic, this play artfully weaves together past and present, North and South America, history, documentary, and myth. Princess Pocahontas and the Blue Spots is a satire of colonization that celebrates Native women as creators and healers. It has become a classic in Canadian theatre since it was first published in 1991 and is now widely studied at universities and colleges across North America and around the world.The remarkable radio play Birdwoman and the Suffragettes: A Story of Sacajawea, first produced or CBC Radio Drama's Vanishing Point: Adventure Stories for Big Girls, is also included.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0889611653
• ISBN13: 9780889611658
• Release Date: January 1991
• Publisher: Women's Press (CA)
• Length: 85 Pages
• Weight: 0.37 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

A radio dram? a documentary drama? or a drama-of-all?

If you are familiar with "traditional" plays like Shakespeare's or even O'Neill's (O'Neill's, in comparison with Monique's, may be conventional), you'd be surprised or even shocked at the reading. Monique's plays which in someway are connected with the postmodern milieu--everything is indetermined, and definition is not for certain. It is composed as an academic article--even with bibliography (and in the bibliography, the playwright would also tell you which book is preferred and which is not). It is composed as a ritual with songs and music surrounded. Most conspicuously, it is also composed as a documentary drama-- a dramatic story told in a documentary manner (since more than half of the characters are not fictional in history). So, my conclusion is, if you are one full of creativity and imagination and you intend to explore something unconventional (on stage), then, perhaps, this is a good start. --Yi Jou, Lo (Taiwan)

A powerful, eye-opening play

In a highly nimble script written for two virtuosic performers, Mojica's play explores how the Pocahontas legend has shaped white society's perception of Indian women, as well as Indian women's perceptions of themselves. It's fascinating to read this play along with James Nelson Barker's 1808 melodrama THE INDIAN PRINCESS. Barker's play help lay the foundations for the Pocahontas legend (and the stereotypes it has perpetuated) and Mojica's play explores how that legend developed over the next two centuries. Reading the two side-by-side reveals much about the experience of Indian women (and about the changes in theatrical form) over the past 200 years.