A Thousand Mothers Collecting the Bones: A Theater and Music Performance of Grief and Praise

Performers: Monique Miyake and Phoenix Song

Director: Vicki Dello Joio

Sat July 25 730pm at La Pena in Berkeley

Through a performance piece featuring theater, poetry, storytelling, and music, Phoenix Song and Monique Miyake channel theater as devotion: in a death and grief phobic society which causes us to isolate, numb, distract, or drown, this beautiful performance ritual gathers us to feel, move, heal, and love together. Witness Monique and Phoenix’s grief and healing journey after their son died 4 years ago to feel more connected to yourself and others, held and resilient in your broken heartedness to allow the light to shine through.

This is an offering of deep love, healing, and the transformation that becomes possible when we allow loss to reshape us into more authentic versions of ourselves in times of immense personal and collective grief.

This performance invites us into a shared space of witnessing, where one story can hold the stories of many. As grief is expressed and honored, it can begin to move—within us and between us—opening the possibility of integration, meaning, and renewal.

Before the performance begins, we will create a communal grief altar together. As you enter La Peña, you are invited to bring a photograph or small object honoring who or what you are grieving, and place it on the altar to be held, witnessed, and carried in community.

Accessibility: ASL interpretation will be provided for this performance.

Phoenix Song, featured in SF Magazine's Best of the Bay, plays music from around the world on didgeridoo, Native flute, buffalo drum, djembe, hand pan, jaw harp, esraj, and vocals that help us move energy through breath and sound.

A Q&A talkback will follow along with an artist's reception of Monique's art prints. 10% of sales will be donated to the Trevor Project, the leading suicide prevention and crisis intervention nonprofit organization for LGTBTQ+ young people.

For discounted tickets, please email phoenixsongmusic@gmail.com.

For accomodation requests please contact us at least one week in advance. Email us at programs@Lapena.org.

Reviews:

What a profound gift you have crafted through fire and offered to the world. An invitation to join you on this sacred journey of wild and inconceivable grief and rage and beauty and love. I see your love as such a testimony of grit and grace and what it means to become human together. Feeling waves of awe and gratitude, my heart shattered into a thousand pieces, transformed into butterflies. --Aryeh, educator and activist

What a spectacular performance of vulnerable heartbreak and beauty. You have gifted us the Art of Soul Bearing the most painful human experience. Your collective performance allows us all to be free to ourselves to go deep, open and outstretched to the truth and wholeness of allowing the pain of grief all the way in. I am so honored and grateful for the witness experience and the place it touches in me. I feel safer in the world to be me in my own brokenness. --Tree, bereaved mother and retired palliative care nurse

I had been processing a lot of mama grief (for my mom, my grief about my kids. etc) when I went to your ritual, and it really helped move something for me. Just being reminded of and seeing your powerful process and how your surrender to grief has really transformed you in such profound ways was a beautiful reminder to me that opening to grief is really the medicine. I respect your radical vulnerability in sharing all of that and letting people see the shadow and that there’s medicine in being with it!

-Anastasia, mother, therapist

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Accessibility

• La Peña is a wheelchair-accessible venue with step-less entry, wide doorways, and accessible restrooms.
• Masks are strongly encouraged. If you’re experiencing COVID-19, cold, or flu-like symptoms, please consider staying home to protect our community. HEPA air purifiers operate throughout our space.
• All-gender restrooms available

We strive to make La Peña a welcoming, accessible space for everyone.

If you have any specific needs or questions about accessibility, please contact us at least one week in advance. Email us at programs@Lapena.org

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