ESTAFIATE: MUSIC FOR PLANTS

The work Estafiate is an immersive style music theater work inspired by the healing nature of plants local to the San Antonio area, the big open sky of Texas, and the iconic San Antonio River. 

Estafiate is a plant grown in my grandmother’s garden on the west side of San Antonio, TX which I saw her use as an herbal remedy for her stomach aches during her final battle with cancer when I returned home to River City from Brooklyn, NY to help care for her in 2018.  Estafiate is a Spanish word pronounced [es.t̪aˈfja.t̪e].  The etymology of this word is from Classical Nahuatl or the Aztec language.

The work Teletextile: Estafiate is a musical composition that I’ve held in waiting for a few years.  I have the first movement written already and many sketches and brainstorms about set design and scripts. My immersive works lean towards intimate one on one interactions between audience and performer and utilize the theater beyond the stage, often starting the “play” before even entering the building.  These experimental and introspective plays lean towards the meditative, often conceptual sketches of poetic moments.

I now live in Grandma’s home and tend to her garden of sacred herbs and plants.  After grandma Sara passed in spring of 2019 Estafiate’s mystery started my journey into herbalism and remains a connection to my now passed grandmother. In English, Estafiate has many names, Mexican White Sage, Mexican Sagebrush, Mugwort.  Most people I met in my research (who were using this plant as medicine) were of an older generation and knew it solely as Estafiate. It took me some time to find its English name(s). 

In Jan 2020 I was awarded The Luminaria Artist Foundation Grant.  Estafiate was originally conceived in the months Jan - March of 2020 during that time the Luminaria Grant was not publicly announced.  In early March 2020 the grant was announced and in late March 2020 the COVID lockdown began.  After the lockdown happened, I was forced to totally shift away from this project in order to prioritize community health.  I have always imagined Estafiate as an indoor and intimate immersion experience into a world of sound and wellness. 

So in 2020, I shifted gears to create The Artemisia Series, a group of works all meant to inspire healing and care for the citizens of San Antonio to learn about tools of healing and wellness local to our region.  This was my way to carry on my education of local herbal medicine and folk healing  and to pass it on to my community.  The Artemisia Series included; “COVID Care Care Package,” “Touching at a Distance” and “The Artemisia Wind Harp.”  All activities were touchless, outdoors, socially distanced, and for mask-wearing participants only.   

Estafiate would be the final work meant for The Artemisia Series. 

Much like today’s movie “prequels”.  It would be the first and original idea behind the work people have already seen and enjoyed so much.  The composer, Meredith Monk described how one project inspires the next as a “flowing form of creativity.  The work is the container, but the creative process is the liquid that flows from one container to the next.”  A flow exists between the two projects of Artemisia and Estafiate.  The Artemisia Series was a way for me to create inspiration for the final and original performance of  Estafiate. 

Throughout my childhood my grandmother and I would take walks in our west side neighborhood and she would point out plants along the way that could help or hurt us.  She knew plants that would bring on a menstruation, she knew plants to cure a stomach ache.  She knew many things, but also kept this knowledge in whispers and secrets because Grandma had somehow been made to believe this knowledge might make her seem like a witch.  She was a God loving woman who looked to God daily for guidance and didn’t want to start any whispers at church.  Knowing these plants were both sacred and secret left my imagination to wonder.  When my imagination wonders it becomes SOUND!

Musically this work will be for harp and The Teletextile Moving Choir in addition to other instruments, electronics and will use the plants as instruments themselves. The undertaking will include local singers, dancers, musicians, artists and sound / light technicians.  I also will get help from my NYC mentors of composers, professors, directors and creators regarding how to incorporate technology, create a ceremony with plants, and how to write for a mobile interactive musical piece.  All together this group is called The Teletextile Ritual Arts Ensemble (TRAE). 

With Estafiate, I want to give people the opportunity to get curious about their natural world again; the sky, the plants, the smell of the air.  In immersive theater the audience members leave with individual experiences by participating in different parts of the performance like a meditation, a tea tasting or a sound bath. These works are inspired by a performance I directed - Whisperlodge, an ASMR immersive theater performance which The New York Times dubbed “an unusual mix of theater and therapy”.  

I saw healing in grandma’s garden, in her Estafiate, in her roses, in her aloe vera, in her orange trees, but I also saw healing in the little botanics that line the streets of the west side, and the river as it flows along the mission trail.  And I can tell I’m not the only one taking interest in the rediscovery and uplifting of local knowledge held by so many grandmothers, so many gardens, so many oral histories and so many forgotten stories. This work is an altar to those things we have forgotten, but somehow still flow through our blood, our river and our roots.

I believe this personal story I have with my grandmother, as it relates to the sacred plants of this region and the complexities of those of us who have fallen off the chain of knowledge for what our ancestors possessed, is an important one.  People of my generation younger and older are seeking to reconnect with our roots both metaphorically and literally.  I hope in this work I can build bridges of knowledge for health and wellbeing that grandmothers would like to pass on to their children, grandchildren and grandchildren’s children.

FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

SATURDAY MARCH 16, 6PM

Ruby City’s Chris Park

111 Camp St, San Antonio, TX 78204