One Bad Year

In 2008, a marriage ended, a nephew was murdered, and a job was lost– and that was only the first eight weeks of the year for Meliza Bañales.  You’d think it would be a banner time to just throw in the towel, but how can you do that when there’s so much meditating and hoola-hooping to do?  One Bad Year is the story after the story.  Using multi-media, dance, bubbles, balloons, science, Xicano-Buddhism, fashion, and astrology the show follows the three selves of Bañales — her inner child, Lil’ Missy, her inner-chola, Mari, and Meliza herself– through their year-long journey of forgiveness, re-invention, and really, really good hair.  What we see are not the makings for a stellar tragedy, but rather the ingredients for healing and making it to the other side, relatively unscathed. Written and performed as part of the AIRspace Residency Program for the ’08-’09 season.

Meliza Bañales, ka Missy Fuego, writes books, sews clothes, and makes movies. She has won an ’08-’09 AIRspace Residency for her one-woman show, One Bad Year, a 2008 Creating Queer Community Grant, a 2006 Frameline Completion Grant for the film Do the Math with Mary Guzman, a 2002 People Before Profits Poetry Prize and toured with Sister Spit in 2007. She recently completed another short film with J Aguilar entitled Getting Off which is appearing in Frameline 33 International LGBT Film Festival. She has been accepted into the RADAR Writer’s Lab to complete her second book of poems, 51 Poems About Nothing At All. Come be her friend at: http://www.myspace.com/melizabanales/missyfuego.