Deeply personal show confronts family secrets, domestic abuse

She learned the family secret at age 7 and kept it because that's what her parents told her to do. Like her nine older siblings, she learned to walk around it, step over it, stuff it and sometimes even toy with it by making it into "a cartoon visual."

Ultimately, performing artist Marcella Goheen could no longer silently bear the burden of how her grandmother died. So she released the truth in the safest place she knew: the theater.

"Theater was a place where I felt free," said Goheen, a Brooklyn-based actress who will perform her one-woman show, "The Maria Project," Aug. 18 and 19 at Minneapolis' Open Eye Figure Theatre (www.openeyetheatre.org). "The theater is where the secret disappears."

The secret was that her grandmother, Maria Salazar, died violently at age 26 at the hands of a family member. But in what she realizes may be a controversial move, Goheen does not make the perpetrator a classic villain.

"I have compassion for him," Goheen said in a telephone interview, quickly adding that "compassion is a big word, a big action. It invites people to understand. Judgment is not helpful for humanity. I don't think anyone is born bad. There are influences, imprints. Before you can change something, you have to understand it."

Her 75-minute play explores the context of that, she said, "not to justify killing, which is wrong no matter what, but to dig deep."

Ultimately, the story belongs to Maria. "The woman really never gets a voice," Goheen said. "What we want to do is give a voice to all the Marias in the world who have lost their voice through acts of violence."

Goheen chose Minneapolis for her four-city tour, which includes Denver, Chicago and San Diego, because we are home to the Domestic Abuse Project (www.mndap.org), which has worked to prevent family violence in Minnesota for 30 years. DAP will sponsor an opening night reception.

"Her project, it is so fitting with the work that DAP does," executive director Carol Arthur said. "We work with every family member. We know this is learned behavior."

It's not a stretch to say that Goheen was born to the theater. By 7, she was performing on stages in her native Fort Wayne, Ind. She did black-box shows in high school and spent her summers doing summer stock, then attended the prestigious Goodman School of Drama in Chicago.

She draws inspiration from her family, who were "more of a tribe of 12 people. When you're the baby, you see things from a very specific vantage-point."

After 9/11, Goheen, who was living in New York, began a seven-year journey to uncover the truth about her grandmother. She traveled to 17 states, finding relatives she didn't know she had, asking them questions, finding more family.

As she found them, unspoken questions were answered. Maria, who died in 1931, was part Hopi Indian and part Spanish from Seville, which explained Goheen's dark hair and skin.

"We had no idea what our bloodline was," she said. "We were told we were Irish."

She considered a documentary, and shot footage, but then decided to do what she knew best. The show debuted on the stage of the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2007.

Goheen praises DAP and other domestic-abuse prevention programs, none of which existed during her grandmother's short life. "We've come so far in working with family systems," said Goheen, who incorporates 16 family members into her play. "No one knew how to talk about it. Some people don't like to use the word 'shame,' but I do."

Arthur agrees. When DAP began 31 years ago, "you didn't talk about domestic violence," Arthur said. "Police would ask, 'What are we doing here? This is a private family matter.' No, it's not," Arthur said. "It's a basic human right to be safe."

That journey to safety begins when secrets are revealed, Goheen said.

"We are only as sick as our secrets. There is absolutely no reason, other than fear, to take the journey to align ourselves with truth."

Gail Rosenblum • 612-673-7350 • gail.rosenblum@startribune.com