Antonio Rocha is a storyteller and mime who lives in Gray. “The Malaga Ship” is not only a story about Maine’s connection to the slave trade in the 19th century, it has also become a vehicle for Rocha to explore his own ancestral trauma. Derek Davis/Portland Press Herald

Antonio Rocha has been a storyteller and mime for more than 30 years. He has performed stories about Brazil, the country where he was born, and Africa, the continent where his ancestors originated. He had told personal stories about his immigration to the United States and his family.

“The Malaga Ship” is the story he was afraid to tell.

“It’s something we never dealt with in my family growing up, talking about our enslaved ancestors,” said Rocha, who lives in Gray. “We never really had a conversation about how that had affected us.”

The Malaga was the name of a real ship built in 1832 in Brunswick that was used to bring African captives to slavery in the Americas. But “The Malaga Ship” is not just a story about the history of the transatlantic slave trade. It has also become the vehicle for Rocha to learn about his own family and heal from his generational trauma.

“At the end of the show, I feel like I’m walking out of a hot sauna,” he said. “My pores are open, and there’s a lot of negativity still coming out, and at the end, I’m lighter. It’s a very cathartic, very healing show.”

Rocha has shared “The Malaga Ship” in Maine and across the country. On Friday, he will perform in South Portland as part of a collaboration with Atlantic Black Box, a nonprofit that investigates the history of colonization and enslavement in New England.

“Antonio’s performance is just an exquisite example of historical recovery work, the kind that we are advocating,” executive director Meadow Dibble said. “Here he is collaborating with a researcher. He has taken those facts, but he has humanized this history that can otherwise feel so distant in time and space, geographically and temporarily. He’s given it human form and human voice.”

FINDING MALAGA

In 2021, Rocha did a residency at Indigo Arts Alliance. Cofounder and artist director Daniel Minter was already familiar with Rocha’s work and was inspired by the way Rocha transformed himself into different people, places and things while telling a story.

“He calls himself a mime,” Minter said. “I call him a shapeshifter.”

Antonio Rocha performed the story now titled “The Malaga Ship” in eight schools and three community centers in 2023 as part of a residency with Portland Ovations. Photo by Katie Day and courtesy of Portland Ovations

Minter connected Rocha with Kate McMahon, the historian of global slavery at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C. McMahon, who is originally from Maine, has researched the role New Englanders played in slavery and focused a chapter of her dissertation on the Malaga. The 183-ton brig was built in Brunswick by Joseph Badger, whose family built their wealth through the slave trade even after it had been outlawed.

“Very few people even know anything about this time period of the slave trade in general,” she said. “For the most part, this activity is happening with U.S. ships transporting enslaved people from Africa to other places in the Americas, primarily Brazil and Cuba. To me, it really speaks to wanting people to understand this prolonged engagement in global slavery, that the United States was actually the most heavily involved country during this time period.”

Rocha traced the Malaga’s journey from Maine to Brazil to Africa, and saw the echo of his own story. He grew up in Rio de Janeiro and came to Maine more than 30 years ago to study with the late Tony Montanaro at the Celebration Barn in South Paris. He later studied theater at the University of Southern Maine and married a woman from Maine. He is now 59.

“I tell people these days that one of the reasons I came to Maine was to find Malaga,” he said.

To tell the story, Rocha decided to shapeshift again.

“The ship has to be the main character,” he said. “And she needs to talk.”

‘IN HIS DNA’

Ships start with trees, and so does Rocha.

He begins “The Malaga Ship” in a stand of pines that are cut down to build a boat. Eventually, he embodies the ship itself. In the story, the Malaga is full of confusion and pain as it transports enslaved people.

“The audience sees Malaga suffering because she is carrying African children,” he said. “The audience really connects with the ship.”

Rocha first developed the story at Indigo Arts Alliance, and it has continued to evolve since. He said he felt ready to approach the subject in part because of the work he had already started, reckoning with his family’s history. He started to understand the weight of his ancestral trauma through therapy, meditation and conversations with his siblings, and saw his difficult relationship with his father in a new light.

Working on “The Malaga Ship” further inspired him to research his own ancestry in Africa. His family and his findings now play an important role in the story. Last year, he said, he met his father again in a dream, and shared a hug.

“He knows where he’s from now,” Rocha said.

That personal connection makes the performance that much more impactful for the audience.

“He carries this story in his body, in his DNA,” Dibble said.

A DEEP CONNECTION

In 2023, Portland Ovations partnered with Rocha to bring his story to eight schools and three community centers in Maine (St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Brunswick helped fund three performances after discovering that Badger was an early supporter of the church’s building fund).

Elizabeth Schildkret, director of school and family programs at Portland Ovations, said the story is “deeply rooted in our community.”

“Through his work, Antonio made genuine, lasting connections with audiences everywhere he performed,” she said.

McMahon said she received an email from a student at Bowdoin College who decided to major in Africana Studies after Portland Ovations presented Rocha’s show at his high school. It opened his eyes to a history he had never heard, and changed the trajectory of his academic and professional life. The story has also impacted the way McMahon thinks about her own work.

“It had never occurred to me before that someone would be moved enough by the historical research to create something like this,” she said. “For me, it has changed the way that I think about how my work can be used by artists and the role that art might have in the work that I do.”

The 45-minute show is sometimes followed by a talk with Rocha and Dibble. Atlantic Black Box has adapted an educator’s guide to the show first developed by Portland Ovations. Dibble said the nonprofit is also working on a documentary about both the ship and the story.

“When we have someone who is willing to become absolutely vulnerable and to take history personally … we are better able to see the forces at work that most of the time are invisible to us,” she said.

Rocha has performances scheduled at a local high school, the Strand Theatre in Rockland and at the Maine State Prison in Warren. He also plans to take “The Malaga Ship” abroad this spring.

IF YOU GO

WHAT: “The Malaga Ship” by Antonio Rocha

WHERE: First Congregational Church, 301 Cottage Road, South Portland

WHEN: Feb. 28 at 7 p.m.

HOW MUCH: Individual tickets are $25. Family admission is $50. Tickets at the supporter level are $100. Accessible tickets are available at no cost.

INFO: For more information and to reserve tickets, visit atlanticblackbox.com/the-malaga-ship/

ALSO: Rocha will perform “The Malaga Ship” on March 7 and kid-friendly “Jungle Tales” on March 8 at the Strand Theatre in Rockland. Tickets are on a sliding scale from $o to $20. For more information, visit rocklandstrand.com or call 207-594-0070.