Join BAAM at The Gem for night of live story telling from Antonio Rocha. He will present his important story “The Malaga Ship: A Story of Maine and the Middle Passage” on Thursday, February 5th at 6:30 pm.

The Malaga was a 183 ton brig built in 1832,  in Brunswick Maine, in a shipyard owned  by Joseph Badger. The ship eventually found herself as part of the already Illegal transatlantic trade of African captives to the Americas, especially Brazil. The Malaga Ship Story is a tour de force performance.  Using his entire body and voice, Antonio sings, narrates, and mimes his way through this poetically toned historical tale told mostly from the perspective of the ship. The story vividly explores the reality and impact of the slave industry, which was the largest industry in the world in the 1800s. The story also has a deep connection to the performer, for Malaga goes to Rio de Janeiro – Brazil in 1845, where Antonio was raised in a biracial household over a century later. 

” I could not believe the coincidences  between the ship and myself. She was built in Maine and went to Brazil to bring t o my home country part of my ancestry. I was born in Brazil and came to Maine where I learn to be a storyteller. The more I read about Malaga, the more I realized I was born to tell her story.” – Antonio Rocha

Antonio Rocha (pronounced haw-sha), originally from Brazil, began his career in the performing arts in 1985. In 1988 he received a Partners of the Americas grant to come to the USA to perform and deepen his mime skills with Mime Master Tony Montanaro. Since then he has earned a Summa Cum Laude Theater BA from USM (University of Southern Maine) and studied with Master Marcel Marceau. Mr. Rocha’s unique and award winning solo fusion of mime and storytelling with mesmerizing voices and sound effects has been performed from Singapore to South Africa and many places in between, including 20 countries on 6 continents as well as in 44 US states. Some of the venues include The Singapore Festival of the Arts, Wolf Trap, The National Storytelling Festival, The Kennedy Center, The Smithsonian Institution, The National Geographic, The Tales of Graz in Austria, Dunya Festival, The Timpanogos Storytelling Festival, Cave Run Storytelling Festival as well as thousands of school performances. Antonio Rocha also loves to teach his craft and often facilitates workshops, not only for performers, but for those who want to incorporate storytelling into their business presentations and classroom.
A two time TEDx speaker, Mr. Rocha is a proud recipient of the coveted Circle of Excellence Award by the National Storytelling Network, and most recently the 2024 Maine Arts Commission Fellowship for the Performing Arts. 

Antonio Rocha’s performance of Malaga was riveting! Antonio masterfully activates the imagination of the audience using history, mime, and spellbinding characters to tell this tale in a unique and fascinating way. He navigates us through a litany of emotions, and in conclusion we discover that we learn a great deal about history and ourselves.”
         -Betsy Heid-Puelle Drama Teacher at Yarmouth HS, Maine.

More information about Mr. Rocha can be found in his website: https://storyinmotion.com/

The performance lasts 45 minutes and due to the impactful nature of the presentation, it is followed by a discussion session with the audience. Usually the audience stays on for another 30 minutes following a performance asking question’s about the Middle Passage, and how the performance was designed.

Social hour at 5:30 pm

Performance & Talk Back at 6:30 pm

Tickets are “Pay What You Can” with all proceeds benefiting future BAAM programming.