‘The Mystica Sisters’ is a multi-disciplinary narrative, chronicling the adventures of two psychic performers from Passaic, New Jersey, as they travel with their show to New York’s Catskills, and to New York City, in the 1940s.

The sisters, Minnie and Dona Mystica, are played by my mother, Kathe “Sissy” Squeeze Canalos, and by my aunt, Donna Squeeze Leonard. While the plot is fictional, many details, and most of the idiosyncrasies of the characters, have their basis in reality. Through intensive dialogue, and improvisational acting, I asked the two to rehash and relive the world that they (and I) grew up hearing about through my grandparents’ generation. We’re collectively drawing on a strange, particular cache of details pulled from family storytelling.

In this world, events are enacted with superstition and nervous excitement. They are followed up with gossip, speculation / psychic prediction, and appeals to God, Saints, and ‘pagan’ forces. The sisters are descended from Russian Gypsies; Italian seamstresses and stone masons; displaced, drifting American Indians who speak “Old Dutch”; and German crop-farmers. However, they identify instead with stock characters played by Vaudeville actors and Hollywood stars. Alternately tender and argumentative with each other, the two women search not only for economic security, but also for meaning. Psychic ability remains as one of the few ways that they, as women, can attempt financial independence in their society through self-invention, and the Mystica Sisters struggle, in earnest, to prove they’re capable. The narrative explores themes of the complexities and vagaries of cultural identity, familial bonds, and the danger/glory of attempting personal redemption through professional ambition.

I began writing an informal script for ‘The Mystica Sisters’ in 2008, scouting for locations and assembling props and costumes as we went. My mother lives in Columbus, Ohio, while my aunt and I live in NYC, so we’ve had to plan our scenes carefully so that they could be shot during the few times a year we’re all together. In some cases, I’ve shot scenes with my mother and my aunt separately and edited the video so as to appear that they’re in the same environment. In 2009, I began making drawings that correspond to scenes in the video piece, and eventually the drawings themselves began to enter into the video. In 2010, I began composing and recording music for ‘The Mystica Sisters’ on Garage Band. Currently, I’m editing the scenes and adding narration - both through straight voice-overs and also as elements of songs.