(May 7, 1959 – January 30, 2025)
Maria Michaela “Mitchy” Mallorca-Saturay was a theater artist and community organizer for MIGRANTE-Netherlands. She was an activist and revolutionary cultural worker who devoted her talent and skills for the National Democratic Movement in the Philippines.
As a teenager at the height of the Marcos dictatorship in the 1970s, she joined a progressive theater company that opened her eyes to the plight of the poor and oppressed. She quickly recognized that the elements of theater can play an important role in raising one’s political consciousness, and has since been organizing, developing, and conducting integrated theater arts workshops aimed to arouse, organize, and mobilize the most marginalized sectors.
Before moving to the Netherlands, she was an active member of the Concerned Artists of the Philippines. Among her talents were workshop facilitating, performing, scriptwriting, and directing.
She was an advocate of the rights and welfare of women and children. She was an environmental and human rights advocate. In 2006, she and her family became were forced to seek asylum in the Netherlands after they became targets of political persecution in the Philippines.
She co-founded the Stichting Linangan and the Willem Geertman Art and Culture Network in Utrecht, where she continued to share and utilize her decades of experience in theater as a tool for grassroots community organizing, collaborating with migrant youth, workers, clergy, and refugees in Europe. Mitchy lived and worked in Utrecht, The Netherlands. She passed away on January 30, 2025.