CounterPulse and OYSTERKNIFE present mouf//full at Grace Cathedral

February 2-4, 2024

mouf//full is an exploration of faith’s limits through a Black queer interdisciplinary lens. Co-directed by Gabriele Christian and Chibueze Crouch, collectively known as OYSTERKNIFE, this piece interrogates the role of the Church in personal lineage and its influences across Afro-Diasporic cultures. How has the Church been both balm and barrier? Where can we find a similar divinity in secular spaces: in the club, inside our bodies, through song, by gathering, and within our quotidian lives?

This immersive, participatory performance combines dance-theater, ritual masquerade, song, poetry, and video to explore how Black cultures have transformed Church into a uniquely syncretic cultural space. By preserving African traditions and adapting a colonial ideology into one of radical liberation, spiritual catharsis, and creative spectacle, Black people have made the Church reflect our own images. Still, flaws and cracks in the foundation remain: homophobia, sexism, social conservatism and spiritual violence run rampant in many religious spaces. With the help of our many collaborators – including Marvin K. White, the Saint John Coltrane Church – OYSTERKNIFE will create a different kind of Mas(s) that welcomes and celebrates all peoples, while centering a queer Blackness that births expansive new worlds we can thrive and believe in.

mouf//full is made possible with support from the Creative Work Fund, the Rainin NEW Program, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant

About OYSTERKNIFE

OYSTERKNIFE—a name derived from Zora Neale Hurston’s essay “How It Feels To Be a Colored Me”—was formed in late 2017 out of a longtime creative friendship between Gabriele Christian and Chibueze Crouch. Nourishing a desire to subvert our collegiate theatrical training, which often ignored our complex Afro-Diasporic queer experiences, we found that interdisciplinary, somatic-based, experimental approaches made for fuller work, allowing us to interrogate sociohistorical norms and institutions while freeing our bodies. Both members of OYSTERKNIFE bring a wealth of creative experiences, meshing theater, ritual masquerade, video, extemporaneous movement, song, and text. Central to every work we co-create are: an attention to archives (documenting the voices both seen and unseen), collectivism (who is here and who is missing that we need to invite), and multimedia immersion (seamlessly blending disciplines and breaking the audience/performer divide). We have produced three full-length shows in the Bay: “mouth full of sea” dug into presumptions around complicity in the transatlantic slave trade; “mouth//full” excavated BlaQ testimony and African indigenous spiritual practices in the Christian Church; and the site-specific “Time of Change” narratively reanimated the majority Black Haight-Ashbury neighborhood that was eclipsed by the counterculture movement of the ‘60s and ‘70s. We have also been commissioned by the University of Santa Cruz, CounterPulse, Campo Santo/Crowded Fire Theatre, Theatre Bay Area, ODC, National Queer Art Festival, and the Black Choreographer’s Festival.

Chibueze Crouch (they/she) is an Igbo-American artist, writer & curator working across ritual theater, song, movement, video, and text. They are co-director of OYSTERKNIFE, a postdisciplinary performance company, with Gabriele Christian, as well as an artist organizer and founding member of BlaQyard, a Black queer land collective. Chibueze is the 2019 RHE Foundation Fellowship recipient, a 2021 California Arts Council Established Artist Fellow, and a 2023-24 Zellerbach Family Foundation Fellow. She has been an artist-in-residence in Biddeford, Maine, San Francisco, Oakland, Point Reyes, and Johannesburg, South Africa. She is also a curator and producer of emerging and established performing artists with the Performance Primers, Queering Dance Festival, and KH FRESH Festival. Chibueze has performed nationally as well as internationally, collaborating with numerous institutions, such as: BANDALOOP, UC Santa Cruz, Theatre Bay Area, CounterPulse, the Medea Project: Theatre for Incarcerated Women, Joe Goode Performance Group, Playwrights Foundation, Jess Curtis/Gravity, Radar Productions, Santiago a Mil International Theater Festival, Yale University, Trinidad Theatre Workshop, Mupa Budapest, Flux Projects, Crowded Fire Theater, and the Black Choreographer’s Festival.

Gabriele Christian (they/them) is an Oakland-based conceptual artist and descendent of stolen folk experimenting within somatic practices, language, performance composition, video production and community arts facilitation to locate and center BlaQ (Black and Queer) experience, vernaculars and aesthetics as wellsprings for radical futurity. They are a founding member of BlaQ-led performance and land projects: RUPTURE; OYSTERKNIFE; and BlaQyard. They’ve presented and collaborated internationally (Berlin, Germany; Karachi, Pakistan; Johannesburg, South Africa; Vienna, Austria et al.) in multimedia productions and processes with artists, choreographers, and companies including jose e. abad/fugitivity labs, LXS DXS, Sherwood Chen, Lenora Lee Dance, SAMMAY, Skywatchers (ABD Productions), Kim Ip, Cornelius Sigourney/OX Productions, Robert Woodruff, Joe Goode Performance Group, Jess Curtis/Gravity, WePlayers, Larkin Street Youth Services, Destiny Arts Center, et hella al. Along with this global experience, they’ve empowered the work and stories of Blind and Visually Impaired (BVI) folk, black and brown youth, Tenderloin residents, and LGBTQ+ elders. At the heart of all of their work, they strive to excavate oral tradition and movement as conduits for urgent and equitable conversations around belonging, spirit, desirability, abundance, and care.

Collaborating Artists:

Marvin K. White is the Minister of Celebration at Glide Memorial Church. Marvin is a writer, artist, preacher, and public theologian. He earned an MDiv. from Pacific School of Religion, in Berkeley, CA. He is a well sought out preacher, teacher and facilitator. He is the author of four collections of poetry: Our Name Be Witness; Status; and the two Lambda Literary Award-nominated collections last rights and nothin’ ugly fly. He has edited and contributed to literary and art journals and publications, locally and nationally. His poetry has been adapted for stage and screen, and he has performed original work at many theaters. As a former member of the critically acclaimed theater troupe, PomoAfroHomos, he performed nationally and internationally. Beginning with being a Teaching Artist for WritersCorps, he has continued to lead creative arts and writing workshops for a range of audiences. Marvin holds a fellowship in the national African-American poetry organization, Cave Canem; and founded and sat on the board of two BIPOC LGBTQ organizations: Fire & Ink, and B/GLAM, two national black LGBT writer’s organizations. In 2019, he was named one of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, “100”. He was awarded a Kennedy Center, “Citizen Artist Fellowship” (’20-’21). Marvin is articulating a vision of social, prophetic and creative justice.

Styles Alexander (they/them) – Movement Artist/choreographer/writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Styles graduated from the Boston Conservatory, where they received a B.F.A in contemporary performance and choreography. While attending the Boston Conservatory, Styles performed and collaborated in creative processes with choreographers such as Andrea Miller, Robert Moses, Dwight Rhoden, Doug Varone and others. Styles has also had the honor of performing repertory by Idan Sharabi, Robin Aren, Joy Davis, Chuck Wilt, Nicole Von Arx. Styles is a co-founder of RUPTURE, a performance collective based in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City. Styles’s choreographic work is a practice of reimagining and communicating with history residing in the body through; fantasy, afro-futurism, and fugitivity. Styles’s work has been featured in Urbanity NeXt, DougVarone’s DEVICES program, Jess Curtis’ Gravity Pop Up Performance project, and the SENSEOBJECT, residency at Berkeley Finnish Hall. Styles is a 2023 DanceWeb Impulstanz Scholarship recipient, under the mentorship of Clara Furey and Lara Kramer.

Natalya Shoaf (she/her) – Movement

Based in the Bay Area, Natalya Shoaf is an active dance educator, choreographer, and performer. She received her formidable dance education from Burbank Dance Biz, Patsy Metzger Dancers, Media City Dance, and Los Angeles High School for the Arts. Natalya holds a BFA in Dance from the Alonzo King LINES Ballet BFA program. Natalya is a dance educator for Oakland School of the Arts and Shawl-Anderson Dance Center. As a performer, she has worked with Flyaway Productions, dazaun.dance, Hope Mohr Dance, Liv Schaffer, and many more. Natalya is the current artist in residence at the Athenian School under the direction of Laura E. Ellis. This is Natalya’s first collaboration with OYSTERKNIFE.

Tara Bucknor (she/her) – Movement

Tara is a Bay Area-based choreographer, writer, and dancer. Originally from Jupiter Florida, she attended BAK Middle School of the Arts, Dreayfoos School of the Arts, and Precision Dance Conservatory before attending and graduating with a BFA in Dance from the University of Florida. After graduating with her BFA in Dance from UF in 2020 she completed the two-year Alonzo King Lines Ballet Training Program. After completing LBTP she went on to be named as one of ODC’s Pilot Artists in its 73rd iteration of the program. She is currently part of Dancing Earth’s Bay Area Company Cohort.

Featured Performers:

Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church

The Saint John Coltrane Global Spiritual Community is the longest-standing black-owned cultural institution for the artform Jazz in operation. For over half a century we have been devoted to meeting the needs of the people through advocating for social and environmental justice, access to housing, reducing homelessness, and criminal justice reform.

Designers:

marlow henry magdalene (video direction, edit and cinematography)

Anum Awan (projection design)

GG Torres (technical direction and lighting design)

House of Perception (costume design and fabrication)

Martina Onyemaechi Crouch-Anayrogbu (masquerade costume design)

Imani Wilson (set design and fabrication)

B Dukes aka DJ Blu Moon (sound design and DJ accompaniment)

X Medianoche (sound design and organ accompaniment)

February 2-4, 2024

This event will be capped at 200 audience members.

Doors open 7:15 and performances will begin at 7:30 PM. Please arrive early to help us start the show on time. There will be no late seating.

>> Directions to Grace Cathedral

All audience members, staff, and artists will be expected to wear a N95 mask (which we will provide for free) except for when actively eating or drinking. Performers may be unmasked while performing.

>> CounterPulse’s COVID-19 Policy

This show will involve movement between multiple spaces. Comfortable shoes are encouraged. Grace Cathedral is fully ADA accessible.

>> Grace Cathedral’s Frequently Asked Questions

ASL Interpretation, Haptic Tours, and Audio Description will be available on Sunday Feb 4th. Haptic tours will begin at 7PM sharp.

Please email info@counterpulse.org with any access needs including NOTAFLOF discount codes. Thank you!

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Photo of Gabriele Christian and Chibueze Crouch (OYSTERKNIFE) by Chani Bockwinkel