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-Anyarogbu. 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 five evening-length shows in California’s San Francisco/Bay Area: “mouth full of sea” (2018) dug into presumptions around complicity in the transatlantic slave trade; “mouth//full” (2019) excavated Black queer testimony and African indigenous spiritual practices in the Christian Church; the site-specific “Time of Change” (2021) narratively reanimated the majority Black Haight-Ashbury neighborhood that was eclipsed by the counterculture movement of the ‘60s and ‘70s; “m|ou|f” (2022) explored the risks and rewards of hyper-visibility and opacity, told through re-imaginings of Black queer(ed) celebrity icons Whitney Houston and Prince; “mouf//full” (2024) revisited themes of Black queer faith and African syncretic cultural traditions preserved in the Church, this time re-mounted at scale in a site-specific multimedia performance at the historic Grace Cathedral in San Fransisco. We have been commissioned by the University of Santa Cruz, CounterPulse, Campo Santo, Crowded Fire Theatre, Theatre Bay Area, ODC, National Queer Arts Festival, and the Black Choreographer’s Festival.

For a full list of OYSTERKNIFE collaborations and shows, please see my CV/Resume.