mouf//full at Grace Cathedral

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.