Gabrielle Civil is a black feminist performance artist, poet, and writer, originally from Detroit MI. She has premiered fifty original performance art works around the world, including her year-long project “In & Out of Place” as a Fulbright Fellow in Mexico and her “Fugue” trilogy after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Her writing has appeared in New Daughters of Africa, Black in the Middle, Kitchen Table Translation, Obsidian, and other publications. She is the author of the performance memoirs: Swallow the Fish (2017), Experiments in Joy (2019), (ghost gestures) (2021), the déjà vu (2022) and In & Out of Place (2022). She earned her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from New York University and was named a 2019 Los Angeles Rema Hart Mann Emerging Artist. She currently teaches Creative Writing and Critical Studies at the California Institute of the Arts.
The aim of her work is to open up space.
Successes
Advance Gender Equity in the Arts (AGE) has announced 35 partnerships for IGNITE, a national program for U.S.-based women and nonbinary emerging theatre artists of color who will be paired with BIPOC women and nonbinary theatre leaders.
“The launch of this inaugural program is based on the roots of shared experience, cultivation, and expansion,” Minita Gandhi, AGE’s national program director and IGNITE founder, said in a statement. “Many of us have not had the opportunity to have had a mentor, or past mentors have been primarily white and male. This program really explores what it means to draw a new line of inheritance.”
The IGNITE program, which runs through July 31, offers a chance for partners to meet for four one-on-one sessions. Cohort participants will also have the option to attend virtual events throughout 2021, including panels and a social media marketing workshop.
The theatre leaders for this year’s program include performance artist and writer Gabrielle Civil.