Now, more than ever, we need to participate in creative and what lead artist and the curator Marvin K. White coined “Prophetic Placemaking” to understand the ways in which the arts and the “spirit of our communities” are being displaced. How do we “ground” in community, practices and spaces, that are safe from gentrifying and political forces?

Paying tribute to the black prophetic and church traditions, the black art traditions, and the black queer arts traditions that have operated within and through both, this “Revival Service”, explores these questions by gathering together black queer operators and movers of the Theopoetic, the Theatrical, the Scholarly, the Journalism, the Creative, and the Prophetic.

The Revival and Festival brings together academic, scholarly, theological, cosmological, community, poetry and public theologies, working in the and for the intersection of community-based arts and the divine. This performance arts festival is part church service, part open practice, part conjure, ceremony and tarry, moving through playwriting, poetry, sermonic expression, song and performance.

Confirmed Speakers, Tellers, Testimonialists, Prophets and Prophetesses, Poets, Performers, Thought Leaders, Magic Makers, Seers, Abolitionists, and Joy Bringers:

Vending by Dovie’s Divine, Cindy Elizabeth, Tameika L. Hannah, Gbeda Acupuncture and Sound Medicine and more.

Curated by public theologian, poet and performer Marvin K. White MDiv., and presented by allgo: a statewide queer people of color organization, this 3-day “Tent Revival” and Festival of Black LGBTQ Performance, Poetics, Prophetics and House Music brings together both local and national poets, thinkers, church folk, practitioners, artists, preachers, and performers.

The centering of this festival in the black church tradition, reminds us that when given space to operate within community, spirit– ancestral knowledge, environmental wisdom, community lessons, indigenous practices) is inherently strategic and allows new insight, new ideas, new affirmation and new possibilities to emerge. Oh and yes, Joy emerges and reemerges.

Black queer arts. Amen. Poetry service. Amen. Church. Amen. Theater. Amen. Performance. Amen. Divinity. Amen. Orisha. Amen. Storytelling. Amen. Frankie Knuckles. Amen. Levitations. Aché and Honey Boom!