Back to All Events

Technical Residency: Diovanna Obafunmilayo (closed to the public)


  • CPR – Center for Performance Research 361 Manhattan Avenue Brooklyn, NY, 11211 (map)

The Technical Residency is closed to the public.


CPR welcomes Diovanna Obafunmilayo for a Fall 2026 Technical Residency, providing one uninterrupted week in CPR’s theater and access to a robust a/v inventory to play, experiment, and create. The residency will support her new work in development GODBODY, a ritual opera, an ancestral (re)birthday party, and a piece of spiritually charged dance theatre. Fusing elements of Hip Hop culture, Afro-cuban and Yoruba religious ceremony and philosophy, queer joy, live painting, comedy, and poetry, GODBODY tasks itself with the making of a body without shame. The body becomes a site of divinity and emotionality, and the processing of those emotions via Black spiritual technologies. 

The technical residency will culminate in a preview of excerpts from the expanded version of GODBODY, experimenting with how light, audience interaction, and ritual participation can be further incorporated into the work.

The full production of GODBODY will be staged in Boston at The Theater Offensive from November 12-14, 2026.


Tickets and more information here.


ABOUT THE ARTIST

Diovanna Obafunmilayo Frazier is a multimedia performance artist, Grammy-nominated songwriter, award-winning filmmaker, and poet.

Diovanna Obafunmilayo bangs a metal pot with a wooden spoon over her head, while wearing sunglasses and a white dress. Behind her there is table set for a birthday party, with red candles, red and blue cloth, red balloons, and red flowers in a vase.

Diovanna Obafunmilayo: GODBODY: a ritual opera [Ceremony 2] presented by CPR – Center for Performance Research as part of OPEN AiR, October 27, 2025. Image courtesy CPR. Photo by Jose Miranda.


Previous
Previous
October 26

OPEN LAB | CARRYING DAT: thick circles & soft survival prep with Joy Norton

Next
Next
November 6

OPEN LAB | GODBODY: Ritual Participation with Diovanna Obafunmilayo