Production Details

Lake Walking, Revolutionary Talking
Lake Walking, Revolutionary Talking is an interactive, experimental performance including a live and virtual cast of spoken word artists from Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria and the U.S. Set in Oakland's Lake Merritt, lost children of the African diaspora wander in an imaginary desert in hopes of discovering untainted water that will cleanse their spirit. This journey through space and time celebrates the power of imagination and connection. Featuring Ayodele Nzinga, Karla Brundage, Duana Fullwiley, David Odiase, Sir Black, Rameses Setekh, Kevin Dublin, Wanda Sabir, Gemini, Amos White, Godfrey-Elvis Odianose, Zakiyyah G.E. Capehart, Joey Korgan, Loice Mwita.

West Oakland to West Africa
In 2013, West Oakland to West Africa (WO2WA) originated when Karla Brundage taught English in Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire, inspired by Ghana's spoken word scene. Partnering with Ehalakasa, the Ghanaian initiative aimed at a poetic exchange, it draws from griot tradition and hip-hop to educate youth on their African heritage. Launched in 2016 with support from the Mills College Community Engagement Fellowship, WO2WA made a profound impact. The 2018 publication, "Our Spirits Carry Our Voices," led the poets to Ghana for a slam. Since then, WO2WA conducted exchanges in Kenya and Nigeria, featuring over 100 pan-African poets.

Artist Biographies

Karla Brundage
Karla Brundage is a Bay Area based poet, activist, and educator with a passion for social justice. She believes that in order to restore balance and to reclaim our humanity as Black people, racist structures that uphold this belief, must be dismantled. Her writing is primarily for Black women and people disenfranchised by poverty, abuse, neglect or violence. She is the founder of West Oakland to West Africa.

Ayodela Nzinga (Majick)
Nzinga, MFA, PhD is an author, director, producer, thespian, dramaturge, member of Alameda County Women's Hall of Fame, and the inaugural Poet Laureate of Oakland. Ayodele is Lead Curator of BAM House Black Cultural Center in Oakland; founding director of the Lower Bottom Playaz; founding director of the Black Arts Movement Business District, Community Development Corporation of Oakland; producer of BAMBDFEST International; a YBCA Creative Corps Fellow; and a California Arts Council Legacy Fellow. Ayodele is the author of Performing Literacy, The Horse Eaters, SorrowLand Oracle, and Incandescent. Ayodele Nzinga hosts Winter in America: The SpeakEasy.

Duana Fullwiley (Sand to Water)
Duana Fullwiley is a literary anthropologist of science and medicine whose fieldwork with scientists, patients, and larger publics explores the interplay of genetics, health and cultural politics in Senegal, France, and the United States. She is the author of The Enculturated Gene: Sickle Cell Health Politics and Biological Difference in West Africa as well as numerous articles on ancestry genetics in the United States. The larger themes of her work have also inspired her poetic engagements with medical power, scientific legacies, and the human animal’s place in nature. She has received awards from the Fulbright Scholars Program to Senegal, the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. She teaches at Stanford University.