An original performance, by Christa M. Forster

Premiered at The National Women’s Theatre Festival @ Titmus Theater, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, June/July 2023

In CALIFORNIO—a transmedia, interdisciplinary performance—Christa M. Forster spins an epic tale that spans 200 years and culminates in the present moment of the 21st century. Through the point of view of an intergenerational persona, Forster and Ysidora Pico de Forster, her 19th century patriarchal grandmother, explore how race, identity, kinship, and annexation determine a person’s, a family’s, a nation’s fate.

Bio

Christa M. Forster is a multidisciplinary artist, performer and educator whose roots run deep in California’s history. As a seventh-generation Californio from San Juan Capistrano and a descendant of the pioneering Pico family who migrated from Sonora, Mexico to Alta California in 1776, she has a rich family heritage that influences her work. Her Afro-Hispanic great-great-great grandmother, Ysidora Pico, married an Englishman named John Forster in 1837, which is how the red-headed gene made its way into the Forster family. Her travels and experiences living in different parts of the world have shaped her artistic sensibilities and broadened her vision.

Currently based in Houston, TX, Forster is an established writer, performer, and theater producer. Her one-woman shows, Field Information, Antilogical Pedagogical, and What’s on [My] Mind?, premiered at Diverseworks and 14 Pews. She helped co-found Infernal Bridegroom Productions, a Houston-based theater company that produced groundbreaking works by Suzan-Lori Parks, Brian Jucha, Daniel Johnston, and Lisa D’amour.

Forster earned her MFA in poetry from the University of Houston’s Creative Writing Program, where she worked with renowned poets Edward Hirsch and Adam Zagajewski and served as poetry editor of Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts. Her literary, performance, interdisciplinary, and educational work has been recognized with numerous awards and grants.