By Polina Smith
Crescent Moon Theater Productions’ latest project ‘When Your Skin Calls You Home’ is one that tugs at the heartstrings—but not in the way you might imagine. Through performance art and ritual grounded in Curandersimo, this Selkie-folklore circus-theater production encourages viewers to look within, and rediscover the parts of themselves that may have been lost or neglected.
The program focuses on how we can move forward through soul loss and the times in our lives when we are numb, disconnected, or traumatized, in the face of colonization, collective violence, and generational trauma. Utilizing the beauty and tranquility of nature as a backdrop for the production, the cast takes viewers on a mystical journey through the wild currents of self with the goal of landing them back in a place of wholeness. The story unfolds through the use of aerials, live cello, vocals, movement, and masks.
Polina Smith, Melusina Gomez, and Shoshana Green invite us to acknowledge the parts of us that are lost. At Commonweal, Bolinas. Photo by Mer Al Dao.
The cast consists of eight performers: Melusina Gomez, Mia Pixley, Shannon Gray, Shmee, Shoshana Green, Polina Smith, Claire Calderón, and Nikbo.
Melusina Gomez is the writer and creator of the production, along with being an artist, teacher, curandera, and founder of Metzmecatl: Moon Rope Theatre, a theater company in the Bay Area. She holds a MA in Experimental Performance from The Experimental Performance Institute at New College. Gomez hopes to bring pathos, humor, beauty, tension, magic, and healing to the production, and to the world at large.
Psychologist and artist Mia Pixley uses her voice and cello to study the self, others, and the natural world, with her music focusing on the beauty that lives in sorrow and how that mix can guide us closer to one another. Pixley has a professional studies diploma in cello performance from San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and a Ph.D. from CUNY Graduate Center, City College, and she tours annually on the Windham Hill Winter Solstice Tour. Pixley is set to release her first full-length album, “Margaret in the Wild,” a project that encourages us to move towards nature within us and around us.
Cellist Mia Pixley creates a soundscape of wonder, freedom, and enchantment. Photo by Mer Al Dao.
Specializing in dance trapeze, Shannon Gray merges the worlds of circus and dance to bring a rare kind of emotional intensity to her performances—no matter if the venue is an underground loft or a zipline suspended 100 feet over the ocean. Gray is currently working on a film called The Sentience Project, which examines dreams, injuries, sentience, and the natural world.
Shoshana Green, artist, teacher, curator, and presenter for Butoh programming in San Francisco, uses movement and image to study movement, the esoteric, relationships, and the body as a sculptural representation. Green has performed in KATSURA Kan's Oracle and Enigma at CounterPULSE in San Francisco and in Vangeline Theater's (NYC) production of FIFTH OF BUTOH at Triskelion Arts in New York, as well as in eX..it performance festival at the International Art Research Residency, Schloss Bröllin in Berlin, Germany.
Shoshana Green and Shannon Gray putting on their selkie masks as they domesticate what is wild within. Photo by Mer Al Dao.
Artist, storyteller, and educator S. Shmee facilitates enchanting programs that bring mindfulness, embodiment, and creative play to tell stories and build communities. Shmee’s original works have been seen at the Bioneers Conference, the Conference for the International Association for the Study of Dreams, SF Fringe Festival, and many more. Schmee holds a BA in Film Studies and a MA in Depth Psychology and supports higher education as an adjunct professor, teaching artist, and administrator.
Polina Smith is the Artistic Director of Crescent Moon Theater Productions and creates original and innovative new work that spans the disciplines of dance, theater, music, and circus. Smith holds a MA of Fine Arts in Creative Inquiry and worked for over ten years with the Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women. In addition, Smith is the art event producer for Bioneers and Seismic Sisters.
Claire Calderón is a writer, literary curator, and musician in feminist indie folk-pop band Coraza, whose first single, “Like Blood” was released this year. Calderón has an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College and also manages The Ruby, a gathering space for women and non-binary artists and writers in San Francisco.
Nikbo is an indie-award winning Filipino artist and organizer who creates genre-fluid music about belonging. Nikbo has been singing and writing for 20 years and toured the world as Musical Director of Stanford’s Talisman acapella group. Nikbo’s compositions won multiple competitions with the West Coast Songwriters Berkeley chapter; Nikbo was also a VONA fellow in 2011, and a featured artist at APERture and the Pistahan Festival. Most recently, in 2020, their first music video, produced in collaboration with the award-winning, Brooklyn-based digital artist Kameron Neal, won an Independent Music Award.
This diverse and talented cast are the true alchemists of the production, each bringing an essential ingredient to cast the healing spell that is this production. As they unfold this story, they urge you, through their passion, to meet your truest self.
In the final scene, Mia Pixley, Claire Calderón, Nikbo, Shoshana Green and Melusina Gomez look out over an ocean cliff, having reclaimed all that was lost. An act of soul retrieval and rebirth. Photo by Mer Al Dao.
When Your Skin Calls You Home was performed at Commonweal in Bolinas, on the California coast, and at Skyline Community Church in Oakland over the summer of 2021.