Carla Blank

Carla Blank is a writer, editor, dramaturge and director. Her most recent publication, edited with Ishmael Reed, is the short fiction anthology, "Powwow: Charting the Fault Lines in the American Experience, Short Fiction From Then to Now" (Da Capo Press, 2009).

"Rediscovering America: The Making of Multicultural America 1900-2000" (Three Rivers Press, an imprint of Random House, 2003) was initiated by a lecture course Carla Blank developed and taught between 1994 and 1999 at the University of California, Berkeley. Titled “Across Disciplines: 20th Century Art Forms," teaching materials for the course led to the creation of the book's cross disciplinary timeline, which highlights and reintegrates the complex contributions of women, African-and-native Americas, immigrants, radicals, artists and others normally cast to the margins of history books.

Carla Blank is coauthor, with Jody Roberts, of "Live OnStage!," an anthology of performing arts techniques and styles available in teacher resource and student editions (Dale Seymour Publications, a Pearson education imprint, 1997, 2001). North Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Idaho have adopted it for middle-school use statewide, and it is referenced in various Canadian and United States school district curriculum guidelines, including the Cambridge Public School Drama collective, developed with Harvard University's Office of the Arts, and the Yale-New Haven Teacher's Institute.

Blank has also been a performer, director, dramaturge and teacher of dance and theater for over forty years, especially devoting her time to youth and community arts performance projects.

Carla Blank worked with Robert Wilson to create "KOOL-Dancing In My Mind," a performance portrait inspired by Suzushi Hanayagi, legendary Japanese choreographer who was a long time collaborator and dear friend of both artists. It premiered at the Peter B. Lewis Theater at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum April 17, 2009, and was further developed at East Hampton's Guild Hall in August, 2009. In 2010 it premiered internationally at Berlin's Akademie der Künste and was shown at the Baryshnikov Arts Center when Robert Wilson received a Jerome Robbins Award. "SUZUSHI HANAYAGI: A Moving Life," by filmmaker Richard Rutkowski, which includes Blank's research and images from rehearsals and performance of KOOL at the Guggenheim, had televison premieres in 2010 on ARTE in France and Sundance Channel in the U.S., and an hour length film, "The Space In Back of You," will premiere at Lincoln Center's Dance on Camera Festival in January, 2012.

Since 2003 she has served as artistic director of The Domestic Crusaders Project, functioning as stage director and dramaturge of all performances of "The Domestic Crusaders," Wajahat Ali's two act kitchen drama about three generations of a Muslim Pakistani-American family. Its New York City premiere September 11, 2009, at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, enjoyed a five week run of standing room only audiences and world-wide media attention. In 2010, it premiered internationally at MuslimFest in Mississauga, Canada, and a November 14 showing of Act I at the Kennedy Center's Millenium Hall in Washington, D.C., remains archived on their website. Appearances on September 10-11, 2011 at The Art of Justice: the 9/​11 Performance Project at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater of John Jay College of Criminal Justice received international media coverage, including features by Al Jazeera English and Japan's national TV channel, NHK.

In March 2009, she directed three original one act plays for PEN Oakland, including plays by Opal Palmer Odissa, Claire Ortalda and Haitian born performance poet Boadiba. She is developing a new performance work with Boadiba and a film with original script by Ishmael Reed.

Carla Blank is currently researching nine American women who entered the field of architecture in the nineteenth century, and a chronology of American history from 1776. She also serves as editorial director of the Ishmael Reed Publishing Company, supervising its poetry and prose projects. Japan based writer Yuri Kageyama's "New and Selected Yuri, Writing from Peeling Till Now," was released in Spring, 2011; and "Courtesans of Flounder Hill," the first poetry collection of Ishmael Hope, is now in production.

A resident of Oakland, California, she lives with her family of writers, Ishmael Reed and Tennessee Reed.