The Indiegogo campaign to support the technical production of Add Architecture, Stir Memory was a success! Over 130 people attended the performance at the UNT on the Square Gallery on a hot Tuesday night in Texas. Looking to continue development of the work in other venues in the region and ultimately take it to Japan. Thank you to everyone who supported the work. A soft cover edition of the manuscript from the performance is now available online. Eternal gratitude.
Author Archives: Shay Youngblood
Add Architecture, Stir Memory: A Workshop Production
Add Architecture, Stir Memory: TX – JAPAN
A Workshop Production by Shay Youngblood
with special guests kt shorb and Lyndon Gill
Saturday, 28 June 2014 – 5-7pm @ Salvage Vanguard Theater, Austin, Texas
Free and open to the public
What is the effect of memory on architecture? What is the effect of architecture on memory? How do our early memories of home shape who we become? I traveled from Texas to Tokyo in the spring of 2011 to ask these questions in the form of interviews with Japanese creatives, that would be the research for a novel set in Hawaii and Japan. Ten days after I arrived, Japan experienced the strongest earthquake in its history, which triggered a powerful tsunami and set off a nuclear disaster. In this multimedia performance I share my experience of home in Japan, my creative process and invite the audience to participate in shaping my work-in-progress.
*This workshop production is made possible with support from
ALLGO: A Texas Statewide Organization for Queer People of Color
“Impossible Landscape” artwork: Adrienne Brown
My First Visit to Yaddo: A Writer is Born
Listen to a brief RADIO INTERVIEW I recorded for Art & Seek on KERA my local NPR station. Click on the link to listen: My First Visit to Yaddo
Storytelling Heaven at the Dallas Museum of Art Story Slam
18th Century Marrow Scoop
Inspired by the amazing Rob Walker’s Significant Objects Project, Carolyn Bess of Arts & Letters Live at The Dallas Museum of Art, commissioned four writers (I was among them) to create original short stories inspired by objects in the collection. (See Rob’s blog here Materially Untrue. ) We were invited into the vault where thousands of priceless artworks are stored in a massive underground city. It was overwhelming and thrilling. There were three compelling pieces that stirred my imagination. A painting by Mark Bradford, a woodcut by Käthe Kollwitz and an 18th century silver marrow scoop. Images swirled around in my head, but there was no clear story. In the week that followed my visit to the museum I learned that my friend, the artist Terry Adkins died. I wrote a draft of “Broken Beautiful” in less than 48 hours. His loss was an unexpected element. The story became a place to channel my grief and make peace with our unfinished conversations.
It’s a Winner: Black Girl in Paris now showing on HBO
Winner of the 2014 Black Reel, Outstanding Independent Short, Black Girl Paris, the short film based on my novel was shown on HBO during the month of February. You can still watch it if you have HBO to GO.
Below is a link to a two minute reel for the film:
Trailer for Black Girl in Paris
Chef Edna Lewis, photographed by Karl Bissinger
The Southern Foodways Alliance commissioned me to write a tribute to beloved Southern Chef Edna Lewis for the Women at Work Symposium at the University of Mississippi in Oxford this past fall. Over several months I got to know her through her recipes and stories about growing up on a farm in Freetown, Virginia. Her recipe for carmel cake was a revelation and a dream. Detra Payne brought Miss Lewis to life at the conference in Mississippi. It was a real homecoming. See the video of the performance at the link below.
Black Girl in Paris Finalist in HBO short film competition
From Kiara C. Jones, Producer of Black Girl in Paris:
Congratulations to Director Kiandra Parks and the wonderfully talented Cast and Crew of her thesis film Black Girl in Paris!
Cultivated Films and Black Girl Productions are proud to announce that our film has been selected as a finalist in the 17th Annual American Black Film Festival.
Black Girl in Paris will have its World Premiere in Miami, Florida in the HBO Short Film Competition. http://www.abff.com/festival/
Black Girl in Paris was filmed on location in Paris, France with a dedicated Parisian Cast and Crew. The film stars the extraordinarily talented, Tracey Heggins (Medicine for Melancholy, Twilight) and the amazing British Television starlett, Zaraah Abrahams and was visualized by award winning Director of Photography, Shlomo Godder. Black Girl in Paris was shot on Panavision Alga’s Platinum, 35mm camera on beautiful Kodak film with processing at Eclair and telecine at Technicolor Paris. Black Girl in Paris is a film by Director Kiandra Parks, Produced by Kiara C Jones. The short is based on a novel by the same name, by author Shay Youngblood for which we are are developing the feature length version of the film.
HBO Short Film Competition
Thursday, June 20
8:30 pm-10:30 pm
Colony Theatre
1040 Lincoln Rd Miami Beach, FL 33139
Five talented filmmakers compete for the prestigious 17th annual HBO Short Film Award.
Admission: Passholders Only
Presented by:
Telling Stories at Friday Late Night – Dallas Museum of Art
TThis Friday, June 21st from 6:30 – 7:30pm I’ll be collecting stories at the Dallas Museum of Art. See the link below for more infomation on the Art Block Party events all evening long. Hope to see you there!
http://dallasmuseumofart.org/
Surrounded By Greatness & Beauty at TCG in Dallas
Daniel Alexander Jones, Shay, Nick Slie at Theatre Communications Group (TCG) Conference in Dallas, 2013
Enjoyed mixing and mingling with old friends and new at the TCG Conference in Dallas. I witnessed Ayad Ahktar’s conversation with Gabriel Greene. Ayad’s first novel American Dervish won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. I watched him blossom as an actor in the Theatre Program at Brown University in the mid 90’s. It was great to see him in full flower on the stage of the Dallas Performing Arts Center. A pleasure meeting Nick Slie of Mondo Bizarro in New Orleans; spending some quality time with my friend for life Daniel Alexander Jones who will be performing in Austin as Jomama Jones at the Salvage Vanguard Theatre during July; seeing the wonderful actor, Marguerite Hannah who was the original Daughter in my first play, Shaking the Mess Outta Misery; laughing again with Abe Rybeck of Theater Offensive in Boston and giving birthday wishes to Reginald Edmund. I’m not done with theater yet.
Book Clubbing with Susan Sontag
Casually we call ourselves Art Book Club because we are mostly visual artists, art lovers, book lovers, writers and teachers of literature and because we haven’t been able to come up with a name we can all agree on that’s better than Art Book Club. It’s a privilege and an honor to be a part of this small community of smart, creative, funny women who are critical thinkers and deeply engaged in developing their craft and expanding their knowledge. Last session we read Susan Sontag’s REBORN: Journals and Notebooks 1947-1963, with an insightful introduction by her son David Rieff, who edited the book. When I first read Reborn a few years ago, I was surprised to discover Sontag’s complicated relationship with Cuban-American playwright, Marie Irene Fornes who I met when I was a graduate student at Brown University. From the age of 14 when the journals begin until her mid 20’s, the book chronicles Sontag’s amazing reading lists, ideas for books, her intimate vulnerabilities and complex relationships, her doubts and big questions. We spent nearly five blissful hours engaged in thoughtful conversation sparked by issues raised in the book about identity, craft, the private lives of public figures, and the function of a journal in our lives among other things. It prompted me to read Sontag’s essays, watch her interviews on Youtube and think seriously about what I want to happen with my 25 boxes of archive materials that include journals, letters and original notebooks and manuscripts from the age of 12 to the present. Why do you keep a journal and what do you want to happen to them in the future?
