11 Facts About Carla Blank

Carla Blank is an American writer, editor, educator, choreographer, and dramaturge.

Carla Blank grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and after attending Carnegie Mellon University transferred to and graduated from Sarah Lawrence College.

Carla Blank collaborated for many years with Suzushi Hanayagi, and in 2009, with director Robert Wilson and others, created a multidisciplinary live performance portrait of Hanayagi entitled KOOL, Dancing in My Mind, which had its premiere at New York City's Guggenheim Museum.

In 2013, Carla Blank directed an Al-Kasaba Theatre production of Philip Barry's Holiday, performed in Arabic by a cast of Palestinian and Syrian actors.

In 2016, Carla Blank directed a production of Ishmael Reed's play Mother Hubbard in Xiangtan, China.

Carla Blank directed the multidisciplinary work by Yuri Kageyama, News From Fukushima: Meditation on an Under-Reported Catastrophe by a Poet, which was premiered at the off-Broadway theater La MaMa in 2015 and developed further in 2017 at Z Space in San Francisco.

Carla Blank directed and choreographed The Slave Who Loved Caviar by Ishmael Reed, which premiered at Theater for the New City in New York on December 23,2021, running until January 9,2022.

Carla Blank has taught Performance Art at Dartmouth College, Harvard's Office of the Arts, and the University of Washington at Seattle, and has lectured on 20th-century art history at the University of California, Berkeley's departments of Dramatic Arts and Interdisciplinary Field Studies.

Carla Blank has been married since 1970 to Ishmael Reed, whom she met in 1965.

Carla Blank has worked with Reed on a range of projects and books, in addition to her independent career.

Carla Blank lives in Oakland, California, with her husband and their daughter, Tennessee Reed, who is a writer.