Kalya scintilla biography of william shakespeare

ByDamon OriononJune 3, 2016inArtist Profiles, Music

Along with creating rich, compelling music as a solo artist, local singer/songwriter Marya Stark plays in duos like Scarlet Crow and Stark Levity, works as a music therapist, teaches compassionate communication, practices Qigong and leads workshops for freeing up the voice.

On the day that Local Santa Cruz spoke with Marya by phone, she had just returned to Santa Cruz from a short tour with Kalya Scintilla and Eve Olution. She was preparing to mix an album with Kalya and Carmen Crow (the other half of Scarlet Crow), gearing up for a full season of shows this summer and putting together footage from various community flash mobs for a video for her song “Unstoppable Joy.”

Local Santa Cruz:

Do you have a name for your style of music?

Marya Stark:

[Laughs] Okay, so I’ve been practicing this! The whole body of work that I produce is bigger than what’s online at the moment, but I’d say the stuff that I have recorded and out is indie-folk that’s steeped in the bardic arts and infused with storytelling. I have a lot of different concept albums at play right now: There’s a whole concept that’s just medicine chants for women, I’m about to release an album next month that’s all educational songs for kids, and then I have The Garden online, and a couple of those tracks are cinematic indie-folk pop music. And this music that I’ve got with Carmen Crow that’s about to come out has more of the deeper storytelling. We’re calling it witch folk, ’cause it’s witchy—it’s got these two ladies with pretty harmonies and deep, darker storytelling.

My mission with music is really to excavate the soul: What parts of our personalities and of the psyche and sub-parts of ourselves can we really explore and discover and unearth, so we can be more complete in our process? I came up in music studying music therapy, and I got really inspired to start writing songs duri

From ancient Greek actors to all-male Elizabethan casts to the drag queens of today, cross-dressing performers have been around for nearly as long as live performance itself. In It’s a Drag, Janet Tennant provides a fascinating and colorful look at performing artists who adopt the characters and dress of others. With a particular focus on theatrical history in Britain and North America, Tennant also turns to modern performers like RuPaul, Mj Rodriquez, David Bowie, and Billy Porter. She surveys the many reasons that performers have cross-dressed over the years, whether to tell stories, to amuse audiences, to create distinctive alter egos, to call attention to social and political issues—or merely for reasons of expediency.

In addition to its memorable portraits of Shakespearean boy actors, pantomime dames, and other cross-dressing performers across history, It’s a Drag takes stock of the present and considers the future of the practice: How will the drive toward equality affect the use of cross-dressing and cross-gender role casting? Will gender-blind roles become as prevalent as color-blind casting? And will cross-dressing continue to amuse and impress audiences, or can we imagine a time when gender differences will cease to be important?

Returning to balance is hard work. There’s so many pits one can fall in. Not to look far, as I’m writing this, the ruthless clock shows half past midnight. But as with everything else, it’s the repetitive little steps that count. I hope. Ask me in a year.

But enough about that. The last two months were busy (which ones aren’t, eh?). Changes are coming. Some are already here. I’ve started a journey towards self-employment and I’ll be announcing stuff and showing my creations soon. It’s in equal parts scary, exciting and liberating. And also surprising. As kids and young adults we have dreams, hopes and some preconceived notions about where life will take us. It is refreshing to know that it’s also able to surprise us. In a good way. Anyhow, more soon. And I mean, real soon.

On another positive note, I am once again able to write. Sounds ridiculous when placed on a writer’s blog, I know. But the truth is, I have been struggling with putting words together for nearly two years. There’s still days when it seems too exhausting but I’m doing my best to keep them few and far between. What this means in practice is, that the work on my story collection has resumed. Few stories still require finishing and there’s plenty of editing to do, but the end is in sight.

Which in some twisted way brings me to my recent attendance to BristolCon, our last best hope for science fiction (to brutally butcher the byline of Babylon 5). Now, I have been going to BristolCon for a decade and always found it to be extremely friendly. But there have been occasions where, stuck in the cloud of my own self-depreciation, I’ve spent entire hours avoiding people. And let me add, it was despite the wonderful atmosphere and active efforts of some of the con-goers. That trend became so prevalent that this year, especially in view of reduced number of attendees and covid restrictions, I considered not going. I did in the