Another month, another last Wednesday... ANOTHER Y-EXCHANGE! We here at Kinetech Arts do love to co-host “Y-Exchange” alongside ODC Theater and The Djerassi Resident Artists Program. Y-Exchange is a series of presentations about performing arts, technology and science and how they intersect and inform each other. Every month, selected artists and scientists are invited to talk about their life and work. Since 2014, we have featured hundreds of artists and scientists from all over the world!
In this slightly-reopening-are-we-afraid-of-the-delta-variant-idk July, we featured Clara Hsu, a poet and playwright, alongside Tom Skalak, a bioengineer and science thriller writer.
Clara Hsu
Clara Hsu is a piano teacher, actor, poet and playwright. She is the director of Clarion Performing Arts Center. In 2019 Clara established Clarion Summer Theater. She produced Love on the Magpie Bridge to celebrate the Chinese Night of Sevens Festival. Her second play, The Piano, a Play-Movie was selected by the 2021 Children’s Film Festival Seattle. Her new play, Neil Armstrong at the Moon Palace will premiere at the end of this summer. Clara won the Jefferson Award for public service in May, 2021. Her latest work, the Gai Mou Sou Rap has gone viral on YouTube.
During the Y-Exchange, she gave us a detailing of her life story.
She had grown up around her family's instrument company – Clarion Music and only discovered writing and poetry at the age of 44. When she had to take care of ailing parents, she was honing her creative outlets.
She dove into poetry head first, and was not intimidated because she had spent a lot of time reading. And as soon as she began to write, it was like a dam opened for her and a lot of pent up artistic expression that had come from not having expressed her voice previously came out.
In 2016, after her father passed away, Clara bought Clarion Music again because she wanted to established a platform for poetry. While the community seemed not to be ready for a poetry performing arts center, Clara ended up playing a character in a play, then falling into playwriting. She then started a children's theatre.
Stay up to date with Clara Hsu through Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter.
Tom Skalak
Tom Skalak joined the Joe and Clara Tsai Foundation in 2018 as Senior Advisor to Clara Wu Tsai. The Foundation makes philanthropic investments in science, economic mobility, and cultural production (art, music, film), with a vision to produce transformative impact on societal well-being and sustainability. Tom is Vice President for Research Emeritus at the University of Virginia and was previously the founding Executive Director of The Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group in Seattle, the Microsoft co-founder’s global science investing group. In these roles, Tom led creative synthesis of research and innovation programs spanning biosciences, environmental sustainability, physical sciences, engineering and technology, arts, design, and humanities. Tom was educated as a bioengineer at The Johns Hopkins University (B.E.S. 1979) and the University of California, San Diego (Ph.D. 1984), was a Resident Artist at the Djerassi Resident.
He spoke to us about his inspirations for his current sci-fi thriller novel, which he was working on as a Resident Artist at the Djerassi Resident.
Tom had grown up in New Jersey and made his way over to California.
Getting to interview Andy Weir, author of the Martian, was extremely interesting for Tom. Andy was very adamant about his novel being problem driven instead of driven by character growth. The main character of The Martian doesn't change at all during it, and Tom sought to do something similar in his novel – a problem driven novel.
If you're curious to explore more art or even to stay up to date with more future Y-Exchanges, feel free to join our meetup group here and pop on by between 7-8:15 PM Pacific time on any Wednesday!
Y-Exchange is Co-Presented by Kinetech Arts, ODC Theater and The Djerassi Resident Artists Program.