Check out a new piece by Sakinah Al-Amin who picks me with other awesome Muslim women to watch out for on Youtube. Many thanks for helping promote my works! You can read the article and check out my videos and everyone else's, too.
Someone wrote a cool blog post about her three inspirations for Diwali, and she chose me as one of the three, amongst Malala Yousafzai and her cousin who has Down's Syndrome! I am honored :)
Check it out. Happy Diwali to all my fellow Indians! May your lives be filled with light and love! Hola, friends. I have been in Veracruz, Mexico for the past month and we wanted to do a short film project for fun. Mexico is rich with many cultures, languages, and histories, with 60 Indigenous languages, which have been threatened by Spanish. Mexico have had an ugly history of colonialism, but that hasn’t stopped many Indigenous groups from still thriving and practicing their cultures and speaking their languages today.
My beloved friend, Alberto, is 100% Indigenous, with Nahua and Totonaco heritage. We were interested in meeting Totonaco people, an Indigenous group from Veracruz and Puebla. They speak Totonaco, which is a complicated language, and apparently much harder than Nahuatl to learn. We met an old Totonaco elder from Papantla who agreed to work with us! He recited a beautiful poem in Totonaco. Alberto is helping me edit the audio for this video. I have been busy writing. I wrote some new poems and short stories. I will work on a new feature script. I also have a performance coming up on September. Also, thanks to everyone who have watched my latest new short film from India, “Deaf Brown Gurl.” The comments I got on the video were amazing. You can check out my creative writings on here: http://sabinaengland.blogspot.com and you can watch my short films, http://www.youtube.com/velmasabina Thank you for reading! I hope you have a good summer. Blessss! Popular stand-up comedian Aparna Nancherla was asked by The Aerogram to list off her favorite quick picks to share with readers, and she happens to choose one of my short films! She recommended The Prayer of Sorrow for poetry / film.
I am truly flattered and honored that she chose my works to share with her audience! See the Quick Picks list. Thanks, Aparna! Since "The American Dream is Dead" shut down a few months ago, I have decided to replace it with a new blogspot. So, I am pleased to announce my new blogspot which has gone public. Please update your bookmark and check out Creative Writings by Sabina England.
Thanks, everyone! I am happy to announce that one of my plays, How the Rapist was Born, is currently in rehearsal-mode and the play will be produced in Trinidad and Tobago and is being directed by Brendon O. Brien, a theatre artist & poet.
If you live in Trinidad and Tobago, then come see my play performed by an all T&T cast later this spring! More details to come soon. On Sunday I performed at a private event (you guys know who you are, wink wink) , we performed on the rooftop of a beautiful tall building in midtown St. Louis. You can see the Arch in the far background. I showed a preview of my work-in-progress, ALLAH EARTH. I used Islamic prayers (both the Adhaan, and Surah Al-Nahl, from the Holy Quran), modern Indian music with a classical twist, sounds of a running stream, and American Sign Language, and MIME to perform Allah Earth.
Allah Earth will premiere in LONDON, UK in the Spring of 2014. I am Deaf, so it's very hard for me to hear sounds / music but I understand that music is VERY important, and plays a vital role in PERFORMANCE. So I practiced, and learned to COUNT the beats to music while performing. So eventually I was able to recognize the Adhaan, sounds of WATER, the music, the Islamic prayers. Unfortunately the wind was VERY strong outside, so my hearing aid stopped working. I tried my BEST and I WINGED my performance without syncing to the C.D... lol even though my performance was messed up, I still gave my BEST and I had the most awesome time performing on the roof... Thank you all for watching!!!!! Blesssss P.S Jenheloise, I look forward to working with you in London for Allah Earth !!! Thanx to EM, JOE, TARA, and everyone else. Here is a small screenshot of my ASL poetry rap video "Deaf Brown Gurl" I am editing. I am just putting down scenes for now, so I haven’t done colorization or audio correction yet. I want to put in scenes from the gurdwara (Sikh temple), mandir (Hindu temple), the dargah (Sufi Muslim tomb), the Buddhist temple, the train station, the Ganges river, scenes from a deaf girls school, and then I want to put in scenes of the St. Louis City skyline, the arch, downtown graffiti murals, and snippets of my own stage performances. I shot the film footage in India on Feb-March and the city footage 2 months ago but barely did any work since I had to do freelance projects for other clients. i hope to have my video finished by Christmas, insha’allah.
My book, Urdustan: A Collection of Short Stories, is now out. Click for more information to read more about the book, and purchase a copy.
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