I am an interdisciplinary artist focused on performance and liveness. I make my work through the lens of the fool, or trickster, and I use play as a method and critical position to engage my viewer in a system where power dynamics necessarily shift. Drawing upon my life experience as a birth doula, waiter, standup comedian, and analyst for a private investigator, I explore the nature of relationships, vulnerability and authenticity. In my live performance work, I focus on the space between performer and audience as an aperture that restricts or expands—I use humor as a lubricant to mirror, respond to, or disrupt the status quo. In my current work, I tease out the theatricality embedded in disciplinary systems that control and condition the body. From readymades to monologues, my work addresses the stakes of live performance and lays bare its attending contracts and procedures.
I have presented my work internationally in Scotland at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, in New York City at the Center for Performance Research, Danspace Project, The Chocolate Factory, Dixon Place, The Kitchen, and e-flux, and in Los Angeles at the Hammer Museum, MoCA, REDCAT, and Human Resources Gallery. I am the founder and coordinator of works-in-progress performance series REHEARSAL, where I have advised over 75 performing artists about their work.
I regularly collaborate and perform with Cruel Babes, an ensemble directed by John Gilkey, founder of The Idiot Workshop. Over the past several years I have also had the chance to perform with Neal Medlyn, Bob Kil and Nina Beier, Vanessa Anspaugh and Amber Bemak, Alexandra Bachzetsis, and Ann Liv Young. I am also one-half of feminist punk band Penis, a collaboration with Samara Davis.
contact me: so.cleary@gmail.com