SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
2024 review for performance in PRICE’s “A Repressed Repertoire (Sequences)” at New Theater Hollywood
“The most extraordinary sequence … occurs late in the play. This was Sophia Cleary’s queer solo dance with the bowl of powder, again borne up by her hands like some emblem of ecstatic release. Though there were seemingly familiar signifiers of sex in Cleary’s movements, it felt like the staking out of a new, or newly commanded, sexuality. It was at once erotically overwhelming and ambiguous. She moved through the tiny aisles of the theater, stopping to execute some truly stellar moves, twisting and flicking her pelvis, sawing the air with rhythmic precision, a tribe of one paying homage to being the body in performance as it takes on inscriptions moment to moment, challenging audience readings through the stilling and stirring actualities of unself-conscious erotic motion.
The other side of Cleary’s performance, her clownish, absurdist choreography, deserves mention. She takes the crown for the most drawn-out and elaborately inept risings from off the floor (she falls a number of times for no discernible reason), including her last when she battles with a chair before getting it (and herself) upright and back to the table.”
—SPENCER PORTER FOR STAGEANDCINEMA.COM
Audience Reviews for IT GETS WORSE at the Edinburgh Fringe
2021 Review for One & Only at The Kitchen
“The best lines of the show are the inside jokes formed between me and Sophia—punchlines that can never be fully recreated. These intangible sparks of connection reveal how One & Only is designed to guide the audience member through their own journey of emotional self-discovery. Sophia has transitioned from birth doula to comedy doula. The one-on-one format of the piece is convenient for COVID safety protocols, but Sophia never jokes about the pandemic. In fact, the distinct absence of COVID comedy contributes to the atmosphere of care. One & Only is a reprieve from the outside world. You get to build a relationship without the emotional consequences of everyday life and perform for an audience without fear of public failure. The secret things you do alone—dancing in the mirror, imagining a stand-up set about your life, rehashing your personal insecurities—Sophia invites you to perform them all for her.”
-NOA WEISS FOR CULTUREBOT
