About Me
My work spans the stage, the boardroom, and the neighborhood blockparty. With an MFA in Devised Performance and a BA in Sociology, I help individuals and organizations navigate the complexities of authentic human connection. I specialize in fostering underrepresented voices through arts education, inclusive producing, and the belief that play is the ultimate tool for social transformation.
I am a classically trained clown who creates out of an insistent sense of curiosity and existential pondering, inspired by a deep desire to merge otherworldly cosmic clown etherealities with our everyday human failures. My collaborative theater making and community engagement informs their socially conscious art practice. My work spans devised theater, original songs, plays, poetry, and improvisational comedy, often incorporating elements of the surreal and absurd. Through vivid imagery, discomfort, and vulnerability, I invite audiences into layered worlds that challenge, provoke, and ask rather than answer.
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I am a 2026 BIPOC artist in residence with Mascher Space. As a performer, I have worked with Pig Iron Theater Company, Theater Unspeakable, Studio 34, Ice Box Project Space, The Drake Theater, and Fringe Arts. As a community engagement manager, I have partnered with Philadelphia Community Bail Fund, Thomas Holme Elementary School, Concilio, Asian Americans United, and various other community organizations.
“Alyse James’s clown, Chris Fartley—again, a series of words I never thought I’d type—offered a bizarre multimedia sensory overload I’m still not sure was even comedy. It felt like Hugo Ball’s Dadaist poetry reborn via TikTok and spat out via clown.”
Upcoming
Foolish and Fallible:
A Bratty Clown’s Guide to Wellness
This project is a collaboration with artist Sacha Vega and explores the performance of authenticity. How it’s weaponized under late capitalism and rising authoritarianism. Through the lens of clown and performance art, we investigate the contradictions of healing in a culture obsessed with heavily-curated identities.
Wellness, like authenticity, has become its own aesthetic. The soft-spoken yogi. The “effortlessly hot” influencer with the Glossier brand deal. These personas exclude the inherently political reality of societal healing that would require the dismantling of our current government.