Plays & Performances, Writing

Spitting Against the Wind

Why

Benjamin Franklin is a figure that most Americans and many non-Americans feel they know well. But the man we think we know as Ben Franklin is almost entirely a mythic figure—an incredibly persistent and omnipresent myth. Why do we want to believe that myth? What’s attractive about it to us as a culture, and what purpose does it serve? And what would it mean for Franklin to be portrayed as a human being instead of an idol?

What

Characters: 1 actor
Running Time: 75 minutes
Summary: This work combines storytelling, movement, and a dialogue with the audience. Spitting Against the Wind revolves around a creative re-interpretation of Benjamin Franklin. In this story I’ve brought Franklin back from the dead and cast him out on a journey that will test his limits as both a human and a myth. The piece delves into epic storytelling, American identity, sexuality, and the limits of our beliefs.

When & Where

Availability: In development.
Production History:
• Excerpt presented at Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Brooklyn, NY, February 2010
• Workshop presentation offered at Dixon Place, New York, NY, March 2009

More about the show

In an age obsessed with self-help, self-medication, and the search for one’s true self, the father of self improvement returns to offer a revision of some of his most famous pronouncements. It turns out that Benjamin Franklin is still alive and well in the 21st century. Not long after his death a good friend brought him back from beyond the grave and he’s been journeying across Asia ever since, undertaking a personal and spiritual journey that has him questioning not only his early life, but also the purpose of life in general. Spitting Against the Wind is a multidisciplinary piece, incorporating dance and storytelling into a performance that asks us to reconsider some of our most deeply held beliefs.

Collaborators for the 2009 Dixon Place workshop included:

• Dancer and choreographer extraordinaire, Sarah Van Buren, of the famous Cheryls.

• Composer Brian Patchett.


This video has nothing to do with the show, but I like it.

By Alexis

Alexis Clements is a writer and filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. Her creative work has been published, produced, and screened in venues across the US, Europe, and South America. Her feature-length documentary film, All We’ve Got, premiered in the fall of 2019 in New York City and has since screened around the US and internationally. Her play Unknown also premiered in October 2019 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Other plays of hers have been produced, published, and anthologized across the US and the UK over the past two decades. Her prose writing has appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Guardian, Bitch Magazine, American Theatre, The Brooklyn Rail, and Nature, among others, and she is a regular contributor to Hyperallergic. In addition to her writing and filmmaking, she is currently serving on the Executive Board of CLAGS, the Center for LGBTQ Studies at the City University of New York (CUNY), as a Coordinator at the Lesbian Herstory Archives, and a co-founder of Little Rainbows, a queer story time for children and their caretakers.

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