My projects and writing have received coverage in publications such as The New York Times, The Guardian, Forbes, Rolling Stone, and Slate, among many others. They have also been featured on both television and radio programs. See selected highlights below.
Film
Press for All We’ve Got
“Right now, a lot of people seem to be asking why so many queer women’s spaces have closed. Filmmaker Alexis Clements, however, decided to ask a new question: Why have the remaining spaces been able to survive?“
– Molly Sprayregen in Forbes
“All We’ve Got is an inspiring and affectionate documentary about the continuing need for social spaces for lesbians, bisexual women, and transgender folks… Director Alexis Clements hooks viewers right from her pre-title sequence, emphasizing the shared experience and visibility afforded by queer women’s spaces.”
– Gary M. Kramer in Gay City News
“The joy of this film is in the richness of the archival footage, in seeing an often fraught and hidden ‘herstory’ brought to life. The joy is also in representation, how it highlights voices and cultures and visions for the world that are not often celebrated or even shown in mainstream media.”
– Annie Berman in Mission Local
For a complete listing of press coverage of All We’ve Got, please visit the project website.
Theater
“As a playwright, Alexis Clements walks a jagged line between theatre, performance art and installation art.”
– Dyana Kimball on Conversation in the anthology Out of Time & Place
Read an interview with me in New York Theater Review
Read an interview with me written by the playwright Adam Szymkowicz
Press for Unknown
“Unknown…compresses several important themes and compelling characters into a forceful whole that informs, inspires, and, for every answer it offers, proposes a new question.”
– Arthur Dorman in Talkin’ Broadway
Press for Conversation
Chosen as “Fest Bet” by the Philadelphia City Paper!
A staff pick at the Philadelphia Weekly!
A “Fringe Pick” in the Philadelphia METRO!
“Clements’s absorbing meditation on verbal communication in all its forms was endearingly presented as a class on the “perfect conversation.” …Under Director Rosalie Purvis, Clements skillfully shepherded her performance from monologue to revealing audience participation, drawing out ticket holders on sledding in Boston, dissecting frogs, and biking to work. Her disarming and intriguing questions on spur-of-the-moment participants’ favorite things and the things they most regret gave the show an intimate, free-flowing feel which also encompassed the dark side of words as “small acts of violence”. Clements dexterously handled the repercussions of her probing among the audience, bringing her own vulnerabilities. Her reflections on the flaws of conversation as a medium of reparations are particularly poignant. She examines the calibrated give-and-take of verbal reconciliations – and their failure when emotional intentions inevitably diverge.Conversation, despite its bare-bones feel and the challenge of lighting a cluttered basement room, proved the most absorbing experience I’ve had so far at this year’s Fringe.”
– Alaina Mabaso, Philadelphia Edge
“Funny, inventive and a little bit interactive, the lessons in Conversation ring true as as often as they ring nutso. A show worth talking about.”
– Patrick Rapa, Philadelphia City Paper
“New York-based writer/performer/pamphleteer Alexis Clements has spent the last few years having a conversation with herself about the ways we all have conversations with each other. Driven by her nagging curiosity about one of life’s little fundamental paradoxes—why something as seemingly straightforward as everyday social interaction results in so much complexity, anxiety and confusion—Clements has created a one-woman ‘mash-up between a lecture, an old-school, character-based, performance-art piece and a literal conversation.’”
– K. Ross Hoffman for the “Fest Bets” in the Philadelphia City Paper
“And after one workshop performance, the conceit made its way into a real conversation. ‘This one pair of friends were so into some of the ideas in the show,’ says Alexis, ‘they went to a bar afterwards and tried to chart the conversation they were having on a bar napkin. The next day the woman who did that scanned the bar napkin and sent it to me. That’s what every artist hopes for, is that the work isn’t some thing you look at and just walk away from.’”
– Nick Gilewicz, on the Live Arts & Philly Fringe blog. Read the full story here.
Press for The Elephant in the Room
“The Elephant in the Room deeply affected me with its examination of worth and self-worth. The insidiously insightful script by Alexis Clements was brought to life with exuberance, fear and promise by a fully committed Suki Peters and a brutal self-evaluation that burned with a fire to excel on her own terms by [Wendy] Greenwood. Directed by [Linda] Kennedy with subtle grace, this show sneaks up on you, and the pun of the title has a significance that builds as each character wrestles with upcoming events of personal significance. Peters is funny in the way that a Shakespearian fool is—unabashedly honest and with an intelligent, and possibly reckless, abandon. Greenwood offers an introspective contrast; the intense anger in her builds slowly but is critical to her character. She doesn’t explode, she digs deeper and finds a steely center of resolve.”
– Tina Farmer, KDHX (St. Louis, MO)
Press for The Interview
“Cleverly constructed and exceedingly well performed, this smashing little play by Alexis Clements teases out a near-future world where everything is controlled by an unseen, all-beneficent company… The balance of power shifts and moves subtly between the two under Sarah Norman’s precise and perceptive direction.”
– Thom Dibdin, The Stage
(read the full review online here or view a PDF here)
“Skilfully executed, with humour and self-depreciation…finely played by Katharine Peachey and Tom Foster.”
– Ed Witcomb, SkinnyFEST
“Oh, this show is so Fringe. Two people, a man and a woman (called Man and Woman) in a white space. An interview is happening but who is interviewing whom? And what sort of a Kafkaesque world is this?…Sarah Norman’s tight direction kept it lively and…the performances make it worth an hour of anyone’s time.”
– Victor Hallett, OnStageScotland.com
Fiction
Press for Ideas Above Our Station
“The contributors’ brief for this anthology of short fiction – the latest in a lively series – was to write stories to appeal to travellers. That was unlikely to promote thematic coherence, although it has encouraged several writers to feature journeys in their pieces….The heroine of Alexis Clements’s sweetly droll “Aubrey” spends her free time phoning old acquaintances, and achieves a triumph when the museum where she is a ticket seller agrees to devote a display to the aubergine…The standard is high throughout. Ideas Above Our Station would be a diverting travelling companion.”
– Nicholas Clee, reviewing Ideas Above Our Station for The Guardian, Saturday December 16, 2006
Multi-Disciplinary Projects
Press for New Acquisition
New Acquisition‘s first project, Your Own Personal Apocalypse, took part in the One Million Forgotten Moments project, from 12-16 September 2007, organized and directed by Yehuda Duenyas, commissioned by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council:
“On Wednesday, opening night, the performance had the extemporaneous feel of a happening. Actors in costumes — a 1920s-style bathing suit here, a bearded man wearing a single in-line skate there — wandered in and out…There is no narrative structure. Some scenes last a few seconds, others a few minutes. Famous New York City characters — Jacqueline Onassis, Spider-Man, “On the Town” sailors, the couple from the Times Square V-Day kiss photograph — make appearances. The acrobatic dancers make especially good use of the space, clambering on the scaffolding in front of the building…Perhaps the most visually arresting moments came when there were performers on the sidewalk in front of the space, on the median in the middle of the street and in front of City Hall Park across the street. As they wove their way to the theater, dancing and singing through traffic and pedestrians, it did look like a kind of poetry.”
– Melena Ryzik, The New York Times, September 15, 2007 (read the article here)
New Acquisition‘s first project, Your Own Personal Apocalypse, launched with an installation and performance that ran at chashama’s 217 East 42nd Street space in New York:
“File this under the Only In New York category: the first issue of New Acquisition, a literary pamphlet (that’s also online). This issue is all about apocalyptical goings-on, and has got a deadpan essay by Alexis Clements called “Your Own Personal Apocalypse” and a funny, tongue-in-cheek poem by Beth Royer called “Sure Signs of the Apocalypse.” If you are in NYC, check out the New Acquisition performances that seem to combine readings, videos, artwork and chicken farming. Yes, that’s right. Chicken farming.”
– Minus Spine, September 7, 2007 (read the article here)