ARTIST STATEMENT

I define myself primarily as a writer and performer. I create original performance based work with my company ​Lisa Clair Group​. I write pieces that are wild, surreal, funny and deeply personal. These works tend to be impossible in tone and aspirational in scale. 

I take the act of play very seriously.  I strive to make work that connects with diverse and divergent audiences in a very core, human emotional place- the gut. I believe that art is for everyone, everyone who wants it. My communities and the act of expanding them is very important to me. I am drawn to performance because of its collaborative nature, the fact that it allows a person to feel a part of something bigger than just themselves. 

Creating art, for me, is a process of healing. This is something I think about a lot- ‘how to heal’ while writing, making, rehearsing and collaborating with others.

I use art as a means of understanding the world - so far the world has presented itself to me as chaotic, beautiful, scary, deeply silly and strange and so these are the kinds of worlds I end up creating.

BIO/CREDITS

Lisa Clair is a New York based playwright and performer. She makes work under the name Lisa Clair Group, a collective of performers, musicians, and designers who collaborate across disciplines to create live, experimental performance.

Lisa is a New Georges affiliated artist and a lead member of Immediate Medium // AGENCY. Her work has been presented at The Collapsable Hole, Target Margin Theater, SPRING/BREAK art show, The SFX Festival @ The Wild Project, The Bushwick Starr Reading Series, Ars Nova, Dixon Place, The Silent Barn and The Performance Project at University Settlement.

As a performer Lisa has been known to collaborate with NY based theater artists David Commander, Normandy Sherwood, Banana Bag and Bodice, Nellie Tinder, Dan Fishback, Little Lord and Immediate Medium. Her salad years as a theater maker were spent in Minneapolis MN where she apprenticed with The Theater de La Jeune Lune and went on to perform with them for several seasons, as well as with these other esteemed Minneapolis based theater companies: Ten Thousand Things, Park Square and Mixed Blood Theater.

Lisa has a BA from Bard College, a certificate of completion in Clown from The Burlesk Center in Locarno Switzerland under Pierre Byland. She completed her MFA in playwriting at Brooklyn College under Mac Wellman and Erin Courtney.

Lisa is a voice over artist, having voiced numerous animated and commercial characters. She currently plays the role of ‘Cub’ on YU Gi OH Sevens.

She is an experienced educator and currently teaches experimental playwriting and acting at Sarah Lawrence College. She also has been known to dabble in curation- serving as The Associate Curator of The Performance Project at University Settlement (2014-2016) and curator of Gray Spaces @ The SFX Festival with Contemporary Performance Network @ The Wild Project, NYC.

You can make contact with Lisa by emailing her at Lisaclairgroup@gmail.com