About Me
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.
I am in this MFA Creative Writing program at Hollins University and will graduate in 2028.
I am a 2026 BIPOC artist in residence with Mascher Space and a 2026 Collective Future's Fellow with Davinci Arts Alliance. 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.”
The work is dismantling; there is nothing to hold onto and nowhere to hide. It’s a mirror, an exposure, an unmasking. W(HITE)OMEN belongs to a lineage of queer parody, from Vaginal Davis’s “terrorist drag” to Kalup Linzy’s soap-opera alter egos, while sharing the unsettling discomfort of Bruce Nauman’s Clown Torture (1987).
Space On Space Magazine
Six Standout Exhibitions in Philadelphia This October and November
Upcoming
W(hite)omen Oct 8 — Nov 15
Da Vinci Art Alliance
at Icebox Mall
1400 N American St, Philadelphia, PA 19122
What does it mean to be a good person in America under this regime? Through play, provocation, and an alarming number of wigs, Alyse James and Sacha Vega offer cultural criticism with humor, heart, and an ongoing question: Can a person, or people, actually apologize their way into becoming good? Can you put a price on repair?
Working across absurdist clowning, video, writing, and installation, the artists created a Marvel-esque cast of W(hite)omen Characters, who have joined forces to save the country, no, the world via workout videos promising eternal youth, an apology subscription service promising a cure to racism, and a series of other
well-intentioned, but failed attempts at atonement for their wrong-doings.
This project chronicles the grotesque and delightful machinery of morality culture: the performance of betterment, the anxiety of being ethical enough, and the contortions we make when righteousness lacks a singular, easy shape.