“I seek the slippery edges of disciplines—where one becomes another—as a mode of questioning the categories we use to organize our experience.”
Alexandra Tatarsky, 2020 Pew Fellow. Photo by Ryan Collerd.
Pew Fellow Alexandra Tatarsky, VagueUS, performed at Gibney Dance, New York, NY.
Alexandra Tatarsky, 2020 Pew Fellow. Photo by Ryan Collerd.
Alexandra Tatarsky, 2020 Pew Fellow. Photo by Ryan Collerd.
Pew Fellow Alexandra Tatarsky, [SIGN FELT], Sad Boys in Harpy Land, performed at FringeArts. Photo by Jauhien Sasnou/Picturebox Creative.
Pew Fellow Alexandra Tatarsky, Fear of the Discorded State: On Clowns, performed at the Bok Building. Photo by John C. Hawthorne.
Alexandra Tatarsky blends performance art, comedy, physical theater, and clown practices to probe the construction of meaning, self, and community. Playing with perceptions of language and narrative structure, their live performances are highly responsive to venue and audience, often breaking the fourth wall and embracing humor to reveal vulnerability and humanity. “Performance is a realm that allows us to think up worlds beyond walls and boxes,” Tatarsky says. They describe the clown as an “ideal model for our times” while also drawing on traditions like vaudeville, postmodern dance, comedy, and Russian futurism. Tatarsky has performed original, evening-length solo works at New York’s La MaMa and the Exponential Festival, the UK’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and in Philadelphia’s Fringe Festival, among others. They have an MA in performance studies from New York University and a BA in Russian literature from Reed College, and they studied devised performance at the Pig Iron School for Advanced Performance Training.
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![Pew Fellow Alexandra Tatarsky, [SIGN FELT], Sad Boys in Harpy Land, performed at FringeArts. Photo by Jauhien Sasnou/Picturebox Creative. ](https://www.pewcenterarts.org/sites/default/files/styles/lg_1280x1024_webp/public/person_images/alexandra-tatarsky-2020-02-web.jpg.webp?itok=EIOa_1_6)
