How do we create a world where we allow people to express themselves, and if they need to be called in or if they’re doing something that really is egregious? How do we help teach them [students] why it’s problematic rather than me having to shut them down?
As a philosopher of the heart, making art, I create immersive playful experiences to inspire audiences to connect to their inner child glee. As a speech coach, I specialize in maximizing my client’s executive presence whilst reducing inner anxiety using the wisdom of complementarity.
Clara Francesca is an award-winning artist, activist, educator and speech coach and holds a BA in Laws & Biomedical Sciences from Monash University. She specialized in mediation, courageous conversation integration and has over 15 years of professional practice coaching and facilitating co-existing with differences in shared space. Her acting spans from avant-garde live immersive poetry recitations and classical theatre to commercial voice overs and co-starring on network TV. Clara has meditatively sung at the NYC Hayden Planetarium, is a member of NYC’s SITI Company’s Inaugural Conservatory Alumni, co-founder of XREnsemble and performs game-theory with TidalFire at the California Academy of Sciences Dome Shows
My name (she/they) is Clara Francesca (sometimes Pagone)… Latin for Famous Free Peacock. My father chose Clara after training with Freudian psychoanalyst Clara Lazar Geroe, my mother chose Francesca for its lyricism and a touch of the Renaissance and our surname formerly Pavone (the more standard Italian for peacock, until somewhere along the line the v went to a g). Since I migrated to North America there have been too many variants on how folk tell me how I should pronounce my own surname “Pagone” for my proud-inner-Sicilian-from-Catania-to-cope… Hence, Clara Francesca.
My origin began when I wanted to “come out” of my mum in the middle of the (originally hippie/fire-twirling/marijuana smoking) St Kilda Festival of Melbourne, Australia (a potential origin story for my chaotically-generous, usually happy, disposition), I began to work professionally as an actor in Australia whilst obtaining a double Bachelor’s Degree in Laws and Biomedical Sciences from Monash University. I spent some time working in Medical Negligence and a variety of empowerment programs for civil liberties organizations. However, as I continued to Perform, the Law Degree provided extremely beneficial to my understanding of artists’ rights and the Biomedical Degree allowed me to train in a wide range of neuroscience-based modalities, something that I especially cherish as an actor. Fusing my Acting with my Legal and Biomedical training enables me to enrich my performance work and support others by providing comprehensive Speech Coaching to those leveling up their communication prowess.
My mission became obvious to me in my mid-20s. I am the Philosopher of the Heart making Art. An award-winning artist, director, & speech coach, my passion is to unlock the individual’s authentic voice with a genuine curiosity for investigating what it truly means to co-exist in such a diverse world. My practice has always been driven by a sense of responsibility to sustainability and a deep dedication to conscionable conduct through equitable work practices, and creating art.
“You Are BUTIFL” combines performance art with a state-of-the-art multimedia installation “directed” by OpenAI ChatGPT, representing our (biased, and heavily Western-Colonizer-influenced) collective consciousness. It invites the audience on a journey to explore questions about beauty and ugliness from an interactive and playful point of view.
Risk-taking & exploratory, “You Are BUTIFL” is imagined as a dystopian interactive game investigating the following:
(1) What metrics determine beauty?
(2) How does data collection output beauty standards onto the general public collective consciousness
(3a) As evolutionary psychology research states that beauty is not subjective, rather that beauty is a scientific phenomenon consistent in optical creatures favoring symmetrical adaptation (3b) how can we anarchize this Western beauty bias infiltration?
In the interim, Clara Francesca is acting in TWO shows this fall in Nyack, NY:
- SCANDELTON
- WIND IN THE WILLOWS
Here are the show details. https://liveartsinnyack.com/performance-calendar
Social Media:
@Clar_Esca
@Shes_Excited
@XREnsemble