VILE Clown Show Returns to Philadelphia This Fringe

Local performance artist and contemporary clown Francesca Montanile Lyons is bringing her solo show VILE back home to Philadelphia after a successful national tour last summer, when it won a Staff Choice Award in the MN Fringe Festival. It will run September 13th, September 15th, September 19th, and September 25th in the theater at the Asian Arts Initiative (1219 Vine Street, Philadelphia, PA.) The piece, which blends clown and bouffon to bring humor to an exploration of muddling through depression, surviving rape culture, and drowning in modernity, is part of the Cannonball Festival in the Philadelphia Fringe. Opening night for press is Saturday, September 13, at 9pm.

Part of a growing and vibrant clown scene in Philadelphia, Francesca's work is rooted in techniques learned during her training at the Pig Iron School for Devised Performance and influenced by the time she has spent in the Philly drag, burlesque, and nightlife performance scenes. Her work overall seeks to disempower shame and taboo through playful honesty and voyeuristic delight, and VILE is a show that exemplifies these values and goals. The piece is personal, but also full of theatricality, physicality, and joy. It's experimental, it blends genres, and it dares to talk about things most would often rather hide: depression and PMDD, assault, isolation, and sexuality - but it also dares to champion hope. 

“Each time I perform VILE,” Montanile Lyons explains, “I have a conversation with at least one audience member that reminds me why I persist in making art, even when it feels hard, when it's not profitable or logical, when it's overwhelming. Performance-making nudges me toward connection, toward presence, toward honesty. And having someone express, ‘I witnessed something here that helped me witness myself. I loved something here that helped me love myself,' that is everything.”

As one audience member shared, “VILE is at times vile…in a brilliant way. But it is all the opposite things too, it is caring and thoughtful and creative and funny! It makes me feel that feeling like theater is my church. A place where I feel seen. Highly recommended.” In the press, VILE has been hailed as “a fantastic piece of performance art and a real gem of the fringe,” (Twin Cities Geek) and “the sort of fringe theater experiment that has people talking long after.” (Twin Cities Arts Reader). VILE won a Staff Choice Award in the Minneapolis Fringe Festival in 2024. 

Philadelphia Awards - Live Stats

Best Musical - Top 3

1. CATS (Shawnee Playhouse)

17.3% of votes

2. INTO THE WOODS (The Milford Theater)

6.1% of votes

3. NEWSIES (Viviana Theatre)

3.9% of votes

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