Clown Down 2: Clown Out of Water finds Portland’s premiere drag clown, Carla Rossi, trapped on a rock in the middle of the ocean while the sea level rises from melting ice caps. Alone with a seagull afflicted with IBS, Carla encounters the world’s last surviving polar bear, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a death metal moon, and Liberace and Liza Minnelli (David Saffert and Jillian Snow Harris) in this multimedia drag farce that utilizes puppetry by Matthew Leavitt, interactive video, Rez Metal by Damage OverDose, and kinetic sculpture by David Eckard—all as Carla navigates climate disaster and the terror and joy of living on an increasingly distressed planet.

BIO

ANTHONY HUDSON (Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde) is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, performer, and filmmaker perhaps best known as Portland’s premier drag clown Carla Rossi, an immortal trickster whose attempts at realness almost always result in fantastic failure. Together they have been featured at the Portland and Seattle Art Museums, the Vancouver Queer Film Festival, the 2019 Portland Biennial, the Risk/Reward Festival, PICA’s TBA Festival, Talking Stick (Vancouver, BC), Melbourne’s YIRRAMBOI Festival, and more, in addition to regularly hosting and programming Queer Horror—the only LGBTQ+ horror film screening series in the United States—at the historic Hollywood Theatre. Anthony was named a 2018 National Artist Fellow by the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, a 2018 Western Arts Alliance Native Launchpad Artist, a 2019 Oregon Arts Commission Fellow, a 2021 First Peoples Fund Fellow, and a 2021 Nia Tero Pacific Northwest Art Fellow, and has received project support from the National Endowment for the Arts, National Performance Network, USArtists International, the Oregon Community Foundation, the Regional Arts & Culture Council, the Portland Art Museum and NW Film Center, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland Community College, Ucross Foundation, Caldera Arts Center, and more. Anthony is currently adapting their internationally touring solo show Looking for Tiger Lily into a book, and they also co-host the weekly queer feminist horror podcast Gaylords of Darkness with writer Stacie Ponder. Find out more at TheCarlaRossi.com.

SPONSORS

Clown Down 2: Clown Out of Water is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund project co-commissioned by PICA in partnership with the Western Arts Alliance’s Advancing Indigenous Performance Program (AIP), Bunnell Street Arts Center, and the Bodecker Foundation. Developed as part of the Indigenous Residency Series (IRS) managed and supported by the Western Arts Alliance’s Advancing Indigenous Performance (AIP) program, led by Ed Bourgeois, with support from the National Performance Network (NPN), James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation and Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC). Additional project support by Maui Arts & Cultural Center, Risk/Reward, and Portland Community College’s Carolyn Moore Writers House Residency.