The Frances Transmedia Project

Creator and Performer

Ongoing multimedia solo performance developed across multiple formats: interactive live installation, short film series, and the forthcoming play, The Frances Show. Video design: J Cookson and Don Pavlish. Development allies: Ivana Bevacqua, Denis Griesmer, Craig Joseph, Adam Seeholzer, Darius Stubbs, Jordan Davis, Jeff Syroney and Ellie Heyman.

Films presented in BorderLight Fringe; Rochester Fringe; Minnesota Fringe. Live interactive performances presented at IngenuityFest and Micro Theater Cleveland.

Supported by IngenuityLabs Incubator Program and Filmmaking Lab Studios.

F*** Me Love Me Aphrodite

Co-Creator and Performer

Genre-blending comedy about modern rituals and messy love. Created with Darius Stubbs and Adam Seeholzer. CPT’s Big Box Series for new works, Cleveland Public Theatre.

Love’s Lost Raree Box

Creator and Performer

Intimate interactive street performance, storefront installation, and short film inspired by centuries-old traveling raree “peep box” showmen. Design: Irene Mack-Shafer, Ian Petroni, Ben Gantose, Inda Blatch-Geib, Chris Szajbert. Short film directed by Jumar Newell.

Toured to Jackson Square, New Orleans, LA; FireFish Festival, Lorain, OH; BorderLight Fringe; Parade the Circle; The City is Our Stage; Third Friday Art Walk at 78th Street Studios.

Supported by Gordon Square Arts District Residency Program, SPACES Satellite Fund and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Reckoning

Co-Creator and Performer

Dance theatre duet exploring embodied memory, loss and resilience. Created with choreographer Kora Radella.

Toured to Festival Internacional de Danza Contemporánea, Mexico City, Mexico; Roulette Intermedium, Brooklyn, NY; Somatic Dance Conference, Geneva, NY; Links Hall, Chicago, IL.

Sacred Space

Co-Creator and Performer

Site-specific interactive flying performance investigating bodily autonomy. Created with director Jaime Bouvier and rigger William Ian Auld. Presented at IngenuityFest.

Supported by IngenuityLabs Incubator Program and SPACES Urgent Art Fund.

Fa(r)ther

Co-Creator and Performer

Solo performance and teen writing workshop investigating father loss/abandonment. Created with director Ivana Bevacqua. Presented at Links Hall, Chicago, IL.

Supported by Center for Arts-Inspired Learning, CAL Roster Artist.

The Poetry Psychic Project

Director

Interactive touring performance created by Denis Michael Griesmer. Presented at Jackson Square, New Orleans, LA; Ohio City Street Festival; Micro Theater Cleveland; Ingenuity Bal; PolarFest; CPT’s Pandemonium. Private homes tour: Minneapolis, MN; Baltimore, MD; New Orleans, LA. Ongoing interactive shows in the Poetry Psychic Parlor at 78th Street Studios.

Supported by Gordon Square Arts District Residency Program.

Marie Curie Horror Story

Director

Original play exploring Curie’s triumphs and tragedies. Created by Holly Holsinger. Performed by Holly Holsinger and Claudia Cromley.

Presented at BorderLight Fringe, Cleveland, OH. Toured to Curious Theatre Branch Rhinoceros Theatre Festival, Chicago, IL.

Insomnia: the Waking of Herselves

Co-Creator and Performer

Devised play exploring the reclamation of lost aspects of the self. Created with Holly Holsinger and director Raymond Bobgan.

World Premiere at Cleveland Public Theatre, James Levin Theatre. Toured to NACL Theatre, Highland Lake, NY. Revived at Cleveland Public Theatre, Gordon Square Theatre.

Ancestra

Co-Writer and Performer

Original play weaving the 1853 National Women’s Rights Convention with a contemporary story of silenced female voices. Co-written by Holly Holsinger with Renee Schilling and Sally Groth.

World Premiere at Cleveland Public Theatre, Gordon Square Theatre. Revived through unique productions at Oberlin College, Irene and Alan Wurtzel Theater and Cleveland State University / Playhouse Square, Outcalt Theatre.

Cut to Pieces

Co-Creator and Performer

Multimedia solo performance exploring the aftermath of sexual violence. Integrating live feed video, live acting and video projection. Created with director Raymond Bobgan and video designer Spencer Padilla.

World Premiere, Cleveland Public Theatre, James Levin Theatre. Revived at Cleveland Public Theatre.

Supported by the Ohio Arts Council Arts Innovations Program and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Artist Statement

I make performances that tell difficult truths about what it means to be human. Working at the intersection of experimental theatre, community-based practice, and multimedia storytelling, I create work that examines trauma, mental health, sexuality, identity, and the complex power dynamics that shape our lives — work that is playful, precise, and deeply personal.

I am drawn to characters who have been silenced and must take enormous risks to find their way to autonomy. These figures — vulnerable, clever, often funny — invite audiences into experiences of recognition and release.

My creative process is collaborative to the core: I have spent over two decades making original performances with professional artists and with people who have never performed before. In both contexts, I believe the creative act is every person’s birthright, and that theatre can be a laboratory for the transformation we need but cannot yet name.

I make art because I believe we are all capable of inventing — and reinventing — ourselves. My performances are invitations into that possibility.

SELECTED REVIEWS

Lauren Warneke // Chicago dance critic reviewing Reckoning at Links Hall:

“The two rail against each other in a (beautiful) physical battle, thrusting fists toward one another’s guts, or prodding and pulling at legs and arms as feathers stuffed in Radella’s bosom go flying every which way. But in moments, the women slow the action and tenderly support each other’s weight. It’s hard to know what exactly the metaphor is: Are they swans? Geishas? Lovers? Runaway brides? Maybe all of the above — it’s fascinating.”

Andrea Simakis // The Plain Dealer reviewing Sweat at Cleveland Play House:

“Seibert is one of the most convincing stage drunks I’ve ever seen, and I hope she takes that as the high compliment it is. Her body appears boneless, flopping like a rag doll… Seibert and Ellis are well-known Cleveland-based talents, and it’s a joy to see them shine at one of the city’s premier theaters alongside actors from New York and L.A.”

Andrea Simakis // The Plain Dealer reviewing American Falls at CPT:

“Chris Seibert, a revelation… It isn’t easy to humanize such a woman, but in a single monologue, one that by all rights should become de rigueur in auditions, Seibert does it.”

Tony Brown // The Plain Dealer reviewing Insmonia: The Waking of Hersleves at CPT:

“Insomnia is a true awakening. Hypnotically engrossing… This is a play everybody should see. But even more so, every woman.”

Christine Howey // Cleveland Scene reviewing Cut to Pieces at CPT:

“Cut to Pieces has an innocent arrogance and an energetic spirit of invention that makes it a thoroughly memorable experience… don’t expect any easy plotting trajectory here. This is weird but wonderful theatrical creation, and it is most fascinating when it is least understandable… Seibert is a marvel.”

Tony Brown // The Plain Dealer reviewing Cut to Pieces at CPT:

“It is Seibert — an existentially lone boat tossed on the stormy breast of the great ocean of being — who is laying herself bare here for all to see the ugliness and beauty, the monstrous and the monotonously quotidian, about being alive and engaged in oneself and one’s world… Her candlepower on her return to the CPT stage attains supernova intensity.”