Confronting anguish through humor, Sad Boys in Harpy Land is a semi-autobiographical clown show about self-doubt and the artist’s journey. Through a series of existential vignettes, self-proclaimed “experimental clown artist” Alex Tatarsky fuses together fragments of their own story with those of equally tormented protagonists. Drawing on sources including Goethe, Dante, and Seinfeld, Tatarsky explores assumptions around identity to present a splintering coming-of-age tale that challenges the idea of individual malady and embraces the messiness of shared struggle. At once a guttural scream and a bellowing laugh, Tatarsky encapsulates the deranged experience of living in this world and finding art along the path.

Run time: 75 min.
Access Information

English CART captioning is provided for Saturday’s performance.

To request additional accessibility services like audio description, please contact us at Accessibility@mcachicago.org or 312-397-4076.

Created & Performed by Alex Tatarsky
Live Music by Shane Riley
Directed by Iris McCloughan
Scenic, Props, Costume Design by Andreea Mincic
Lighting Design by Masha Tsimring
Developed with Eva Steinmetz
Dramaturgy by Basie Allen, Lisa Fagan
Stage Management by Payton Smith
About the Artists

Alex Tatarsky makes performances in the uncomfortable in-between zone of comedy, dance-theater, performance art, and deluded rant, sometimes with songs. 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. Recent works include DIRT TRIP (MoMA PS1), Untitled Freakout (The Kitchen), Buttplug Gnome (Gibney Dance), and Americana Psychobabble (La Mama, Jacob’s Pillow). They have been a Pew Fellow, a Movement Research artist-in-residence, a curatorial fellow at The Poetry Project, an Independence Fellow, a Jilline Ringle artist-in-residence, and was a featured artist in The Whitney Biennial 2024. Along with artist Ming Lin, Tatarsky is one half of Shanzhai Lyric and its fictional office Canal Street Research Association, with recent presentations at Sculpture Center, Artists Space, Henry Moore Institute, Storefront for Art & Architecture, and Greater NY at MoMA PS1.

Shane Riley (composer & sound designer) is a musician who lives in Philadelphia.

Iris McCloughan (director) is a director, performance maker, and writer in New York. Their performance works have been presented in New York (PAGEANT, BAX, The Poetry Project, Danspace Project, Movement Research at the Judson Church), Philadelphia (The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia Contemporary, FringeArts), and elsewhere. Recent direction includes Sam Bell’s Il bunkerini (Clubbed Thumb’s Winterworks), Alex Tatarsky’s Sad Boys in Harpy Land (Playwrights Horizons), and Joan Jonas & Eiko Otake’s Drawing in Circles WHY? (Castelli Gallery/Danspace Project). McCloughan is a past winner of the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from American Poetry Review. Their writing has appeared in American Poetry Review, Prelude, Tupelo Quarterly, juked, jubilat, Gertrude, Denver Quarterly, and Queen Mob’s Teahouse, among many others. They are the author of three poetry chapbooks, including triptych (greying ghost, 2022). McCloughan has collaborated with many other artists and writers, including Eiko Otake, Joan Jonas, Mike Lala, Alex Tatarsky, Lena Engelstein + Lisa Fagin, Juliana May, and Beth Gill. Their work has been supported with residencies and fellowships from Clubbed Thumb, Soho Rep, The Chocolate Factory Theater, The Mercury Store, JACK, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

Andreea Mincic (set, costume & props design) is a designer whose work operates at the crossroads of performance, visual art, and experimental theater. In close collaboration with artists such as Alex Tatarsky, Mincic is invited to engage both imagination and handcraft—building unruly worlds through sets, costumes, wigs, masks, puppets, and hybrid objects that live somewhere between sculpture and performance. Previous collaborations with Tatarsky include Nothing Doing (Under the Radar 2025), Material (Whitney Museum of American Art), Untitled Freakout (The Kitchen), and Dirt Trip (MoMA PS1).

Masha Tsimring‘s (lighting design) recent projects include—Off Broadway: Practice (Playwrights Horizons), Friday Night Rat Catchers (New York Live Arts), Rheology, A Woman Among Women (Bushwick Starr), Six Characters (LCT3), Coach Coach (Clubbed Thumb), Staff Meal (Playwrights Horizons), Grief Hotel (Clubbed Thumb), and Sad Boys in Harpy Land (Playwrights Horizons/Abrons Art Center); Regional: the aves (Berkeley Rep), The Inspector (Yale Rep), and Primary Trust (La Jolla Playhouse); Dance/Opera: GEMS, Plenum/Anima, Me. You. We. They. (LA Dance Project); Giulio Cesare (Hudson Hall); morning/mourning (Prototype/HERE); Terce (Prototype); Deepe Darknesse (Lisa Fagan/Lena Engelstein/New York Live Arts); and Rodelinda (Hudson Hall/Santa Fe Opera).

Payton Smith (production & stage manager) is an interdisciplinary theater-maker. She has stage managed, devised, and crafted in Philadelphia, New York, New Orleans, and Santa Fe. She studied Theater and Performance at Bard College and the National Theater Institute. Recent Stage Management credits include: Nichole Canuso Dance Company (Being/With 2021–2023), Annie Wilson (Always the Hour 2023), Bearded Ladies Cabaret (Rose: You Are Who You Eat, 2022), FJK Dance (Off Limits, 2022), Prism Quartet (Mending Wall, 2022).

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