alice de crais

work

phased / romantic

about




BROKEN SCREENS 
2025 | London
live performance, 50min


Broken Screens is a performance work examining political paralysis and the subtle architectures that shape contemporary experience. Four figures move through a landscape of glitches, delays, and fragmented gestures, continually interrupted by systems that feel both mundane and overwhelming.

Drawing on theories of structural violence, mediatised dramaturgy, and failure, the piece frames malfunction as material. Scenes loop, stall, or restart; bodies negotiate with invisible forces; meaning surfaces in moments where action misfires or refuses coherence.

Broken Screens asks what remains possible inside structures that interrupt us, and how attention shifts when movement is no longer smooth, linear, or fully in our control.

Developed as part of MA Advance Theatre Practice at the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama FORMAT Festival 2025.
CREDITS

Concept, text, direction: Alice De Crais, Maddie Hurley &  Xiaoyu Liu 

Performers: Ali Yuraw (Yuan-Ling Chen), Stephen Ledger, Shelvin Rachael, Poni 

Photography: Yingying Xie

With special thanks to Sam Ward, James Christensen, Pablo Temboury 


MIGUEL 
2025 | Roma
live performance, 30min


A procession that shifts between catwalk, ritual, and tableau vivant. An elf disrupts the runway, a bride bursts into the scene, and the group reorganises around each interruption. The performers drift away one by one, leaving a groom who arrives too late and falls asleep. A study of misalignment, timing, and the quiet choreography of arrivals and departures. 
CREDITS

Concept, direction and choreography: Alice De Crais 

Designers: Shun Giovanni Colafato, John Rey Tiva - Edoardo Pasini from PECORANERA, Desstructure, Federica Fusco

Performers: Gianluca Grifoni, Evaluna Pieroni, Marianna Di Majo Norante, Nicholas Zolo, Ilaria Malatesta, Shaven Nuyandoa, Benny Male, KA
Photography: Gaetano Zazzera


CON-TATTO 
2023 | London
Photographic Series


Born as a collaboration between Alice De Crais and Alice Lipizzi, these photographs describe the intrinsic bond between two people and their relationship that goes beyond the normative ideas of love. 

Through impulses and improvised movements, Alice and Shamil create narratives of fighting and reconciliation on the backdrop of changing nature. Their story follows a cycle of day and night where, as the light changes so does the intensity of their feelings. Their movement becomes the medium that allows their bodies to enter the primordial need of humans – being in contact with each other and the nature around us. This rite becomes the tool that brings back to the ancestral root of empathy and actively overcomes the universal fight against loneliness.

NASTY Magazine: https://www.nastymagazine.com/fashion/con-tatto-by-petar-petrov/  CREDITS

Art direction: Alice De Crais, Alice Lipizzi 

Photography: Petar Petrov 

Photography Assistant: Klaudija Avotina 

Stylist: Alice Lipizzi 

Styling Assistants: Francesco Candido, Lucy Broome 

Models: Alice De Crais, Shamil Redpath


La Stanza (Archivio 1519)
2022 | Roma
Installation


La Stanza (Archivio 1519) is a spatial installation grounded in an eight-year relationship that began in adolescence, unfolding through both romantic and non-romantic forms of intimacy. Conceived as a room one can physically enter, the work aims to recreate the hippocampus of the brain, the site where memories are formed, stored, and transformed. It offers access to a warm internal landscape that functions as a refuge and a mnemonic space.

Exploring nostalgia, early attachments, and the persistence of formative bonds, La Stanza (Archivio 1519) creates a protective environment in which personal and shared memories can surface, settle, and be experienced. 

SLEEVE MAGAZINE: https://sleeveshop.bigcartel.com/product/sleeve-issue-n-2-archive-obsession
CREDITS

Concept: Alice De Crais 

Artists: Alice De Crais, Paolo Alneon

Photography: Alice De Crais, Paolo Alneon, Tommaso D’Onofrio


If I Ever Get Around to Living
2022 | London
live performance directed by Ken Nakajima 


If I Ever Get Around to Living is the demonstration of the tribulation that comes with setting yourself free from the past. We can never truly move forwards if we cannot let go. The wall that is presented in front of the individuals has no reason to obstruct them, and yet, they obstruct themselves.
CREDITS

Direction, choreography, design: Ken Nakajima

Performers: Nefeli Kentoni, Pablo Temboury, Alice De Crais, Cornelis Joubert,  Mingxiang Wang, Gaïa Debuchy 

Documentation: Aurora Fantechi, Claire Suying Chevalier

Photography: Justin Atkins