“Soldati’s masterful clown performance is fearless, silly and laugh-out-loud funny." Fest Magazine (UK)
"Has me thinking of Lucille Ball and Jerry Lewis." Stage Whispers (AU)
"Leave it to Gemma to bring a fresh, bizarre, surprising, and hysterical take on taking your clothes off comedically." The Comedy Bureau (US)
“Arrestingly unpredictable and entirely sure of itself” Theatre Bubble (UK)
Gemma Soldati is an American performing and teaching artist. She won Best Comedy at the 2019 Melbourne Fringe with The Living Room. She has taught in Los Angeles, New England, Chicago, and Toronto for both adults and children. She is currently a resident at Ars Nova’s Makers Lab in NYC. She also won Artist of the Year 2023 from Stay Work Play.
Gemma’s focus is clown inspired work developed in front of live audiences. Her projects playfully dive deep into the heart of vital themes probing audiences with questions and meaning making - Grief, Ritual, Sleep, Dreams, Money, Power and beyond. Her current touring shows are The Poor Rich, an interactive 18+ clown show about the absurdity of money and The Adventures of Sleepyhead, a family show about the loss of one’s dreams.
The Adventures of Sleepyhead was developed at the New Hampshire Theatre Project and had a successful run with critical acclaim at the Edinburgh Fringe at Assembly in 2022. Sleepyhead has also been adapted as a short video series for NHPBS with support from the New Hampshire Humanities. The videos won her Best Performance at the 2022 NH Film Festival. The show has since been adapted into a children’s book illustrated by Sarah Diamond.
She was an artist in residence at Kimball Jenkins in Concord, NH from 2022-23 and at Het Domijn artist Cooperative in Weesp, Netherlands for the Fall of 2021 where she developed The Poor Rich.
Gemma was an ensemble member of The Murge, which LA Weekly described as, "Spontaneous Theater of the absurd...Lascivious, blasphemous and potentially dangerous." Additionally, she was ensemble and co-deviser in The Invention of Language and The Simple Simples —featured in The Neo-Futurists Kitchen Festival in 2016.
She has devised and produced several shows in Los Angeles including, The Cobbler, The Sleepover Show, The Living Room and Amateur Burlesque—featured in Comedy Bureau’s 2018 “100 Best Things in Comedy"
Gemma has studied with Betty Grumble, Paola Coletto, Deanna Fleysher, John Gilkey, Philippe Gaulier, Aitor Basauri, and Mick Barnfather.
Gemma Soldati is supported in part by a grant from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts & the National Endowment for the Arts. She was a recipient of a Community Grant by the New Hampshire Humanities, as well as an Artist Entrepreneurial Grant from New Hampshire State Council on the Arts. She is a member of the NH State Council on the Arts Arts in Education Roster.