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Ayla

@aylaperformsanywhere

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🎭AVLTheatre Artist
🌿Practitioner of Presence
⛺️Reimagining Classics in Unexpected Places
💫Seeking Artistic Anarchists & Dreamers
🔥F*ck the Fourth Wall

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“Out here I can hear your heartbeat, I can hear the start of a long sigh
I can hear the song of the robin, I haven’t wrote my own in a long time
And it’s just fine” 🎶 Noah Kahan, We go way back
It’s finally cooled off enough to go dance creekside again.
The uneven ground adds a layer of complication to my movement.
I haven’t been dancing like this in a minute and the challenge feels good.
This is what it means to be an Appalachian artist,
to hear my heartbeat louder beside the creek,
to hold weeks and months of emotions and release them into the water.
Autumn has arrived and so have I. 🍁

#creeksidedancing #appalachianartist #improvdance #contemporarydance #autumnhasarrived by @aylaperformsanywhere

I’ve been thinking a lot about the ‘Resiliency of the Clown’
Remembering rehearsing in the woods.
Remembering getting together and making things happen.
Remembering rehearsing with an ensemble.
Missing ensemble.
Craving a creative community to rehearse with again, even if it’s out in the woods. 🌲✨🎭

#resiliencyoftheclown #ensemble #ruralresidency by @aylaperformsanywhere

“Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be.” Act 4, Scene 5, William Shakespeare’s Hamlet

This is my favorite line in maybe all of Shakespeare’s work, because there is so much possibility in it. This world is so full of possibilities, and so are we. I believe you can’t play someone who isn’t already somewhere inside of you, but I also believe we have the entire universe at our fingertips. There are so many versions of ourselves we haven’t met yet.✨

I don’t know who future Ayla will be. Present Ayla is still struggling, and past Ayla had different problems that felt just as real and insurmountable to her then. But I look back at that version of myself now and I don’t pity her. I’m proud of her. She was resilient. I am resilient. 🌼

I am not a character in a Shakespearean tragedy. My ending isn’t already written, and neither is yours. We know what we are, but we cannot possibly know what we may be. And I think there is so much hope in that uncertainty. Your future is still unwritten, and it’s a story I would very much like to read. 📖

Today is the last day of Suicide Prevention Month, but suicide prevention doesn’t end today. If you’re struggling, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, and @twloha has resources for finding help and support. And, as I said at the beginning of this month, I’m no professional, but I’m a good listener. I’ve been there. You can reach out to me too. 💚

📸 @vibratingvisions

#suicidepreventionmonth #ophelia #resilient #wherewomenbegintofeel #suicidepreventioneveryday by @aylaperformsanywhere

As Samhain approaches and the days surrender themselves to darkness, I find myself revisiting my interpretation of Bertha Mason. This was my first artistic endeavor after Hurricane Helene. Surrounded by destruction from a very different element, returning to creation through Bertha brought a deeper understanding and empathy of living through uncertainty amidst destruction. I wasn’t interested in imagining that Bertha wasn’t mad and simply misunderstood, but in exploring her madness as something childlike, dangerously curious, and feral in an animalistic way. As Charlotte Brontë wrote in Jane Eyre, “What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight, tell.” I studied the movement of feral children, particularly accounts of children raised by wolves, imagining a woman imprisoned for so long that she had become closer to beast than human. A woman whose only human connection came through Rochester’s cruelty, whose experience of intimacy had become inseparable from violence and abuse. I imagined her watching Jane from the shadows, unseen, with a complicated mixture of jealousy, heartbreak, curiosity, and a longing for that same tenderness. Her instability, both in movement and in mind, which ultimately have led her to set fire to the very home in which she was still imprisoned.

There is something about this turning of the seasons, this settling into darkness, that gives us permission to explore our darker expressions. To accept uncertainty, to dive into it and embody it until it becomes known, and in knowing becomes lighter. Or at least a little easier to carry. Within the burning of that piano was a beautiful blaze to stare into, to warm ourselves by, and to dance with. What is destructive can also be peaceful. And perhaps that is where acceptance sits, in the earthen embers that hold the world in their dim orange glow. Settling into sweet silence, listening to the crackling of the fire, content to be ourselves fully. 🔥

A blessed Samhain and All Hallows’ Eve. 🎃

#berthamason #janeeyre #charlottebrontë #wherewomenbegintofeel

Thank you to @kimilegertattoo again for hosting @vibratingvisions and I for this powerful photoshoot 🖤 by @aylaperformsanywhere

Another year of @spicedhoneyproductions 🌶️🍯

What I love about Spiced Honey Productions is the lack of limitations on her stage. My wildest ideas, the breaches of audience interaction, the ways I can play with the space. @paxsea not only gives me permission but encourages me to push myself and find my creative growth edges. Over the years, I’ve danced with multiple different knives, danced in the dark and played with practical lighting techniques, crawled and walked across audience members laps, and spent HOURS practicing spinning on my head in soap and water. Spiced Honey has given me the space to explore just how grotesque, absurd, frightening, silly, and tender sensuality can be. ✨

This year for the Rewind I’m revisiting two favorites: my very first burlesque piece (unpictured) and an out of this world exploration of that magical moment of intimacy just before or after a kiss. (first photo)💫

And beyond the art, what incredible friendships and collaborations have come from it! Thank you @paxsea and @lilwitchy99 , from our very first burlesque together to over half our twenties spent growing as artists and women alongside each other. What a beautiful friendship we’ve fallen into. 💚

Come experience another year of avant-garde burlesque, VIP tickets always get special treatment from my pieces 💋 IYKYK
Tickets in my bio. 🎟️

#avantgarde #burlesque #aerialburlesque #fuckthefourthwall #kissyouraudiences by @aylaperformsanywhere

AYLA CLAYPOOL, Artist Feature

For Ayla’s portfolio site, we chose Designer Layout ( 04 ), transforming its cinematic foundation with immersive, theatrical presence. The ethereal illustrative typeface designed by @celinehurka, a stamped book-emblem submark, and delicate floral embellishments reveal the magic and transformation at the heart of her work. Full-bleed imagery and shifting color palettes pull visitors into the distinct theatrical worlds she creates. Its immersive, audience-focused quality mirrors Ayla’s practice as a physical theatre practitioner whose work is rooted in play and presence, where the audience is woven into the very fabric of the piece, rather than separate from it.

Visit — aylacreatesanywhere.org by @aylaperformsanywhere

AYLA CLAYPOOL, Artist Feature ( 1/3 )

Ayla Claypool is a physical theatre practitioner based in Asheville, North Carolina.

Her work is rooted in devising and often begins not with fixed scripts, but with impulses — an image, a story, a piece of music, a question, a feeling that refuses to leave her alone.

Drawing from a background in physical theatre, Commedia Dell’Arte, and aerial arts, Ayla shapes her work through collaboration, improvisation, physical storytelling, and rhythm. She is drawn to reimagining classical stories and archetypes through a feminist lens, searching for the humanity, agency, and complexity within women who have too often been reduced to symbols, warnings, or muses.

— @aylaperformsanywhere

Read full Artist Interview on our Substack (link in bio) by @aylaperformsanywhere

Sad times mean happy times and porch wine 🥂
#daytrip #girlsnight #porchwine by @aylaperformsanywhere

“O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall.” - Robert Frost
“There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir:
We must rise and follow her” - Bliss Carman
“October is a symphony of permanence and change.” - Bonaro W. Overstreet

On this mild October morning I sat down to write for the first time in a very long time. There was a time where I was writing nearly everyday. Poetry, plays, confessions and expressions of my own internal hurricane, my own ‘gypsy blood astir’. But as those winds have settled I find myself creatively dried up. Lacking in inspiration has never been a challenge for me. And after a chaotic summer crammed full of unexpected challenges now on the other side of everything I find myself feeling.
Empty. Not relieved. Not sad, for heartbreak brings bountiful inspiration. Just empty, and tired. While I know that inspiration comes in waves and seasons and cycles are the way of life. In the abundance of Autumn. (My favorite season) It is odd to feel like this. While I want to be playing or dancing in Overstreet’s symphony. I find myself wanting to curl up in a ball, on the ground, and watch the leaves change colors and just listen to the great symphony of the season. by @aylaperformsanywhere

Next week at @zeldadearest we’re tasting 5 wines and telling the story of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald’s life through wine. ✨

@storycellarsessions has the champagne on ice and ready to pop! 🍾

Step into the age of jazz, find out what it means to be flapper, and explore the complexities of Zelda through the complexities of wine; where first impressions cannot possibly be captured in that first sip. 💛
So we raise our glasses at the chance to see Zelda the same way F. Scott saw his Dearest: through the bottom of a glass. 🥂

#zeldafitzgerald #immersivetheatre #wineandstorytelling #ashevilleevents #storycellarsessions
📸 @asheville.elevated.photography by @aylaperformsanywhere

Sometimes words pour out of me like a river, flowing and spurting, bubbling and swirling like water. When words are filling my head and brushing up against the edges of my own humanity, getting them out isn’t always easy. Sometimes the words hurt. But they need somewhere to go, and sometimes all I can do is put them on a page. Other times I don’t have words at all. Sometimes all I have are the carnal sounds of hurt, anger, loneliness, and betrayal.

That is what I love so much about Ophelia’s ‘mad’ scene. Her grief comes out sideways, through songs, flowers, folklore, and fragments of thought. My Ophelia is wailing and angry, full of passion and raging against a world that feels like it’s against her. She isn’t done adhere to social norms in a way that feels like she’s almost breaking the fourth wall. And making not just the men in her life but the audience actually look at her. And see her for the first and last time.

I recognize something in that. In some of my darkest moments I have wailed and almost literally keened for a version of myself. I’ve learned to allow myself to feel those emotions to their fullest extent rather than pushing them aside or feeling shame for having them in the first place. There is an emptying that happens when I allow myself to express all of it. All of the hurt and anger that gets ties up in the existence of being a young woman, especially all the emotions that aren’t ’fit for a lady’. Afterwards I feel empty. There is release in that emptiness, and space to fill myself back up again. 🌼

If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988 @twloha also offers great resources for finding help and support. I think the best suicide prevention is talking about it. I’m here to talk, to share, to listen. I’m still here, and I’m glad you are too.

#suicidepreventionmonth #ophelia #madwoman #feelthosebigfeelings #wherewomenbegintofeel

📸 @vibratingvisions by @aylaperformsanywhere