Biography

Francesca Marie Chilcote

is a free-lance teaching artist and theatre-maker based in Washington, DC. She holds a BA in Theatre from The College of William and Mary (Williamsburg, VA) and an MFA in Physical Theatre from the Accademia dell'Arte (Arezzo, IT), where she studied commedia dell’arte under Maestro Marcello Bartoli. Her master’s thesis work examined the roles of women in the commedia, and sought to transform these roles through feminist theatre techniques. She continues this pursuit of strong, female comedic roles in her work today.

In 2014, she founded Women From Mars (www.wfmtheatre.com) with Dory Ford-Sibley and Echo Sibley-Abbate. She devised and performed WFM’s first piece, “Silent Reflections,” at the Crisis Art Festival in Arezzo, Italy, a festival she helped collectively organize from 2011-2014. The company continues to perform and make new work in Italy and the United States.

Now based in Washington, DC, she has worked with the following area companies: The Welders, Faction of Fools, Nu Sass Productions, Brave Spirits Theatre, Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, Adventure Theatre MTC, and Discovery Theatre at the Smithsonian Institution. She, along with Kathryn Zoerb, serves as the Co-Artistic Director for Faction of Fools Theatre Company, a commedia company in DC. She also regularly performs in Faction’s shows as a company member. She teaches clown, commedia, and devising at the Performing and Visual Arts magnet program at Annapolis High School in Anne Arundel County, MD. She teaches commedia dell’arte workshops at local theatres and schools throughout the region. She is also a certified teacher of the Elemental Body Alignment System (EBAS). Her work as a translator is featured in The Routledge Companion to Commedia dell’arte and her article “Silent Reflections - A Clown-Noir Cabaret: Transformation of object and the feminist clown” was recently published by the Southeastern Theatre Conference Theatre Symposium (Issue #32).