The "Apocalypse In Your Bedroom" Tour

James Knott Presents… "The Apocalypse In Your Bedroom” Tour

Multi-Media Performance/Theatre

2017-Present

This award-winning, self-mythologized facade of a rock show, incorporates life-scale video projection, original music, gestural choreography, and on-the-go stage props to coalesce into a black-box style theatrical spectacle meets dirty diary reading exploring the elusive nature of queer identity facing societal rejection despite a yearning for belonging.

With a reliance on the grimy mustard-coloured lights and sequins of campy 70s glam rock aesthetics, I travel the mental collapse of a dark night of the soul, searching for purpose in a world that doesn’t care to be purposeful. Several characters externalize inner dialogues, including a housefly in a disheveled business suit, a maniacal receptionist, a genie of sorts, and even the moon, confronting my character with probing questions of what it means to “be”, and why to even bother?

Broken promises, wishes on a star, deals with the devil, may lead to packing up to leave with no intention of return. But does it?

You’ve finally quieted the voices circling your head after you’ve turned off the light for the night. But an incessant buzzing keeps panning across your ear. In frustration you employ a poorly timed swat in the dark, missing the fly but revealing pleas from a consciousness you did not expect. The fly has been a witness to your spiraling self-doubt. Your crisis of purpose. How nothing you do ever works out right. How no one seems to welcome you into the fold like you wish they would. How you’ll never amount to much of anything at all.

You’re handed a business card. Ominous spectacles float in a void above the phrase “Time to look through a new lens, Jimmy.” And it leads you to a cheeky, stylish, and seemingly all knowing being who’s willing to help you out. But the cost seems risky. “A little piece of you, for a little piece of me..” To make a deal with the devil for a sense of purpose? For a sense of success? For a sense of belonging? What do you do?

Grad Ex 102 - OCAD University (2017) TORONTO

7a*11d (2018) TORONTO

The Art Gallery of Hamilton (2019) HAMILTON

Festival Phénomena (2022) MONTREAL

Buddies In Bad Times (2023) TORONTO

Click to read:

THESIS DOCUMENT