REDCAT, CalArts’ downtown center for contemporary arts, presents the West Coast premiere of John Kelly’s Time No Line, Thursday April 25 to Saturday April 27, 2019. John Kelly once referred to himself as an “aesthetic octopus”–he cannot be easily categorized, and critics have wildly praised him as a choreographer, theater artist, writer, vocalist, filmmaker, dancer, visual artist and more (winning 2 Obies, 2 Bessies, The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts and an NEA “Masterpiece Award”). 

Kelly has also been called a “warrior” and a “survivor,” who served as a leading light in New York’s downtown arts community during the height of the AIDS crisis. He beautifully reflects on his decades of creativity with elegance and rare emotional depth in his “live memoir” Time No Line, a solo performance work based on 42 years of journal writing.

Combining historic texts with movement, video, music and song, and live drawing, he theatrically renders his experiences within the East Village performance art scene of the 1980s, gender performance, the AIDS epidemic, and our shared cultural history (he playfully blames his performance career on the experience of seeing gay theater collective The Cockettes in the 1970s). As a survivor in New York’s evolving cultural landscape, Kelly uses his personal experiences to add his voice to our interrupted cultural and generational dialogue, as our shared history is threatened by cultural amnesia.

What: John Kelly’s Time No Line
Where: REDCAT, 631 West 2nd Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012
When: April 25-27, 2019; 8:30pm
Website: https://www.redcat.org/