Named “one of Boston’s rising stars” by Stuff Magazine, Johnny Blazes is known for hir genre-bending, gender-blending, tongue-in-cheek performances. Ze draws from hir training in theater, dance and opera to create a graceful clowning style that incorporates drag, burlesque and circus arts to create works that defy categorization.
(c)2008 Steph Plourde-Simard
Johnny first made hir mark on Boston as the director and choreographer of The Madcap Rumpus Society’s “Mischief in the Machine”, a circus-theater performance set to the boisterous music of Emperor Norton’s Stationary Marching Band. The show made use of mask-work and combined non-verbal storytelling with poetry and music to tell a steampunk-inspired narrative. Johnny also founded and directed Oberlin College’s OCircus!, a 95-person student group with whom Johnny created five original shows. The final OCircus! show that ze directed was a small ensemble circus that drew upon vaudevillian traditions to create a dark and sexy narrative with a cabaret feel. The show wowed audiences in Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit, New York, DC, Richmond, and Boston.
Johnny has collaborated with The ExtraTerrestrial Circus Experiment, The Theater Offensive, Big Moves, and is a touring performer with both The Tranny Roadshow and The Femme Show. Ze has performed in spaces ranging from Carnegie Hall in New York (as an aspiring young opera star) to the Fox Theater in Tucson (as part of The International Drag KingCommunity Extravaganza). Ze is a core cast member of the monthly variety show TraniWreck, and often contributes to other local shows such as Bent Wit Cabaret, Intro to Anatomy, Perestroika, and others.
Johnny’s current solo project, “wo(n)man show”, makes full use of Johnny’s broad range of talents. This semi-narrative, evening-length performance uses drag, dance, theater, clowning, circus arts and classical voice to tell stories that are both personal and universal. “wo(n)man show” is a humorous look at the gender stereotypes that pervade our world, and the performativity of one person’s daily genders. “wo(n)man show” has played at venues and colleges throughout New England, and continues to tour the US throughout 2010.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Perhaps somewhere along the line you got the message that you are ordinary. Or if you are not, that you should strive to be. Fit in. Follow the trend. Be normal. Yet in a world of 7 billion people—each with their own way of expressing, being, living—how can any one thing be considered “normal”? This seemingly simple question is one that we often forget to ask. We allow ourselves to be persuaded by media and power structures in place that there is a correct way to be. Their labels—“white,” “woman,” “middle class,” have strict definitions. When we allow ourselves to believe these definitions, to assimilate them into our consciousness, then we become limited by their immovable boundaries and stop being truly ourselves.
We receive these messages every day, nearly every minute; we have become blind to them. My purpose as an artist is to open your eyes, using the most powerful of tools: humor. I aim to make you laugh—laugh at the idiocy of the images of masculinity and femininity that are profligate in our media, laugh at your own reactions to these images. If I can expose the absurdity of the notion that there is such a thing as “normalcy,” then perhaps I can encourage you in some small way to resist assimilation.
I am a bricoleur: one who uses materials at hand to create new works. My pastiches are crafted from snatches of pop culture, mythology, literature and shared histories. I use music, movement and characters to sew a patchwork of cultural references. I reference our culture because to truly look at it we must all take a step back. In a country whose trajectory has been horribly forged by racism and sexism, we must locate ourselves in the collage of values and histories we call American culture. And as a collage artist, a collector of trash, I both despise and adore the junk I have collected. I both celebrate the beautiful flamboyance of femininity and eschew the notion that it should be expressed in only one way by only one set of people.
My work is often called drag, burlesque, variety, cabaret, clown, circus or performance art. These labels are insufficient to describe what I make; I am interested in the cracks between, the intersections. Yet I use these labels myself from time to time in hopes of expanding existing categories, broadening their definitions. My performance could be better described by my interests: I am interested in the multifarious spectrum of genders available in
drag performance, in human sexuality and the exposed body as both symbol and object in burlesque, in the awe-inspiring feats of which the human body is capable as realized in circus arts, and, above all, in the power of laughter to enlighten.
Laughter will en-lighten you, relieve you of the heavy baggage of this culture of normalcy. It will strip the veil from your eyes so that you may better see the absurdity of that which you thought was holding you back. You are not ordinary at all, you are brilliant, and if you pursue “normal,” you rob the world of something glorious.
