John Kelly’s The Escape Artist to Play PS 122 in April

2010 Ethyl Eichelberger Award winner John Kelly will perform The Escape Artist, at PS 122, April 15-30.

In the piece, which includes spoken text and songs, a stressed-out performer has a catastrophic trapeze accident while rehearsing a theater piece based on the life of the Italian Baroque painter Caravaggio. While stranded on a gurney in a hospital emergency room for 15 hours with a broken neck, he escapes and finds refuge in the images that flood his mind — the sinners and saints, the prostitutes and gods — that populate Caravaggio’s paintings.

Kelly is a longtime fixture in the downtown performance scene, who is well known for his drag impersonation of Joni Mitchell in the tribute shows Paved Paradise and Paved Paradise Redux. His other works as a writer and performer include Brother, The Paradise Project, and Pass the Blutwurst, Bitte. His other credits include James Joyce’s The Dead on Broadway and Orpheus X Off-Broadway.

For tickets and more information, click here.