HOT! Festival and New Museum Presents bring you an evening of confession, digression, song, and prance from two Josephs—from both sides of the pond.

You Don't Know The Half Of It is La JohnJoseph's high-octane travel memoir. Spanning Europe’s art capitals and embracing all the dropouts in between, telling of French-kissing sailors in Greece, terrorizing celebrities with London's trannie mafia, and crying in the cathedrals of Dublin (both of them), the show unravels in La JohnJoseph’s characteristically witty, poignant style. An irreverent mix of told tales, original songs, and outré covers, video work and live satellite appearances, the show even includes the debut appearance of The Future Legendary Children Gospel Choir. 

Drawing on his signature blend of vocal acrobatics, funny, trenchant language, and uncanny characterizations, Featured Creatures is a new multimedia cycle by monologist/singer Joseph Keckler in which he evokes stories of adolescent transformation, the vengeance and longing of an incompetent receptionist, and an imagined encounter with a biological hybrid hiding out in Brooklyn.  Joined by violinist Dan Bartfield, Keckler heightens the everyday to the level of operatic.

La JohnJoseph is a transdrogynous, transatlantic performance artist. A protégé of the legendary Penny Arcade, he has appeared across the USA and Europe, performing Patti Smith songs saturated in wall paint, dancing at strip clubs, opening art fairs, and creating baroque installations in swimming pools. His previous solo show “I Happen To Like New York”was a sell-out success and Time Out critic’s pick in London this spring, and tours the UK this summer. After contributing to the OPA Performance Festival in Athens and the Zagreb Theatre Festival he will co-star in a seven-week run of a brand-new production, Infinite Variety, in London this fall. As the Village Voice wrote: “In La JJ's weird and wonderful world, anything and everything is possible.”

Joseph Keckler is a singer, monologist, and interdisciplinary artist. His solo play with music, Human Jukebox, became a big hit with audiences and critics alike at both its recent Dublin Fringe premiere and subsequent run at La MaMa ETC. He has been presented at such venues as HERE, Performance Studies International, SF MOMA, Spiegelworld, and The Stone, and has been featured on NPR and The Sundance Channel. Keckler has appeared in various traditional and experimental operas and plays and enjoyed the privilege of collaborating with artists such as John Moran, Holly Hughes, Erin Markey, Jeff Mangum, Dan Fishback, and others. Keckler holds a BFA in painting from The University of Michigan and trained operatically under George Shirley. He throws a monthly performance and art salon "Inner Beauty Parlor" at Envoy Gallery. New York Press writes, “Keckler commands the stage with erotic bravado, launches into dramatic monologues and embodies so many different personae that you wonder whether he’s possessed by spirits or if his body cannot help but channel all the of voices in his head.”

Launched in 1991 as an initiative of Dixon Place, HOT! Festival (July 1-August 1) is a pioneering festival of queer performance and culture. In fact, it’s the longest running festival of its kind. 2009 sees a dynamic expansion of the festival with the new, state-of-the-art Dixon Place theater complex at the heart of five weeks of performance, literary events, and humanities programming. Dixon Place is located at 161A Christie St. (between Rivington and Delancey).

Location: New Museum Theater

Series: New Museum Presents