Self _Evidence

Performance lecture

University of the Arts, Philadelphia

April 2017

Performed by Jonathan VanDyke, with

Fred Brown, Jessica Creane, Johanna Kasimow, Lydia Kincaid, Lillian Ransijn & Meryl Sands

Sponsored by NYPAC and the UARTS Pig Iron School

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I Martedi Credici, Rome

(in association with Temple University Rome), October 2015

Performed by Jonathan VanDyke

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The Skowhegan Project Space, NYC, April 2015

Performed by Jonathan VanDyke

as part of Staging Sex, Staging Self performance series curated by

Jonathan VanDyke & Chelsea Knight

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Presenting at 17, NYC

(project of artist Elise Gardella)

2014

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Jonathan VanDyke looks for himself in a family photograph taken during his childhood. The picture shows his adopted Uncle wearing his mother's dress while   holding the trunk of a stuffed elephant in his mouth. VanDyke's performance explores the issues faced by queers who were children during the AIDS crisis and 80's culture wars, and how the hyper-capitalism and theatricality of this  period nurtured a certain type of passing (including his own). Augmented by research into a gay panic that happened in his rural hometown, passages from he soap operas he watched as a child, and memories of a disappeared Uncle, he evokes the repressed ghosts of a lost generation of queer mentors while exploring his own transition from theatrical youth to closeted jock to out artist.