Kelly Nesbitt

Kelly Nesbitt is a multi-disciplinary performance artist, midlife warrior, and frontline healthcare worker who plays at the intersection of humor and healing. With extensive training in the field of humor, Nesbitt has been awarded grants for the creation of solo and interdisciplinary ensemble performances, toured internationally, and collaboratively produced numerous DIY community arts events since 1999. 

Inspired by nature, contemplative arts, practice and technique ~ Nesbitt is a body based storyteller who embodies the archetype of the fool, juxtaposes absurdities with sincerity, and pathos with surreal-humor. Performance aesthetics employ recycled layered costuming, makeshift props, and superhero motifs. Film work experiments with raw facial close ups, lowbrow editing techniques, and dreamlike magical realism. Moods fluctuate between an atmosphere of high energy bathos to moments of quiet intimacy. Audience members have described their performances as transcendentalist hilarity, utterly inexplicable, and earnestly epic.

My intention as a performance artist is to honor/subvert the performative lineages from which I come; clown and physical theater. I aim to celebrate the weird spaces in between. Our artistic climates are changing rapidly, and there has never been a more relevant time to embrace the vulnerability and self-effacement of the fool.