Punching A Pillow Until the Sun Rises

Staged within the hidden confines of a private hotel room, Milton masquerades as a hysterical diva caught in a tragic-comic cycle of perpetual destruction. Originally made available for public viewing through live-streamed video at the Gladstone hotel in Toronto, this endurance-based performance twists the supposedly cathartic exercise of punching a pillow into a bawdy spectacle of amateur magic, drag and melodrama. As Milton rips the seams of each pillow, clusters of feather boas are revealed, initiating a raucous cycle of transformation performed in the dark hours between sunset and sunrise. Through twelve-hours of improvised character play, Milton tears through varied performance registers that reference film noir, confessional culture and voyeurism while remaining tangled in a mess of camp theatricality and novelty store glamour.