Sat, Jun 06
|Highways
Leo Garcia is Dead / The Canonization of St. Leo
The past meets the present. Through alien abduction, bodily collapse, and ritual transformation, Leo moves toward public canonization—culminating in sainthood by the L.A. Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Autobiography, myth, and queer spiritual satire converge to construct a legacy in real time.
Time & Location
Jun 06, 2026, 8:00 PM
Highways, 1651 18th St, Santa Monica, CA 90404, USA
About The Event
Leo Garcia is Dead / The Canonization of St. Leo is a solo performance structured as a sequence of offerings, visions, and transformations, culminating in a live act of civilian sainthood.
Drawing from the traditions of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (see https://www.lasisters.org), the work reframes canonization as a community-driven act rather than an institutional decree—where sainthood is constructed through performance, participation, and collective recognition.
The performance unfolds in three movements:
Offering (Legacy) — Garcia invites the audience into a shared ritual space, distributing objects and language as unstable symbols. An account of alien abduction emerges as both origin story and constructed mythology, collapsing meaning into repetition and gesture.
Death (Out-of-Body Experience) — A recounting of bodily collapse and separation from the self shifts the work into lived rupture. The body becomes witness to its own undoing, suspended between presence and absence.
Eulogy (Canonization) — Religious narrative and iconography surface, culminating in Garcia’s transformation into “St. Leo.” Drawing from the Sisters’ practice of civilian sainthood, the act functions as both satire and recognition—an elevation shaped as much by performance as by belief.
Throughout, the audience is implicated as witness and participant—receiving offerings, observing transformation, and navigating the instability between sincerity and construction.
What remains is not a fixed identity, but a self-authored legacy—one that questions authorship, lineage, and the desire to be remembered.
Garcia is canonized as “St. Leo,” joined by special guests whose presence expands the act of canonization into a collective event.
ARTIST BIO
Leo Garcia is a Los Angeles–based performance artist, filmmaker, and arts leader. His work spans performance, film, and installation, often merging autobiography with constructed narrative to examine identity, authorship, and cultural inheritance. He serves as Executive Director of Highways Performance Space & Gallery and is co-founder of Film Maudit 2.0.
Tickets
Admission
From $20.00 to $50.00
$30.00
+$0.75 ticket service fee
$20.00
+$0.50 ticket service fee
$50.00
+$1.25 ticket service fee
Total
$0.00