John Michael

John Michael is a Chicago-based trauma clown and creator of 13 audience-participation plays. He is best known for the internationally acclaimed Meatball Seance, where he cooks his mother's meatballs onstage to summon her from the dead to meet his boyfriend, played by the audience. After losing three friends to overdose, he developed harm-reduction theatre that has distributed 4,420 doses of Narcan and taught audiences how to administer the life-saving medication as part of the performance. In 2026, John Michael will continue spreading overdose prevention education, presenting Narcan Time Machine at Carnegie Mellon University.