The Emperor of America is part of a larger artistic community, the BreadKnives.

In 2012 Justine Arden and Nina Danon created this platform to explore new ways of thinking about, making and distributing art. They noticed how few people allow themselves to dream nowadays. People no longer act on their impulses or let themselves express their inner folly. People’s inspirations are blocked because making art has become too difficult nowadays. The goal of the BreadKnives is to facilitate this process. It wants to gather artists from all domains to help each other out. To let people interconnect and share their artistic desires, create common projects and support each other. A cultural movement that allows all the crazy ideas to flourish.

BreadKnives brings the magical dream of Emperor Norton back to life through the artistic collaboration of music and theatre.

These performances will try to capture some of the honest moments in the life of a man whose sense of reality somehow captured the imagination of San Franciscan society, but they will also bring a story to abandoned spaces that have long been forgotten. They will perform in old churches, castles, abandoned industrial landscapes. These spaces might have new life breathed into them by the story of a man who chose to put aside the constraints of humdrum existence, and act out the true majesty of life.