Selfies in the Grand Canyon

Brendon Burns spent his 2015 Outside the Box tour performing in unconventional spaces like zoos, comic book stores, and primary school gyms. He chose to film his final tour stop: a disused, semi-demolished Manchester bar packed with a crowd sitting under industrial scaffolding. Released in 2016, the black-and-white show has the grimy aesthetic of an indie film and a confrontational tone to match. Burns targets the age of the selfie, contemporary racial politics, and what he perceives as a sanitized shift in the British comedy scene. He tackles subjects ranging from Donald Trump to periods, eventually building to an extended story about a guided tour through the Grand Mosque of Bahrain, treating the audience less like a passive crowd and more like sparring partners.