YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE
is not a character.
It is not an alter ego.
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It is not a costume, a creature, or a performance waiting to begin.
It is the place where the human becomes unfamiliar.
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Created by Joss Carter, YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE is an evolving artistic practice built around physical transformation, creature embodiment, movement, psychology and imagination.
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For more than twenty years, Joss has worked with the body as both performer and material — stretching it, distorting it, interrogating it and rebuilding it into something that no longer belongs entirely to the human world.
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Film.
Theatre.
Dance.
Performance art.
Motion capture.
Immersive performance.
Sound.
Image.
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The medium changes.
The body remains.
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Every human being carries something they do not show.
A private instinct.
A forbidden thought.
A buried memory.
A fear without a name.
A hunger.
A fantasy.
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A version of themselves that exists somewhere beneath the surface.
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YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE goes looking for it.
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The work inhabits the territory between the beautiful and the grotesque, the vulnerable and the monstrous, the sacred and the absurd.
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It is not about creating fear.
It is about revealing truth.
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The body is where the work begins.
Before language.
Before character.
Before narrative.
There is breath.
Weight. Tension. Instinct. Rhythm. Impulse.
The body remembers things the mind has forgotten.
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YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE treats physicality as a form of excavation — digging beneath learned behaviour and habitual movement.
To discover what else might be living there.
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A spine becomes a weapon.
A hand becomes an animal.
A breath becomes a warning.
A face becomes a mask.
A body becomes a vessel.
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Sometimes grotesque.
Sometimes beautiful.
Sometimes pathetic.
Sometimes terrifying.
Sometimes unmistakably human.
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The monster is never the destination.
The monster is the method.
THE OTHER
YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE is fascinated by the moment when identity begins to fracture.
The moment the familiar becomes strange.
The moment the body stops behaving correctly.
The moment a human gesture becomes animal.
The moment a face becomes unreadable.
The moment the audience can no longer decide whether they are looking at a person, a creature, a memory or something else entirely.
This is the territory of the Other.
Not entirely human.
Not entirely monstrous.
Not entirely real.
A body caught somewhere between states of existence.
TRANSFORMATION
Transformation is not simply physical.
It is psychological.
Emotional.
Instinctive.
Mythological.
A transformation can happen through a change in posture.
A change in breath.
A change in rhythm.
A change in gaze.
A change in consciousness.
A body can become monstrous without changing its anatomy.
A human can become frightening without becoming violent.
A creature can become vulnerable without becoming human.
YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE searches for these thresholds.
The places where something begins to change —
and does not change back.
THE LANGUAGE
The work has its own vocabulary.
Not a vocabulary of words, but of physical states.
Breath.
Silence.
Tremor.
Weight.
Collapse.
Suspension.
Repetition.
Distortion.
Stillness.
Sound.
Instinct.
The performer becomes both scientist and specimen.
The body becomes the laboratory.
Every movement becomes an experiment.
Every creature becomes a question.
Every transformation becomes evidence.
THE WORLDS
YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE refuses to belong to one medium.
It can inhabit a film.
A theatre.
A warehouse.
A forest.
A soundscape.
A motion-capture volume.
A photograph.
A stage.
A ritual.
An audience.
A single body standing alone in darkness.
The work moves freely between performance, cinema, contemporary movement, creature acting, sound, visual art, choreography and immersive experience.
The form is allowed to change.
The mythology remains.
THE RITUAL
There is something ritualistic about transformation.
The performer enters one state.
Something happens.
The performer emerges altered.
YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE treats performance as a kind of contemporary ritual — a space in which the ordinary rules governing the body can temporarily be suspended.
The audience does not simply observe a transformation.
They witness a threshold being crossed.
Sometimes they are invited closer.
Sometimes they become part of the environment.
Sometimes the performer looks directly back.
The fourth wall becomes porous.
The creature becomes aware that it is being watched.
And the audience becomes aware that it is being seen.
THE LABORATORY
YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE is an ongoing laboratory for the unknown.
A place to develop creatures.
Characters.
Movements.
Worlds.
Sounds.
Images.
Rituals.
Performances.
It is a space for experimentation without the requirement that every experiment succeed.
Some ideas become characters.
Some become images.
Some become performances.
Some disappear.
Some mutate into something completely unexpected.
The practice remains open because the unknown is the point.
THE CONFRONTATION
At its core, YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE is about confrontation.
Not simply with horror.
With ourselves.
With the parts of human experience we make invisible.
Fear.
Desire.
Shame.
Instinct.
Vulnerability.
Absurdity.
Obsession.
Mortality.
The grotesque.
The unknown.
The work holds these things up without necessarily explaining them.
It asks the audience to look.
And then asks a more uncomfortable question:
Why does this feel familiar?
THE MYTHOLOGY
YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE is becoming a mythology of its own.
A growing collection of bodies, creatures, characters, rituals, images, sounds, performances and physical investigations.
There is no single protagonist.
No fixed form.
No final creature.
The mythology can expand indefinitely.
One creature becomes another.
One performance leaves behind a movement.
One movement becomes a character.
One character becomes an image.
One image becomes a world.
The work feeds itself.
It mutates.
THE CREATURE THAT KEEPS EVOLVING
YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE is not a finished artwork.
It is a living practice.
A laboratory.
A mythology.
A physical language.
A performance philosophy.
A world under construction.
It exists wherever the human body is pushed beyond the familiar and asked to become something else.
Human becomes creature.
Movement becomes character.
Character becomes mythology.
Performer becomes vessel.
Body becomes world.
And the nightmare becomes real.
YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE
Created by Joss Carter.
The creature keeps evolving.
Joss Carter is a British multidisciplinary Creature Actor and Movement/Performance Specialist, Choreographer, Director and Producer working across film, television, stage, experimental live performance art, motion & performance capture, music video, events, and education.
With over 20 years experience Joss has successfully established as one of the most recognised and respected artists working within his specialist creative fields of expertise.
Graduating (2010) from the Northern School Of Contemporary Dance conservatoire, Leeds, UK, Carter's formal training in contemporary dance, classical ballet, and somatic movement techniques, choreography, and the creative/academic studies of experimental, abstract, and avant-garde movement and performance concepts
interrogation, Joss creates the physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual vessel to summon the shadows that live inside his soul, free himself from the the of all humanity so they can of reality YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE.
BURIED WITHIN THE HEART OF
C R E A T U R E
C A R T E R
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LAST UPDATE: MARCH 2026
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National Film Awards 2025 WINNER - Best Thriller & Best Producer
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With his own bare hands Joss Carter has independently crafted himself a unique set of tools that for over 20 years has allowed him to dig his grave, build his coffin and carve his own name and reputation into the stone entrance of a catacomb filled to the brim with all the "Wonderful things" that hide within.
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Sealed with
and trespass without encrypting the spells inscribed on the key that unlocks the gates, provides light and safe passage through the deep and dark tunnels
will suffer the consequenses of e same ancient curse that has cursed the Carter family ever since open the gates with the spells and curses that serve to protect and preserve the mind, body, and soul of a man
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Protected by the spells, cursesdeep inside catacomb of
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Upon the walls of his tomb you will see sacred paintings that depict fantasies, realities, curiosities, obscurities, abnormalities, and insanities of a mind, body, and soul sacrificed to the of his of purpose in life and existence in humanity.
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transformational
sacrifice of his own human flesh and bone.
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A life devoted to the exploration own purpose exiitence of his own.
resurrection, and reincarnation his
journey through life with the words of others who knew him best and wish to preserve his memories and protect his heart as it lies weighted in the balance against a single feather ready to be judged by Angel, Demons, Gods, and Devils that hide inside his mind, body, and soul who deciedes his fate and allow him safe pass into the afterlife so he can finally rest in peace for eternity....until he is discovered , preserve, and as h is judged
handscrafting the skills
to
spark your curiosity guiding light that leads you through the darkest tunnels of his imagination where you will meet
A life , and held together by blood, sweat and tears,
Joss has sacrificed his heart to the
in hope that he will one day find the flame that ignites burn light life to the creation and transformation of dreams and nightamre
nightmares of transformation out of skin,
physical, psychological, emotional, sensational, and spirituallive the living, breathing, walking, talking
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Discover the fantasies, abnormalities, monstrosities, and insanities of his reality
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Uncover the truths, lies, secrets, mysteries, and curses of humanity.
where you will soon discover
of human to c of his existance of humanity, identity, personality, to non-human forms
the many treasures
the body becomes character, movement becomes language, and performance exists beyond the human form, physical performance, and creature embodiment.