Join the School of Disability Studies and the Cripping the Arts in Canada course for an artist panel. The panel will feature Yousef Kadoura, Rebecca Sweets, Vanessa Dion Fletcher and Alex Bulmer.
Date: November 20, 2019
Time: 12pm-2pm
Location: Sally Horsfall Eaton Centre, 5th floor room 560
Open to: Everyone
Yousef Kadoura was born in the midwestern United States and raised in Ottawa Ontario, he is a Lebanese Canadian actor, writer, producer, and curator as well as a right leg below knee amputee. Yousef is a graduate of the Acting (2017) program at the National Theatre School of Canada. Since moving to Toronto from Montreal in 2017, he has worked as the Curator in residence at Tangled Art + Disability co-curating the Flourishing series in 2018. He was also the producer and creator of the podcast series Walking the Space (2017) a three part podcast exploring disability in Canadian theatre.
Yousef is also a founding company member of Other He/Arts a new performance collective which came together initially as a producing vehicle for the Yousef’s show, One Night, in Aluna Theatre’s Caminos festival (2019). As an artist Yousef seeks to draw from a plurality of experiences and disciplines to expand the boundaries of performance in pursuit of accessibility, presence and shared experience.
Rebecca Sweets is a Toronto-based multidisciplinary, mad + disability artist. Through tangible, performance, and interactive mediums, Sweets explores the enchantments and hindrances of digitality, cycling between intimacy, identity, and the imagination. She has worked with Akin Collective, Mammalian Diving Reflex and has had performances and works at Trinity Square Video, Gardiner Museum, Gladstone Hotel, and Margin of Eras Gallery. Most recently she co-founded and released PRUDEmag, a collaborative zine reclaiming the term “prude” as a celebration of autonomy and boundary-setting, a refusal of sex-necessary feminism, and a liberation in which one’s “no” is respected. Currently she is working on her first solo exhibition entitled LOVE MY DYSFUNCTIONS exhibiting at the Margin of Eras gallery in February 2020. You can find her at rebeccasweets.com.
Vanessa Dion Fletcher is a Lenape and Potawatomi neurodiverse Artist. She graduated from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2016 with an MFA in performance, she has exhibited across Canada and the US, at Art Mur in Montreal, Eastern Edge Gallery Newfoundland, The Queer Arts Festival Vancouver, Satellite Art show Miami. Her work is in the Indigenous Art Centre, Joan Flasch Artist Book collection, Vtape and Seneca College. In 2019 Vanessa is supported by the City of Toronto Indigenous partnerships fund to be the Artist in Residence at OCAD University.
Alex Bulmer is an award winning writer, director, and actor. Originally from Canada, Alex Bulmer has worked internationally in theatre, film, radio and television for over 25 years. Alex has worked with numerous organizations including the BBC, CBC, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, National Theatre of England,Nightwood Theatre, The National Arts Centre of Canada, Royal Court, Graeae Theatre Company, APAE Brazil, the London 2012 Olympics. She is the writer of the AMI award-winning BBC radio 4 adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, writer of SMUDGE, which earned two Best New Play nominations in Canada and was Time Out’s Critics’ Choice during its U.K. premiere, and co-writer of the BAFTA-nominated U.K. television series Cast Offs, a disability informed production featuring six lead disabled actors. She is co founder of Invisible Flash UK , Artistic Director of Cripping The Stage in association with The British Council Toronto , and co-Artistic Director of Common Boots Theatre in Canada. Alex was awarded Best Actress at the 2018 Moscow International Disability Film Festival, and appears as Lady Z in the upcoming Apple Television series See. She was recently named as one of the most influential disabled artists by UK’s Power Magazine.
The event location is wheelchair accessible. ASL (Christopher Desloges and Rogue as interpreters), live-captioning and attendant care will be provided. Attendees are asked to please refrain from wearing scents or fragrances. Nearest accessible TTC station is Dundas.
Livestream link: https://ryecast.ryerson.ca/72/Live/1861.aspx
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