January 7–11, 2019
Anand Rajaram
Anand’s theatre credits include work at the Grand, Aquarius, Tarragon, Soulpepper, Videocabaret, Corpus, Stratford, Second City, CanStage, and Puppetmongers. Film, TV and voice work includes CBC’s Because News, Men With Brooms (TV series), Suits, among others. Anand is artistic director of @N@f@N@ and of Dishoom! South Asian Performance Festival.
Visit Anand Rajaram’s website
Graham Banfield
Musician, educator, and researcher Graham explores how music serves as a portal to the human experience. The diverse aspects of his career have been lauded by prizes in international guitar competitions, scholarships, teaching and lecture posts, his Carnegie Hall debut, and inclusion on an Emmy award-winning soundtrack.
Visit Graham Banfield’s Instagram
Jen Roy
Jen is a wheelchair dancer and performance artist. She recently co-founded the Cyborg Circus Project with Shay Erlich. Her practice stems from their experiences as a queer, mad, multiply disabled person. They envision a future where disability justice-informed art has permeated the fabric of the arts in Canada.
Visit Jen Roy’s Instagram and Facebook
Jessica Watkin
Jessica is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies. Her research focuses on disability artists, their creative process, performance training, and support systems. A Blind interdisciplinary performance artist, she uses choreography, disorientation, and poetry to create nonvisual and blind-centered work.
Visit Jessica Watkin’s blog and on-line magazine
kumari giles
kumari is a queer non-binary mixed maker of many things who believes in art, movement, and food as tools for liberation, transformation and healing. They bring love, intention and integrity to projects, including Unapologetic Burlesque, the Right to Dance project (ILL NANA/DiverseCity Dance Company), and the a colour deep collective.
Visit kumari giles’ website and Unapologetic Burlesque
Ralitsa Rodriguez
Ralitsa is a POC Deaf theatre artist, ASL poem performer and revival dance artist. In 2018, she performed with Sage Willow and Tamyka Bullen in Deaf That! for Buddies in Bad Times Theatre’s Rhubarb Festival and Edmonton’s Sound Off: A Deaf Theatre Festival. In 2019, she will be performing in Deaf’s Unique Time at the Rhubarb and Sound Off festivals with Thurga Kanagasekarampillai and Ali Saeedi.
Sage Lovell
Sage is a Deaf artist and founder of Deaf Spectrum — an organization focused on sign language inclusion. Some notable works include: The Clouded Mind (Crip Interiors, 2015) and Deaf, what? (Tangled Art & Disability, 2017). In 2018, they received the Defty Award for their ASL poetry, The Four Elements.
Visit Sage Lovell’s website
Steff Juniper
Steff Juniper is a third-generation, southern Italian-Canadian, white settler, residing in Tkaronto. They are a sober queer, non-binary trans witch, a mad/disability justice worker, writer and sound artist. They have completed an arts-based MA in Critical Disability Studies at York University.
Thurga Kanagasekarampillai
Thurga is a Deaf Sri Lankan Tamil-Canadian queer artist. She recently graduated with honours in the Acting for Media Program at George Brown College. Thurga has worked as a Deaf interpreter with Cahoots Theatre for The Enchanted Loom (2016), Red Dress Productions for Drift Seeds (2017), and Speculation (2018).
Visit Thurga Kanagasekarampillai’s Instagram and Twitter
Wy Joung Kou
Kou is a queer multidisciplinary artist based in Toronto. Having gained most of their skills through mentorship and community-based models of learning, their practice includes mosaic, installation, community-based art, performance, and poetry. Kou strives to tell stories, transmit emotion, and create access through language, touch, movement and visuals.
Visit Wy Joung Kou’s Facebook and Instagram
February 18–22, 2019
Alexia Vassos
Alexia is finishing her final year of Theatre & Drama Studies through the joint program at the University of Toronto Mississauga and Sheridan College. Currently, she is working on a scholarly journal that focuses on the (mis)representation of disability in canonical plays. In March 2019, she will play Olga in Chekhov’s Three Sisters at Theatre Erindale.
Alexia Vassos’ website is coming soon
Caoimhe Whelan
Caoimhe is from Dublin, Ireland. She read Drama and Theatre at the Samuel Beckett Centre, before going on to become a professional stage manager. Caoimhe is an Irish Sign Language (ISL) user and has produced Deaf-accessible work with Amanda Coogan, Dublin Theatre of the Deaf, and the Gate Theatre, Dublin.
Visit Caoimhe Whelan’s LinkedIn
claude wittmann
claude lives as a transman with disability, works as a bicycle wheel builder, and has contributed to performance art since 2006. Recently he has designed postcards, which state that his concepts have failed his hopes. claude is currently trying to act his artistic ethics more directly towards systemic change.
Visit claude wittmann’s website
Hanan Hazime
Hanan is a multidisciplinary artist, creative writer, community arts educator, and writing instructor living in Toronto. When not writing or creating art, Hanan enjoys reading fantasy and science fiction novels, overanalyzing things, photo-blogging, dancing with faeries in the woods, and drinking copious amounts of tea.
Visit Hanan Hazime’s website and Instagram
Natasha Bacchus
Natasha is a Guyanese-Canadian American Sign Language (ASL) instructor, theatrical actress, and personal trainer who will be taking part in the 2019 ASL Deaf Drag Performance at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. An award-winning track athlete, she has competed globally. In 2014-15, she was the BC Sport Federation for the Deaf’s Outstanding Athlete of the Year.
Visit Natasha Bacchus’ Instagram
Shay Erlich
Shay is a wheelchair dancer and performance art critic. They recently co-founded the Cyborg Circus Project (a disability-led dance and circus company) with their partner Jenna Roy. Shay writes about disability art at the Wheelchair Critic, as well as in mainstream publications such as NOW Toronto and the Dance Current.
Visit Shay Erlich’s Tumblr and Twitter
Shira Spector
Shira is a Jewish lesbian cartoonist, with a BFA (Fibres) from Concordia University. Her work is exhibited in Toronto and published in multiple anthologies. Currently, she’s writing a graphic memoir supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, and a recent Sustainable Arts Foundation Award.
Visit Shira Spector’s website
Vanessa Dion Fletcher
Vanessa uses performance, textiles, and video to reveal the complexities of what defines a body physically and culturally and to reflect on the indigenous feminist body with a neurodiverse mind. She holds an MFA in performance from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is part of the Crosscurrents exhibit at the Textile Museum of Canada.
Visit Vanessa Dion Fletcher’s website
Zita Nyarady
Zita is a dance, theatre, and circus artist. As co-artistic director of the Grand Salto Theatre, her work has been presented at the Toronto Sketch Festival, Harbourfront Centre, numerous Fringe Festivals, and the Toronto, Edmonton and Montreal Clown Festivals. She was 2017/18 Heliconian Club Dramatist in Residency and is in the Cirque du Soleil database.
Visit Zita Nyarady’s website and Facebook