This event was nominated for the City of Kingston’s Celebrating Accessibility Award
As part of our Able Artists series, H’art Centre is proud to be co-hosting with Queen’s Department of Film and Media, a two-day gathering featuring internationally renowned theatre artists, Jenny Sealey and Alex Bulmer. This dialogue and workshop will bring together artists and researchers from the local community broadly committed to equity in performing arts contexts.
Jenny Sealey and Alex Bulmer’s visit to Kingston offers a unique opportunity to engage with pioneering Deaf and disabled art-activists who have used the arts to advance a more socially just world.
October 5th, Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts: Participants will dialogue about developments in crip arts, the importance of being an agent in your own story, and the necessity of an aesthetics of radical inclusion. The gathering will reflect on the politics of “being included” in cultural representations–from plays and films, to arts grants and administration, to the very stories we tell about ourselves. This is a by invitation ASL interpreted event.
October 6th, THE BOX at H’art Centre: a workshop dramaturging projects by Jenny Sealey, Alex Bulmer, and H’art’s upcoming production of A Gift from Martadella. This is an ASL interpreted event. The October 6th portion of the event is open to Queen’s faculty, students, and the general public provided they register with H’art Centre in advance. Space is limited. Call 613-545-1392 to register.
ABOUT THE PRESENTERS
Jenny Sealey, MBE has been Graeae’s Artistic Director since 1997. She has pioneered a new theatrical language and aesthetics of artistic access experimenting 
with bilingual BSL [British Sign Language] and English, prerecorded BSL, creative captioning, in ear/live audio description methods. Her current international work includes working with Crescer e Viver, setting up circus training for Deaf and disabled people for the Rio 2016 Paralympic Opening Ceremony and Cultural Olympiad; touring Reasons to be Cheerful to Mexico, and directing disabled-led productions in Sri Lanka and Japan. Jenny co-directed the London 2012 Paralympic Opening Ceremony alongside Bradley Hemmings. She also won the Liberty Human Rights Arts Award and was named on the Time Out London and Hospital Club’s 2012 list of most influential people in the creative industries. http://graeae.org/our-work/
Photo Credit: Matt Cetti Roberts
Alex Bulmer is an award-winning writer, performer and art maker for stage and screen. Bulmer has worked with numerous organizations including Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Nightwood Theatre, CBC, The National Arts Centre, Royal Court, Graeae Theatre Company, APAE Brazil, the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad and is 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-winning U.K. television series Cast Offs, a disability informed production featuring six lead disabled actors. She is the artistic director and co-founder of the U.K.-based theatre company Invisible Flash; the inclusive dramaturgy contributor to Red Dress Productions’ June, 2017 performance of Promise in The Park; and is currently developing an original song-driven stage play entitled Hush for a U.K. production in 2019.
http://www.invisibleflash.co.uk
PARTICIPANTS
Erin Ball (Kingston Circus Arts), Lin Bennett (Arts Advocate), Jeni Draper (BSL interpreter, Fingersmiths Theatre), Lisa Figge (Theatre Artist, Queen’s Cultural Studies), Michelle Girouard (Theatre Artist), Hayley Hudson (Deaf Spirit Theatre), Kathryn MacKay (H’art Centre, PeerLess Productions), Elizabeth Morris (Deaf Spirit Theatre), Heidi Penning (Queen’s Human Rights Office), Lisa Ravensbergen (Theatre Director and Actor, Queen’s Cultural Studies), Kim Renders (Queen’s Drama), Natalie Rewa (Queen’s Drama), Lib Spry (Theatre Director, Queen’s Cultural Studies), Holly Treddenick (Circus Artist), Theresa Upton (Deaf Spirit Theatre)
EVENT ORGANIZERS
Yasmine Djerbal, Queen’s Cultural Studies Program and Keren Zaiontz, Queen’s Film and Media and Cultural Studies Program
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We would like to acknowledge the support of Queen’s University Office of the Provost — Chancellor Dunning Trust Lectureship, Principal’s Development Fund – Visiting Scholars Program, Office of the Provost — Academic Operations and Inclusion, Department of Film and Media, Dan School of Music and Drama, Cultural Studies Graduate Program, Human Rights Office, Isabel Bader Centre Integrated Learning Fund, Agnes Art Centre, and the Department of Gender Studies.