In this episode, performer and dramaturg, Yousef Kadoura speaks with Qanita Lilla about living an exuberant life as a disabled performer and of surrounding himself with networks of people who share affirmative joy. Expanding the idea of storytelling and re-defining disability, Yousef talks about navigating belonging in a field populated by able bodied performers, and reimagining society in the shape of us all, a society that cares for all its actors, both disabled and abled bodied.
I don’t think I’d be able to be a creative individual without my community and the people around me.
Yousef is a Lebanese Canadian actor, writer and curator, as well as a right leg below knee amputee. He is a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada and is currently an editor and host of the podcast, Crip Times. Yousef is also a founding company member of Other HeArts, a new performance collective whose diverse experiences of “otherness” have reinforced the world-building (or destroying) nature of performance as a daily act. 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.
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With Opened Mouths: The Podcast is hosted by Dr Qanita Lilla and produced by Agnes Etherington Art Centre in partnership with Queen’s University’s campus radio station, CFRC 101.9 FM.