Other Hearts is a Toronto-based performance collective made up of four members: Yousef Kadoura, Sebastian Marziali, Silvae Mercedes and Harri Thomas. Our work has been called “consistently challenging” (Mooney on Theatre, 2021) and moves laterally across form and genre, ranging from puppetry and performance art to installation and experimental film. This versatility is supported by the diversity of our identities and lived experiences (Arab, Womxn, Mad, Disabled, Latinx, Non-Binary, Queer). Our work together is driven by a shared curiosity around the possibilities of hybrid performance forms, and is especially devoted to marginalized histories, the inventive use of bodies and objects, and the performance of memory.
Our shared and diverse experiences of “otherness” have reinforced the world-building (or destroying) nature of performance as a daily act. How will my appearance codify or transform the way that I am read in the world? What parts of myself am I willing to sacrifice today, that others may be seen and flourish? And how can I guide the world to see me better, in all my contradictions?
These questions all have their echo in the wider world, the wider practice of being human. Bringing together a core team whose practices have reached across every end of the spectrum of performativity, from drag and burlesque to plays and performance art, we have come together in a spirit of radical cosmopolitanism. To draw from a plurality of experiences and disciplines to expand the boundaries of performance in pursuit of accessibility, liveness and shared experience.