This event will feature aspects of lecture and performance. ASL and CART services provided. All are welcome!

Petra Kuppers is a disability culture activist and a community artist. She teaches in performance and disability studies at the University of Michigan. She is the Artistic Director of The Olimpias Performance Research Series, and Olimpias workshops, installations, performances and exhibitions have been created and shown in Europe, the US, New Zealand and Australia. The Olimpias projects are community-based, collaborative, and deal with disability culture issues (more info at www.umich.edu/~petra). Petra’s books include Disability and Contemporary Performance: Bodies on Edge (Routledge, 2003), The Scar of Visibility: Medical Performances and Contemporary Art (Minnesota, 2007) and Community Performance: An Introduction (Routledge, 2007). She has also co-edited with Gwen Robertson The Community Performance Reader (Routledge, 2007).

Neil Marcus writes, "Disability is an art – an ingenious way to live". This award-winning playwright, actor, poet, and performance artist earned national acclaim when he crafted his experiences as a man living with dystonia, a severe neurological disorder, into a powerful staged work. Storm Reading, first produced in the late eighties, challenged audiences to reevaluate conventional ideas about disability and set a standard for performing artists with disabilities. Voted one of Los Angeles’ top ten plays of 1993, it enjoyed a nearly decade-long run. Since then, Marcus’ passionate stance toward life has infused his artistic choices. Believing that "life is a performance," he has cast his creative net wide, participating in a range of diverse projects.