Deaf Arts Incubator Double Bill

Inside Out Theatre's inaugural Deaf Arts Incubator Double Bill featuring

Suffocate II : The Night's grabbing Mara

a multimedia performance combining live theatre and short film

created by Audivoir & Matthew Courtemanche 

and 

Braiding Histories

a work-in-progress showing created and performed by Crystal Wolfe and Ebony R. Gooden

About Suffocate II : The Night's Grabbing Mara

Inspired by Henry Fuseli’s The Nightmare (1782), Mara—from an old linguistic meaning of “ghost”—confronts an intertemporal universe to bring the sexist, racial, and colonial issues of the past into the present, revealing the scars experienced by racialized women. Created in American Sign Language (ASL) by and for Deaf people, the narrative is built from each performer’s knowledge, allowing them to demonstrate the alliance between reality and fiction. Creator Matthew Courtemanche seeks to open a door for the Deaf community that recognizes itself in the universal issues of popular culture, such as sexual, racial, and ableist violence.

About Braiding Histories

Braiding Histories is a bilingual Deaf theatre project led by artists Crystal Wolfe and Ebony R. Gooden, premiering as part of Inside Out Theatre’s Deaf-led Arts Incubator during the 2025/26 season at The Erratics Indie Arts Club (June 29–July 4, 2026). This work transforms the act of braiding hair into a radical performance of storytelling, resilience, and reclamation.

The piece unfolds on a stage split into two sides, one facing left and one right. From these places, Ebony and Crystal create a massive braid together as the story unfolds, weaving scenes that embody their personal and cultural histories. Ebony’s scenes will reflect Black traditions of braiding as acts of resistance and survival — such as braids used to conceal rice seeds during slavery or to map escape routes. Crystal’s scenes will honour Indigenous teachings, from the significance of braiding sweetgrass to the strength of familial memory carried strand by strand.

The work will be performed in American Sign Language, Black ASL, and Indigenous Sign Language, with visual storytelling, projection, and sound design for the Deaf and hearing audiences. Through hands, silence, and movement, the artists will explore both the violence and silencing they have endured as Deaf women, and the joy that emerges through reclamation and cultural continuity.

About the Deaf Arts Incubator

The Deaf Arts Incubator is a Deaf-led program by Inside Out Theatre that supports the development, creation, and presentation of new work by Deaf, DeafBlind, DeafDisabled, and Deaf-identified artists. Rooted in Deaf culture, language, and lived experience, the incubator provides artists with resources, space, and mentorship to create ambitious, accessible performances that challenge dominant hearing norms. Presented at The Erratics Indie Arts Club, the incubator nurtures bold artistic voices and advances a more inclusive future for Canadian theatre.