OTHER HEARTS is a Dora Nominated, Toronto based performance collective made up of four core members: Yousef Kadoura, Sebastian Marziali, Silvae Mercedes and Eris Thomas.

Other Hearts seeks to blur the line between artists, audiences, and the world around them. We create liminal performances while exploring the various creative potentials of accessibility, materiality and embodiment. We have been called “Bold, challenging, raw and creative” (Slotkin Letter, 2024), and “The sort of daring underground work Toronto could use more of” (Next Magazine, 2024). Our work moves across forms and genres, 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, Trans, Nonbinary, Queer). We are devoted to work that is interdisciplinary and intercultural, drawing from the lived experiences of our core team and our collaborators to envision new ways of being together via performance.

We came together as a collective in 2019 for ONE NIGHT (Caminos, 2019), a hybrid puppetry and poetry performance exploring inherited trauma. During the pandemic we created short films for the Art Apart and Toronto Digital Fringe Festivals (2020 and 2021), as well as Guelph University’s “Practicing the Social” digital gallery. In summer of 2022, we created and presented IAC (INTANGIBLE ADORATIONS CARAVAN), a hybrid circus and performance artwork created with aerialist Erin Ball and featuring local artists from the Mad and Disability communities, as part of Toronto’s Years of Public Art. We presented as part of Theatre Gargantua’s inaugural Side Streams Festival with a work in progress version of the audience collaborative work ON WHAT GROUND, and were listed on the CBC’s “Must Sees” for Halifax’s Nocturne Festival 2023 for INVISIBLE ARTIST CARNIVAL (a revised version of IAC with Halifax artists and an accompanying installation). The latter received an extensive review from Akimbo, one of Canada's premiere digital arts publications.

In January 2024, we presented our challenging and immersive production of Heiner Muller's QUARTET to great critical acclaim, in association with Video Cabaret. QUARTET was Dora nominated for Outstanding Scenic and Projection design in the Independent Theatre category. We also served as associate producers on the HOPES AND FEARS ASSEMBLY with Sto Union for Nuit Blanche 2024, contributing Eris Thomas' ENTWINED/DISTILLED, as well as technical and staffing support.