Meet the Team

Salome Chasnoff (Director, Producer) is a Chicago-based filmmaker and installation artist who maintains a collaborative social practice and exhibition career that centers the voices of under-recognized or misrepresented communities. Her work has shown across the US and internationally in film festivals, galleries, and museums including National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC; Theaster Gates’ Stony Island Arts Bank, Chicago; Frameline Film Festival, San Francisco; Creative Time’s Democracy in America; Chicago Humanities Festival; Superfest Best of the Fest, Berkeley CA; Black Harvest International Film and Video Festival; Toronto Lesbian and Gay Film and Video Festival; and the United Nations. Awards include Purpose Prize Fellow, Women’s eNews Ida B Wells Bravery in Journalism Award and 21 Leaders for the 21st Century, Chicago Foundation for Women Impact Award, and the Illinois Humanities Council Towner Award. She was the founder and director of the celebrated community media organization, Beyondmedia Education, and a founding member of the PO Box Collective, a multi-generational social practice center. Chasnoff teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she also directs the BFA in Art Education program.

Susan Nussbaum (Writer, Producer, Interviewee) is a Chicago-based playwright, novelist and longtime disability rights and culture activist.  She won Barbara Kingsolver’s 2012 PEN/Bellwether Prize for her novel Good Kings Bad Kings, also a 2013 Indie Best Pick and one of Booklist’s Top Ten First Novels of 2013. Her work as a playwright has been seen in many Chicago theaters, including Victory Gardens, Second City, Steppenwolf, the Goodman Theater as well as theaters around the U.S. Her play Mishuganismo was published in Staring Back: The Disability Experience from the Inside Out and Beyond Victims and Villains: Contemporary Plays by Disabled Playwrights published her play No One As Nasty. Nussbaum worked for many years at Access Living, a disability rights organization. For her innovative work with disabled teenage girls, Nussbaum was chosen for the 2007 Chicago Girls Coalition Woman in the Field Award, by the 2008 Utne Reader as one of 50 Visionaries Who are Changing Your World, and for the Chicago Foundation for Women’s Impact Award in 2015.

Alyson Patsavas (Writer, Producer, Interviewee) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Disability and Human Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research brings together disability studies, feminist theory and queer theory, and focuses on the cultural politics of pain, health and illness as well as representations of disability in film, television, and popular culture. Her current book project maps contemporary North American cultural discourses of pain and proposes a crip analytic of pain. Her work appears in in Crip Magazine Vol 2, Sick Time, Crip Time, Caring Time, Different Bodies: Essays on Disability in Film and Television, The Feminist Wire, Somatechnics, Disability Studies Quarterly, and the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies.

Carrie Sandahl (Writer, Producer, Interviewee) is an artist/scholar and Associate Professor in the Department of Disability and Human Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is also the director Chicago’s Bodies of Work, an organization that promotes disability arts and culture year-round through partnerships with cultural institutions and producing original work. Her own research and creative activity focus on disability and gender identities in live performance, including theatre, dance, and performance art. Sandahl has published numerous research articles and an anthology she co-edited with Philip Auslander, Bodies in Commotion: Disability and Performance (University of Michigan Press), garnered the Association for Theatre in Higher Education’s award for Outstanding Book in Theatre Practice and Pedagogy.

Jerzy Rose (Director of Photography, Editor, Producer) is a film director and editor. His films have shown at the Telluride Film Festival, Slamdance Film Festival, Palm Springs International Film Festival, Fantastic Fest, La Cinémathèque Française, and in-flight on Virgin American Airlines. He hopes to one day show his work on transatlantic and transpacific airlines. He teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Candace Coleman, a black disabled woman from the South Side of Chicago, is the Racial Justice Community Organizer at Access Living. She works closely with disabled people affected by the criminal justice system to spearhead community organizing around the intersection of racial and disability justice including anti-bullying, the school-to-prison pipeline, restorative justice, police brutality, and deinstitutionalization. Coleman remains dedicated to teaching disabled youth of color to take pride in all aspects of their identity, so they can become leaders themselves. She believes that young people will shape our future and change our world.

Lawrence Carter-Long is a respected authority on media and disability, and curator of the pioneering disTHIS! film series as well as Turner Classic’s The Projected Image: A History of Disability in Film, which broke new ground by captioning and audio describing all 21 films – a first for cable television. Additional credits include Ready to Ride: A Homecoming Musical (actor/adviser) and adviser for Crip Camp, Push Girls, and Sundance Institute New Filmmaker Intensive. Publications include “Where Have You Gone, Stephen Dwoskin? A Disability Film Manifesto” (Film Quarterly, Spring 2019), “How ABC's 'Speechless' is changing attitudes about disability” (Upworthy, October 2016), and “Grindhouse, Arthouse and the Wacky, Wonderful World of Underground Disability Cinema” (Library of Congress lecture, December 2013). Carter-Long is a founding steering committee member of ReelAbilities: Disabilities Film Festival.

Mike Ervin is a writer and disability rights activist living in Chicago. His play The History of Bowling has been produced by theatres across the country. As a free-lance journalist, he has published over 1,300 articles and essays, mostly on disability topics. He is author of the blog, Smart Ass Cripple, and two books, Smart Ass Cripple’s Little Red Book and Smart Ass Cripple’s Little Yellow Book. From 1992 to 2019, Mike directed the Access Project, a comprehensive initiative to make live theater accessible for people with disabilities. He is a founding member of the Chicago chapter of the direct-action disability rights organization ADAPT. He is proud to have been arrested over a dozen times for civil disobedience. Mike is also founder of Jerry's Orphans, which organized annual protests against the Jerry Lewis telethon.  

Mat Fraser is an Internationally renowned disabled actor & writer. Known for screen work, including the BBC/HBO series “His Dark Materials”, US TV comedy “Loudermilk”, and “American Horror Story: Freak Show”, in 2020 he curated a series of 6 Monologues around Disability for the BBC & BBC America, also writing & acting one of the pieces. Mat’s writing has been widely recognized and awarded. His museum show “Cabinet of Curiosities: How Disability Was Kept in a Box” won the UK's Observer Ethical Award for Arts & Entertainment 2014.  www.matfraser.co.uk, Instagram: @mflidfraser, Twitter: @mat_fraser

Timotheus “T.J.” Gordon, Jr. is a research assistant at the Institute for Disability and Human Development (IDHD) at the University of Illinois at Chicago. As a research assistant, he supports advocacy projects on disability pride in communities of color and providing resources to families of people with disabilities in marginalized communities in the Chicagoland area. He is also an autistic self-advocate and creator of the Black Autist, a blog that centers on autism and disability acceptance in the African diaspora. Gordon is a co-leader of the Chicagoland Disabled People of Color Coalition (Chicagoland DPOCC), a group that promotes disability acceptance and inclusion in marginalized communities throughout the Chicagoland area.

Tsehaye Geralyn Hébert is an ADA 25 Advancing Leadership ambassador, a member of the Chicago Cultural Accessibility Coalition committee, and Artistic Associate at eta Creative Arts Foundation. She is a nationally acclaimed citizen playwright and cultural architect. Recognition includes: Alliance Kendeda National Graduate Playwright Award; Sundance Theatre Lab, Frank McCourt Memoir, and Cultural DC/SourceFest finalist; Voices Rising Fellow, Vermont Studio Center; The Guild Literary Complex 30 Writers to Watch; Midwest Black Playwrights Project winner, RhinoFest; Native Voices and Visions Louisiana State University.

Tommy Heffron is an award-winning film/video artist and an Assistant Professor in the Scripps Howard School of Journalism and Communications at Hampton University. In Chicago, he taught filmmaking and media studies to youth and digital video production to adults. He brought a storytelling and scene building workshops to incarcerated youth at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center and founded LitLAB@1512, a creative writing and design program for teens in the North Lawndale Community. At CAN TV, Chicago's Public Access station, he designed and managed the station’s training department and directed a monthly half-hour show for Special Olympics Chicago. His immersive films, videos, and performances explore the sensory-bound minefields of communication and understanding.

Riva Lehrer is an artist, writer and curator who focuses on the socially challenged body. She is best known for representations of people with impairments, and those whose sexuality or gender identity has long been stigmatized. Her work has been seen at the National Portrait Gallery, Yale University, the United Nations, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Arnot Museum, the DeCordova Museum, the Frye Museum, the Chicago Cultural Center, and the State of Illinois Museum. Awards include the 3Arts MacDowell Fellowship for writing, 3Arts Residency Fellowship, the Carnegie Mellon Fellowship, and the Prairie Fellowship. Her memoir, “Golem Girl,” will be published in 2020. Lehrer teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and in the Medical Humanities Departments of Northwestern University.

Tekki Lomnicki is the founder and Artistic Director of Tellin’ Tales Theatre, a 23-year-old company dedicated to shattering the barriers between the disabled and non-disabled worlds through the power of personal story.  She has written and performed 26 solo performance pieces including two full-length plays, When Heck Was a Puppy and Blurred Vision, and starred in the award-winning film, The Miracle by Jeffrey Jon Smith. She taught youth at Chicago’s Gallery 37 and After School Matters, and adults at the Victory Gardens Training Center. She is a recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Artists Fellowship in New Performance Forms, the 3Arts Award in Theater, and the Grigsby Award for Excellence in Solo Performance, the Dan Van Hecke Award for outstanding leadership and service to the disability community.

Crom Saunders is a tenured professor at Columbia College Chicago, where he is currently Director of the Deaf Studies B.A. degree program. Crom also works as a theatre interpreter and ASL master/director for several notable theater companies, including Steppenwolf Theatre and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, with nearly two decades of experience under his belt. In addition to his teaching and theatre work, Crom also presents workshops, and performs improv and his one-person show, “Cromania!” internationally. To see his work:  http://thecromsaunders.com, http://writercrom.blogspot.com, or “Ink-Stained Fingertips” on Facebook and YouTube.