The Disabled List Comedy Festival 2023 [In-Person Only]
About
** Both days are now AT CAPACITY for wheelchair seating and SOLD OUT! **
** Both nights of the program will feature ASL interpretation and live captioning in the cinema. **
Ticketing, concessions, cinemas, restrooms, and our public edit lab are located on Northwest Film Forum’s ground floor, which is wheelchair accessible. All doors in Northwest Film Forum are non-motorized, and may require staff assistance to open. Our upstairs workshop room is not wheelchair accessible.
The majority of seats in our main cinema are 21″ wide from armrest to armrest; some seats are 19″ wide. We are working on creating the option of removable armrests!
We have a limited number of assistive listening devices available for programs hosted in our larger theater, Cinema 1. These devices are maintained by the Technical Director, and can be requested at the ticketing and concessions counter. Also available at the front desk is a Sensory Kit you can borrow, which includes a Communication Card, noise-reducing headphones, and fidget toys.
The Forum does NOT have assistive devices for the visually impaired, and is not (yet) a scent-free venue. Our commitment to increasing access for our audiences is ongoing, and we welcome all public input on the subject!
If you have additional specific questions about accessibility at our venue, please contact our Patron Services Manager at maria@nwfilmforum.org. Our phone number (206-329-2629) is voicemail-only, but we check it often.
Made possible due to a grant from Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, in partnership with Sensory Access, our Sensory Access document presents a visual and descriptive walk-through of the NWFF space. View it in advance of attending an in-person event at bit.ly/nwffsocialnarrativepdf, in order to prepare yourself for the experience.
NWFF patrons will be required to wear masks that cover both nose and mouth while in the building. Disposable masks are available at the door for those who need them. We are not currently checking vaccination cards. Recent variants of COVID-19 readily infect and spread between individuals regardless of vaccination status.
Read more about NWFF’s policies regarding cleaning, masks, and capacity limitations here.
The Disabled List announces the first ever disability-focused comedy festival in the Pacific Northwest. The Disabled List Comedy Festival, produced and hosted by local comedians Dan Hurwitz and Kayla Brown, takes place from Jan. 27–28 at the Northwest Film Forum in Seattle, WA.
The Disabled List is a collective of disabled comedians that has been performing in and around Seattle since 2018. In 2021, we produced a short film that debuted at Northwest Film Forum’s Local Sightings Film Festival and was screened at several other film festivals throughout the state. The Disabled List Comedy Festival will feature filmed sketch and live stand-up by comedians with disabilities, including standup from an out-of-town headliner: Gibran Saleem from New York City.
Closing night will kick off with a screening of the award-eligible This Is Spinal Injury, followed by live comedy. The movie, which premiered at Local Sightings Film Festival in September 2021, follows the exploits of a troupe of disabled comedians attempting to put on a comedy show during a global pandemic.
Lineup
FRIDAY, 7PM
Andy Iwancio (10 min)
Gretta Gimp (10 min)
Michael Bellevue (10 min)
~ Intermission ~ (15 min)
King Khazm (15 min)
Cheri Hardman (10 min)
Gibran Saleem (20 min)
SATURDAY, 7PM
This is Spinal Injury (Dan Hurwitz & Kayla Brown, US, 2021, 26 min)
Crystal Liston (10 min)
Howie Echo-Hawk (10 min)
~ Intermission ~ (15 min)
King Khazm (15 min)
Laura Lyons (10 min)
Gibran Saleem (20 min)
Headliner bio:
Gibran Saleem
Gibran Saleem was born in North Carolina and raised in Virginia in a Pakistani household. He started comedy while attending graduate school at New York University for Psychology. While attending school he was individually handpicked as an MVP nominee on the national TBS Rooftop Comedy College Competition and was a two-time recipient of the UCB diversity scholarship.
Gibran is the only comedian to ever be selected as a finalist for both the Stand-Up NBC and NBC’s Late Night program; where he was one of six individuals hand-selected from over 1,000 submissions.
Gibran has been featured on MTV, TV Land, Popcorn Flix, PBS, CUNY TV, VOA, Elite Daily, and Cosmopolitan and performed his stand-up television debut on Gotham Comedy Live for AXS TV. He was the focus of an international documentary on NHK TV called Asian Dreamers: Brown is Funny and has been featured in festivals nationally across the states as well as winning 1st place in the Hoboken comedy festival. Gibran is a staple among college campuses and travels throughout the year. He can be seen on Pamela Adlon’s Better Things on FX.
Musician bio:
King Khazm
King Khazm is an emcee, producer and community organizer who has become a prominent figure in the Hip-Hop community within Seattle and around the world. His work to engage and empower communities is demonstrated through over 25 years of music, art and community service.
King Khazm has performed all around the country and world including the World’s Fair & Expo 2020 (Dubai), Hempfest (Seattle), Galpao Aplauso (Brazil), Festival de la Juventud (Guatemala), and Strictly Street (Malaysia), Folklife Festival (Seattle), sharing stages with the likes of Naughty By Nature, Gza, Kurtis Blow, Zion I, Aceyalone and others.
As a producer, he has collaborated with artists such as Abstract Rude, Afu-Ra, Def-I, Eli Almic, Gabriel Teodros, OneBeLo, Sadat X, Sean Price and Xololanxinxo.
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube
The Disabled List returning champs:
Andy Iwancio
Howie Echo-Hawk
Howie Echo-Hawk is a Queer, nonbinary “comedian” and all-around Native person.
Michael Bellevue
Michael Bellevue is an avid sailor, reader and writer of Russian, standup producer, avid volunteer who’s produced several fundraisers for nonprofits, comedian, chess player since age 5, linguistics fan, and, self-evidently, Black. He volunteered at a food bank for 15 months during the pandemic.
Cheri Hardman
Cheri Hardman captivates audiences with hilarious tales about being a plus size, menopausal babe. She won Tacoma Comedy Club’s “The Comedy Voice,” was a finalist in Nate Jackson’s Super Funny Comedy Club’s “Funniest MF Out Here” and performed in Seattle International Comedy Competition. Her bawdy, sassy style makes her the perfect host for “Heavy Petting with Cheri Hardman.”
Crystal Liston
Crystal is a PNW native and has been in the disability game for 32 yrs. She has decided to throw her hat into the comedy arena in hopes that the fame will help out her political career.
Laura Lyons
Laura Lyons started comedy in Davenport, Iowa 2015. In 2016, she took a year off to focus on recovery from substance abuse. Laura returned to the stage in 2017 in Denver, Colorado and has been performing ever since. She moved to Seattle in pursuit of comedy and a legal education and she believes that every city’s police force should be abolished.
Gretta Gimp
Gretta Gimp has the disability Cerebral Palsy. She has been doing “stand up“ since 2016. Her humor is self-deprecating and cathartic. She finds humor to be the best way to educate people about disability topics and believes that having a disability is just an ordinary fact of life—not anything extraordinary or inspirational.
Meet the hosts:
Kayla Brown
Kayla Brown (she/her) is a disabled activist and amature comedian from Seattle. She believes that art and other media forms are a way to break down stereotypes, build community, and transform people’s worlds. When not at work or school, Kayla co-produces the comedy show The Disabled List, plays video games, reads fanfiction, and eats snacks.
Dan Hurwitz
Dan Hurwitz is a disabled, Black, and Jewish writer, comedian, and filmmaker. In 2018, he co-founded The Disabled List, an ever-growing group of disabled comedians from the Pacific Northwest. Dan was a semi-finalist in both the Laughs Comedy Competition (2019) and the Stand-Up NBC comedy competition (2019). During the Covid-19 pandemic, Dan co-wrote, co-directed, and co-starred in “This Is Spinal Injury” (2021), a mockumentary about the trials of disabled artists during quarantine, which premiered at Northwest Film Forum’s Local Sightings Film Festival in September, 2021.