Joseph Shahadi is an interdisciplinary artist. He makes experimental theater and performance, installations, photographs, video, works on paper, and paintings. His work is about how political moments and movements become culture, focusing on memory, violence and the gaze. Joseph has been produced in New York at Collective Unconscious, the Culture Project, the Ohio Theatre and the American Livingroom series at HERE among others, regionally throughout the United States, and internationally. His early play AMERICAN STANDARD was produced off-off Broadway with Expanded Arts. His visual art has been exhibited in New York and regionally at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE). Joseph holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from New York University, where he taught for five years at the Tisch School of the Arts. He has been published in the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism in a special section he also co-edited, the Drama Review (TDR), and he contributed a chapter to Doomed By Hope, the first western text about Arab theater written in English. Joseph has been a Visiting Artist and Guest Lecturer in Theatre and Film, and an invited speaker and panelist, notably at Ralph Lemon’s Culture/Identity/Belief Forum and Redefining Performance in the 21st Century, convened by RoseLee Goldberg for Performa. He co-founded and Executive Directs the Art of Brooklyn Film Festival, named  "the signature film festival of the borough" in 2025. He lives in Brooklyn. 

Kari Morris (they/them) is thrilled and honored to continue their collaboration with Dr. Ash Marinaccio and the DocBloc community. 

Kari is an award-winning, non-binary, neurodivergent, multi-hyphenate artist and arts educator based in New York City. As a performer, they relish devised work and specialize in quirky underdogs with a soulful soprano (a “Julie and Carol” special with a Jane Lynch edge). As a writer, they pen stories about magic, spirituality, queer identity and the EXvangelical experience. 

Their latest short film, “Counting”, won first place in the shorts category in the North by Northwest Micro-Budget Film Festival and Best Screenplay Award at the Fargo Moorhead LGBT Film Festival. Most recently, they were an inaugural member of DocBloc’s Intergenerational Theater Lab, and its devised piece, Now and Then and Now, was well-received at The Tank. A veteran performer with Frigid New York’s Living Radio, they’ve voiced and/or penned 100+ roles. Other favorites include Mrs. Ruthers in “Attackazoids, DEPLOY!” (Grand Prize Nominee, USA Film Festival), Iris in Children’s Letters to God (TYA National Tour) and Helena in A MidSummer Night’s Dream (Lucille Lortel). 

As an arts educator, Kari has co-created, adapted, and directed 100+ original short plays / film projects for and with K-8 children, including adaptations of both Shakespeare and musicals. 

In addition to their one person show currently in development with DocBloc, Kari will also soon launch Play Without Ceasing: a Podcast For EXvangelical Artists.  

A cum laude graduate of both Millikin University and The New School for Drama, Kari is a proud member of both Actor’s Equity Association and The Ring of Keys.