ACCESS Tampere Festival will be hosted by Eero Enqvist and Dawn Jani Birley!

Eero Enqvist (MA in Theatre) is a multi-talented artist who has made over 150 theater roles. In addition to acting in theater, TV productions and films, he has also directed numerous performances for poetry, theater, deaf theater and bilingual theatre. He is a passionate writer, who wants to go deeper into the human soul. Eero’s first vocational qualification is a sign language interpreter, which gives him a special status at the heart of the Finnish sign language community and culture. As a member of ACCAC Finland he has been hosting all the Finnish ACCAC events since 2013.

Dawn Jani Birley was born to a third-generation Deaf family in Saskatchewan, Canada and identified herself as culturally and linguistically Deaf. She is a multi-award-winning professional Deaf actor with more than 15 years of experience working all over the world. Holding a Master of Arts degree in Physical Theatre with Merit from London, it is her desire to continue creating work that challenges people’s perception of Deafness as well as rebutting ideologies and myths surrounding Deafness.

Eero and Dawn have acted together in numerous theater pieces, one of which is Kukunor ja Unikuu, a piece written by Eero and performed bilingually as part of the Creative Europe -project in 2017-2019. The performance was also seen in South Korea as a part of the ACCAC-event in 2016. Eero has also directed the performance Who will comfort Toffle (Kuka lohduttaisi Nyytiä) which will be part of the ACCAC Culture 2.0 Festival’s programme.