ABOUT THE FILMMAKER: Lee Lawson is a Neurodiverse Toronto-based filmmaker and performer whose work explores embodied storytelling, intimate female experience. As an actor her work has screened at TIFF, on HBO, in installation at the AGO and most recently at Cannes through Telefilm's NSOT program. As a director her work has been featured on CBC Radio’s Here and Now and supported by Ontario Art Council, The Chalmers Fund, Canada Council for the Arts, The National Filmboard of Canada, Panavision and WFW's.

SEXUAL CONTENT/NUDITY on this project: For ADEV taking a shower, there will be NO nudity. Both performers will be in NUDE body suits/full coverage modesty wear. We will be filling the room with so much mist/water vapour that you won’t be able to tell where their bodies start.

“Intimacy” is required only from ADEV and NIXA. The “biting” will not involve actual biting with teeth, we’ll be figuring out how to simulate this with lips by working with our intimacy coordinator.

Polycepolis is an experimental movement based short film.

Polycephaly is the condition of having more than one head.

Polycepolis is a place where every being is two people in one suit.

The film explores the experience of being part of a couple through a neurodiverse lens.

All roles/ characters in this project will be played be actors who compose one half of the “polycep” couple, ie. each “couple” will be composed of two actors wearing one suit (so they look like one body with two heads).

The world of Polycepolis is populated by beings who have to negotiate every single movement and share every single moment with another person. Their happiness is completely tied to their other half.

A note from neurodiverse filmmaker, Lee Lawson is that through this piece she hopes to embody and literalize the joy, comedy, horror, and drama of being bound to another person, as well as the reality of finding the strength to stand on your own – in direct opposition to ableist norms.

The world of Polycepolis mirrors our own. Through our casting, we aim to reflect the rich diversity of abilities, ethnicities, orientations, genders and neurotypes that make up our world.

The story follows a female member of a ‘Polycep’ couple named Adev as she witnesses the partnerships that surround her. She watches the ways that others manage to find happiness, mourn loss, transgress boundaries and find fulfillment in an effort to understand her sense of disconnection.

Ultimately, she realizes that she cannot be happy bound to another. She must be reborn as her OWN person.

This is an Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council For The Arts funded short film.