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Posts Tagged ‘ASL’

Sign Language in Dance

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on April 23, 2024| 1 Comment »

Photo: John Labarbera.
Company 360 Dance Theatre in the show Nine.

To follow up on my recent post about deaf actors performing for general audiences, I have a related story about the use of signing in dance. I always felt that watching signing was like watching dance.

Lauren Wingenroth writes at Dance Magazine, “For Deaf audiences, watching performances with traditional sign language interpretation can feel like watching a tennis match: Their focus has to toggle between whatever is happening onstage and the interpreter, often off to the side, who might be communicating what the music sounds like or what’s being said. That’s if the performance even has an interpreter, which all too often is not the case.

“But attend a Company 360 Dance Theatre performance and the tables are turned. The Fredericksburg, Virginia–based company, led by choreographer Bailey Anne Vincent, who is Deaf, incorporates American Sign Language into all its productions. ‘If you’re a Deaf person, you’re in on the story more than a hearing person,’ says Vincent.

“For Vincent, using ASL in her choreography — which might mean incorporating a sign to emphasize an emotion a character is feeling, or to communicate what a lyric is saying — is both an artistic choice and an accessibility-related one. Though her audience is mostly hearing, ‘I still try to approach all our shows assuming there might be someone who is Deaf in the audience,’ she says. But it’s also just a natural extension of the fact that ASL is Vincent’s preferred language. ‘When I choreograph, the way that my mind thinks is in my own language,’ she says. …

“Deaf actress and dancer Alexandria Wailes feels similarly. ‘Dance and using ASL are both so embedded in who I am, as part of my identity,’ says Wailes through an interpreter. ‘I can’t really separate one from the other.’ …

“To get a sense of the deepening relationship between dance and ASL, look at choreographer and performer Brandon Kazen-Maddox’s career thus far. A GODA (grandchild of Deaf adults) and native ASL signer, Kazen-Maddox was long one of the New York City performing arts scene’s go-to interpreters, a reliable presence at performances, talkbacks, and more.

“But in 2019, choreographer Kayla Hamilton asked Kazen-Maddox to join her New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks piece not as an interpreter but as an artist. ‘She asked me to represent all sounds in sign language, and also use my body as a dancer,’ says Kazen-Maddox. ‘It was the most mind-shifting thing for me.’ …

“The experience was the beginning of a shift in Kazen-Maddox’s career, away from simply facilitating communication between­ Deaf and hearing individuals as an interpreter­ and towards an emerging genre Kazen-Maddox calls ‘American Sign Language dance theater.’ …

“Always key to this work, says Wailes: Deaf or Hard of Hearing performers who are ‘bilingual’ in dance and ASL. ‘If you’re trying to be more inclusive, great,’ she says. ‘Who are the people who are onstage? What are their lived experiences and how does this reveal itself­ in the work?’ …

“Until recently, Betsy Quillen experienced performances for Deaf audiences and hearing audiences separately. ‘It’s one or the other — it’s very isolated,’ says Quillen, who is a Hard of Hearing actor and theater director. …

“So when choreographer William Smith asked Quillen to collaborate with him on a piece for Roanoke Ballet Theatre that incorporated sign language, they had a clear goal: to make something that both Deaf and hearing audiences could understand and enjoy.

“ ‘My specific role was making sure that Deaf eyes would understand it, and that we were making our Deaf audiences feel welcomed and included and respected,’ says Quillen. ‘But we also made sure to show our hearing audience that this piece is made even more beautiful because we’ve included the Deaf audiences — that all of this ASL in every part of the production is enhancing the experience for everybody in the audience.’ “

More at Dance Magazine, here.

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When the Characters Are Deaf

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on April 14, 2024| 4 Comments »

Photo: Signature Theatre.
A behind-the-scenes look at the rehearsal process for the musical Private Jones, featuring deaf and hard-of-hearing artists.

When we were watching the Hulu series Only Murders in the Building, we noticed efforts by the producers to be inclusive. For example, a key character is deaf. When he is on, he uses sign language and we read subtitles. A few other characters use signing for his benefit. He can also read lips.

A push for diversity and inclusion is not happening only in streaming services. At the Signature Theatre in Virginia, for example, deaf and hard-of-hearing characters powered a whole musical.

As Thomas Floyd has the story at the Washington Post.

“Signing, singing and soundscapes are intermingled on a late-January afternoon at Signature Theatre’s Arlington, Va., rehearsal studio, where the cast of Private Jones is marching through the world-premiere musical’s opening scene.

“Loosely inspired by Gomer Jones, a deaf sniper who fought in World War I, the show opens in rural Wales with an 8-year-old Jones getting a lesson from his gruff father in sharpshooting and hard truths. As the only scene before Jones loses his hearing, it uses radio-play-like foley effects to create the sounds that will echo in the character’s head through the rest of his life — and give deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences visual cues to associate with those sounds.

“When Johnny Link, the hard-of-hearing actor playing Jones, raises a prop rifle, another performer flaps an umbrella to conjure the sound of birds fluttering overhead. A ratchet replicates a rifle cocking. A snare drum stands in for a gunshot. All the while, two actors narrate — one in spoken English, one in American Sign Language — and writer-director Marshall Pailet reminds his cast to be aware of the open captions that will flank the stage at every show. …

“Accessibility is a guiding principle for [writer-director Marshall Pailet], the hearing playwright and composer who wrote the book, music and lyrics for Private Jones. … The musical features a cast of hearing, hard-of-hearing and deaf actors performing dialogue in three languages — English, ASL and British Sign Language — while also delivering Pailet’s Celtic-inspired score. To Pailet and Alexandria Wailes, the show’s director of artistic sign language, no scene should be staged without careful consideration of how narrative intent is both seen and heard.

“ ‘If the piano does something that is supposed to evoke an emotion and there’s not a visual equivalent of that, we haven’t done our job,’ Pailet says. ‘Theater is taking psychology and turning it into behavior. So everything is visual, everything is behavioral, and it’s also therefore a perfect medium for sign language, which is a visual language. It exists to be seen.’

“Pailet acknowledges that the origins of Private Jones are fairly mundane: He was interested in writing a World War I trench warfare story — specifically exploring how being asked to commit violence can reorient a person’s worldview — when he came across an article with a couple of sentences about the deaf Welsh sniper. …

“After traveling to Wales … and tracking down war records he believes belonged to Jones, Pailet took an early iteration of the show to Connecticut’s Goodspeed Festival of New Musicals in January 2020. He subsequently connected with Wailes, the ASL master on the Oscar-winning film CODA, and the duo began swapping ideas during the pandemic on how to better integrate deaf and hard-of-hearing perspectives.

“While the show features a narrator performing in ASL, Wailes pitched the idea of also incorporating British Sign Language during dialogue exchanges between characters who would have spoken in that wholly different dialect. …

“Finding the right actor to enlist as Jones — a deaf character who tricks his fellow soldiers into thinking he’s hearing and carries much of the show’s vocals — also proved critical. As a musical theater performer who has used hearing aids since childhood, Link came with connections to the hearing and deaf worlds that the character bridges. …

“ ‘I have never felt so seen in a character,’ Link says. ‘Truly, this is one of the most special projects I’ve ever worked on because it pulls from different parts of my life. I feel a lot of the things that Gomer feels. I just knew I had to do it.’

“Pailet says unfamiliar perspectives are at the core of Private Jones, which uses its innovative soundscapes to place the audience in Jones’s shoes while interrogating how people empathize with or dehumanize those they don’t understand. …

“Having spent the better part of five years developing the show, Pailet hopes this isn’t his last shot at envisioning Jones’s journey onstage.”

More at the Post, here.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=qrzBPRhbBS0%3Fsi%3DnZf_K8kfsB2xQUyo

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School of Kindness

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 3, 2022| 7 Comments »

I wanted to share something from the Christian Science Monitor editor about about a reporter who died recently.

“David Clark Scott traveled the world: He roamed throughout Latin America as the Mexico City bureau chief and reached into Southeast Asia as Australia bureau chief. He supported and counseled dozens of Monitor reporters as international editor.

“When he wrote columns, his favorite stories were of people taking the time to help one another. He even produced an entire podcast.

In these times, when everyone is fixated on what went wrong, it’s important to look for what is going right, and sometimes, frankly, it needs to be at the top of the page.

“Dave passed on this week. On his last day of work, he pitched three stories, any one of which would have made a lovely column. But, he told me, he’d already ‘put a call in to the principal at the Nansemond Parkway Elementary School cuz, well, that’s the intro that tugs at my heart.’

“It did mine, too, so I wanted to share it with you.

“The Nansemond students in Suffolk, Virginia, have been learning a new language: sign language, so they can communicate with food nutrition service associate Leisa Duckwall, who is deaf. It started with a fourth grade teacher, Kari Maskelony, who has deaf family members and started teaching her class. This month it spread when Principal Janet Wright-Davis decided the whole school would learn a new sign every week in honor of Disabilities Awareness Month.

” ‘I don’t think [the students] saw it as a disability,’ Dr. Wright-Davis told me over the phone. It was just a new way to communicate. Her biggest surprise? ‘How much they want to learn it.’ Their favorite sign: pizza.

“The difference in the cafeteria is palpable, she says. Instead of pointing, as they used to, the students sign their requests. ‘She’s smiling and they’re smiling, and it’s just a different environment,’ says Dr. Wright-Davis.

“Ms. Duckwall has come to morning announcements to teach everyone new signs and has signed that day’s menu. Dr. Wright-Davis gets stopped in the hall by students signing good morning and wanting to show her what they’ve learned. Instead of stopping at the end of this month, the students are going to keep learning all year.

“The school had its Trunk or Treat event Thursday evening, and the children were signing as they celebrated Halloween. ‘One gentleman came out, and he was signing,’ Dr. Wright-Davis says. It made her realize the lessons wouldn’t be confined to the lunchroom or even the school. ‘They’re going to encounter someone, even if it’s just to say good morning, or please, or thank you. … Now they know a little bit more to show some gratitude.’

“There’s plenty to learn from Nansemond: Show some gratitude, look for ways to make people feel welcome, and seek out kindness and celebrate it when you find it. Dave always did.”

See the Monitor, here, and more at WAVY television, here. No firewalls.

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Opera By and For the Deaf

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 9, 2021| 1 Comment »

gordon-stewart
Photo: Victory Hall Opera.
Miriam Gordon-Stewart (above), artistic director of Victory Hall opera in Charlottesville, Virginia, and music director Brenda Patterson had the original idea for deaf opera.

Right before the pandemic, a cutting-edge company in Virginia put on an opera with deaf performers. The company is still going strong. Undaunted by Covid, it claims it was made for this moment and is offering a roster of outdoor performances for its 2021-2022 season.

An example of the company’s creativity was the deafness project. Thomas Floyd wrote the report for the Washington Post.

“Alek Lev understands that he’s not exactly a member of the deaf family, but he feels comfortable enough calling himself an ‘in-law.’ As a student at Wesleyan University, he took a sign-language class on a whim and subsequently dated a deaf person. Over the past two decades, the writer, director, actor and American Sign Language interpreter has largely worked in the deaf community on films and stage productions.

” ‘As someone who is fluent in sign language and has done this for such a long time, just seeing people sign onstage isn’t particularly thrilling now,’ Lev says. ‘It needs to be thrilling for some other reason.’

“One such reason arose in 2018, when Miriam Gordon-Stewart and Brenda Patterson of the boundary-pushing Victory Hall Opera in Charlottesville pitched Lev on a production of Francis Poulenc’s 1957 opera Dialogues of the Carmelites, but with deaf performers.

“The concept came about after Gordon-Stewart, Victory Hall’s artistic director, and Patterson, the music director, read Andrew Solomon’s 2012 nonfiction book Far From the Tree, about how families accommodate children with disabilities. The book mentioned ASL’s roots in French Sign Language, dating to the deaf community of 18th-century Paris. They then drew parallels to Dialogues of the Carmelites, which follows a convent of Carmelite nuns pressured to renounce their vocation during the French Revolution.

” ‘Within the deaf community, there are a lot of similar issues that come up,’ Gordon-Stewart says. ‘There’s a pressure to assimilate with hearing culture, for example, which is intensely political. These things worked together for us into the idea of a production of Dialogues of the Carmelites that would be set in a deaf convent.’

“Victory Hall Opera [took] a step toward making the production a reality with a workshop Feb. 27 [in 2020, featuring] three sopranos singing alongside three deaf actors. …

” ‘There’s something about the challenge of figuring out how to do this and why to do this each time that is just more exciting to me than putting on yet another version of a play that’s been put on several times. … I like that we have a whole new problem now. We have sign language. We have deaf actors. We have hearing actors who don’t know sign language. I love the puzzle.’

“ ‘I’ve done a lot of workshops and productions that include hearing and Deaf actors, but the fascinating thing about those experiences is that it’s never the same,’ [Sandra Mae Frank, who in 2015 played the lead role of Wendla in Deaf West Theatre’s Tony-nominated revival of Spring Awakening on Broadway] writes in an email. …

“Most of the roles in that Spring Awakening production were doubled by a deaf actor, who used sign language, and a hearing actor, who simultaneously performed the vocals. Although that has become a common template for deaf theater, the [Victory Hall] team wants its performers to complement one another in an artistically innovative way. … The deaf actors act out the plot while the singers serve as spiritual guides, representing women who have endured similar oppression.

” ‘If we’re going to create an art form out of this, then we need to push the concept one step further than it’s been pushed before,’ Gordon-Stewart says. ‘There’s a potential for the result being a marriage between two art forms, rather than just the two art forms being simultaneously performed. You bring a potentially heightened physicality to both ends of that equation, making it a more visually compelling art form for the deaf performance, and making it a more heightened experience for the hearing audience.’ ”

More at the Washington Post, here.

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Sign Language for Music

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 21, 2021| 2 Comments »

Photo: Colorado Public Radio.
Cherish Ross is with FLOW, a sign language interpreting agency that specializes exclusively in performing arts.

So many interesting kinds of jobs in the world! And the luckiest people are the ones whose work aligns with what they love doing. Consider those who interpret for the deaf at concerts.

Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim has a cool story at the New York Times. “On a recent afternoon in a brightly lit studio in Brooklyn, Mervin Primeaux-O’Bryant and Brandon Kazen-Maddox were filming a music video. They were recording a cover version of ‘Midnight Train to Georgia,’ but the voices that filled the room were those of Gladys Knight and the Pips, who made the song a hit in the 1970s. And yet the two men in the studio were also singing — with their hands.

“Primeaux-O’Bryant is a deaf actor and dancer; Kazen-Maddox is a hearing dancer and choreographer who is, thanks to seven deaf family members, a native speaker of American Sign Language. Their version of ‘Midnight Train to Georgia’ is part of a 10-song series of American Sign Language covers of seminal works by Black female artists that Kazen-Maddox is producing for Broadstream, an arts streaming platform.

“Around the world, music knits together communities as it tells foundational stories, teaches emotional intelligence and cements a sense of belonging. … As sign language music videos proliferate on YouTube, where they spark comments from deaf and hearing viewers, the richness of American Sign Language, or A.S.L., has gotten a broader stage.

“ ‘Music is many different things to different people,’ Alexandria Wailes, a deaf actress and dancer told me in a video interview, using an interpreter. Wailes performed ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ at the 2018 Super Bowl, and last year drew thousands of views on YouTube with her sign language contribution to ‘Sing Gently,’ a choral work by Eric Whitacre. …

“A good A.S.L. performance prioritizes dynamics, phrasing and flow. The parameters of sign language — hand shape, movement, location, palm orientation and facial expression — can be combined with elements of visual vernacular, a body of codified gestures, allowing a skilled A.S.L. speaker to engage in the kind of sound painting that composers use to enrich a text.

“At the recent video shoot, Gladys Knight’s voice boomed out of a large speaker while a much smaller one was tucked inside Primeaux-O’Bryant’s clothes, so that he could ‘tangibly feel the music,’ he said in an interview, with Kazen-Maddox interpreting. Out of sight of the camera, an interpreter stood ready to translate any instructions from the crew, all hearing, while a laptop displayed the song lyrics.

“In the song, the backup singers — here personified by Kazen-Maddox — encourage Knight as she rallies herself to join her lover, who has returned home to Georgia. In the original recording the Pips repeat the phrase ‘all aboard.’ But as Kazen-Maddox signed it, those words grew into signs evoking the movement of the train and its gears. A playful tug at an invisible whistle corresponded to the woo-woo of the band’s horns. Primeaux-O’Bryant signed the lead vocals with movements that gently extended the words, just as in the song: on the drawn-out ‘oh’ of ‘not so long ago-oh-oh,’ his hands fluttered into his lap. The two men also incorporated signs from Black A.S.L.

‘The hands have their own emotions,’ Primeaux-O’Bryant said. ‘They have their own mind.’

“Deaf singers prepare for their interpretations by experiencing a song through any means available to them. Many people speak about their heightened receptivity to the vibrations of sound, which they experience through their body. As a dancer trained in ballet, Primeaux-O’Bryant said he was particularly attuned to the vibrations of a piano as transmitted through a wooden floor.

“Primeaux-O’Bryant was a student at the Model Secondary School for the Deaf in Washington in the early 1990s when a teacher asked him to sign a Michael Jackson song during Black History Month. His first reaction was to refuse.

“But the teacher ‘pulled it out’ of him, he said, and he was thrust into the limelight in front of a large audience. Then, Primeaux-O’Bryant said, ‘the lights came on and my cue happened and I just exploded and signed the work and it felt good.’ Afterward the audience erupted in applause: ‘I fell in love with performing onstage.’ ”

Find information on things like the role of ballet training in ASL interpretation, the impact of the pandemic, and Egyptian Arabic Sign Language at the Times, here.

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