Deaf West Theatre’s Big River magically mixes American Sign Language into a great American musical.
By David C. Nichols
All photos: Craig Schwartz
In the late 1980s, National Theatre of the Deaf actor Ed Waterstreet and spouse Linda Bove moved to Los Angeles, where opportunities for hearing-impaired thespians were scarce at best. Waterstreet, who has been deaf since age two, set about to change that by launching Deaf West Theatre in 1990. Since then, the company’s reach has expanded far beyond the original dream of its founder: to provide both deaf and hearing audiences with a "rare communal experience."
That reach touches the East Coast this summer, when Roundabout Theatre Company presents Deaf West’s re-envisioning of Roger Miller and William Hauptman’s Big River at the American Airlines Theatre. The company’s staging of this 1985 Tony Award-winning musical adaptation of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a bona fide Los Angeles landmark. From the 2001 opening in the aftermath of September 11th (amazingly, the Broadway musical’s L.A. premiere) through its transfer to the Mark Taper Forum, the first such upgrade in that venue’s history, Big River has left critics struggling for superlatives and audiences scrambling for tickets.
The production’s intimacy and integrity is typical of all Deaf West’s shows from the company’s inception. Deaf West was the first professional resident company for deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing audiences in the Western United States, and the first theatre in the nation to be helmed by a deaf artistic director.
The company’s numerous citations include the prestigious International Fete d’Excellence 2002 Gold Medal Award for Cultural Education in Theatre at Geneva. Big River itself took top Los Angeles Critic’s Circle and Ovation Award honors. Located in the NoHo Arts District in North Hollywood, the company has also received continuous governmental grants, in recognition of their commitment to bridging cultures through theatre.
Deaf West has arrived at its unique means of theatrical expression by eschewing traditional approaches like sideline interpreters or closed captioning. Termed by company members as "a third language," their seamless blend of American Sign Language, creative voicing, and reinterpreted text is not compensation, but a vital new theatrical vocabulary.
Deaf West’s seamless blend of
American Sign Language, creative voicing,
and reinterpreted text is "a third language,"
a vital new theatrical vocabulary.
For example, the company’s 2000 production of A Streetcar Named Desire landed a hearing Blanche DuBois into the home of her deaf sister Stella, married to a deaf Stanley Kowalski. This brilliantly illuminated the combustible gulf between Tennessee Williams’ characters, indelibly so when Troy Kotsur’s Stanley, otherwise signing while a hearing actor spoke his lines, voiced
the famous cry of "Stella!" from his marrow.
Such creative license evolves from play to play, dictated by the script requirements and the actors. Thus Deaf West has developed a distinctive performing ethos, described by Center Theatre Group artistic and producing director Gordon Davidson as "magic." He says, "At a certain point, you can’t tell who’s singing, who’s signing, who’s hearing, and who’s not."
Singing? One of Waterstreet’s dreams was "a deaf musical…I wanted to see the music." This implausible dream came true with Deaf West’s 2000 Oliver! The hit staging by Jeff Calhoun introduced the Tony nominated director and choreographer to the challenges of staging non-hearing performers. "It never occurred to me going in that you’re going to have to stand up, walk onstage, and tap each actor on the shoulder every time you want to say anything."
Successfully negotiating such idiosyncratic requirements prepared Calhoun for the intricacies of Big River. He was determined to keep Twain’s never-more applicable political content from dwarfing the storytelling. His solution was "to center on the spatial elements, without losing the innocence or the charm."
This certainly applies to Ray Klausen’s ingenious set which features scattered pages from the book’s original edition. "The common denominator between the deaf and hearing communities is the written word," says Calhoun. "So I wanted the whole stage to look like Mark Twain’s novel exploded all over the theater."
With Huck embodied by the marvelous deaf actor Tyrone Giordano (described by Calhoun as "the fulcrum," and slated to reprise the role in Manhattan), the concept adds Twain himself as narrator and voice of Huck. The doubled impact quadruples in the casting of Huck’s sodden father with two actors simultaneously (one signing, one singing), who then portray the hucksters who commandeer Huck and slave Jim’s Mississippi River trek.
Perhaps the most amazing aspect of this production is how the contrast of sign language and spoken word underlines the core issues of racism and intolerance—and vice versa. "In the novel, Jim’s daughter is deaf. People think we’ve invented it, but it’s straight from Twain. Since the ASL is also simply there without comment, each metaphor feeds the other," says Calhoun.
This culminates in the evening’s defining moment, a transcendent second-act ensemble coup involving suddenly unaccompanied signing. This was, according to Calhoun, "A happy accident that occurred during techs at the Taper, while I was waiting for the lighting designer."
Serendipity has accompanied both company and production from the start. Waterstreet has said, "Growing up, I imagined some way to use all the dynamics of the theater. Could we feel equal with hearing people and also get greater impact for both? Could we make something new and better for both hearing and non-hearing?" As Manhattan is about to discover, the answer is
a resounding yes.
David C. Nichols is a freelance reviewer for the Los Angeles Times.
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