Deaf West Theatre

Like regular theater, but better

Something Old

Musical theater is one of my favorite things on the planet (you don’t say), but it does have certain limitations inherent to the genre. One is a significant reliance on audio and listening to music, often in seats that are too far away for lipreading, which makes musicals difficult to access for those who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. Many theaters have sign language interpreters at select performances, which goes a long way in making both musicals and plays more accessible. However, that requires people to split their attention between the actors on stage and the interpreter, all but guaranteeing they will miss essential parts of the show.

But since humans are very cool and innovative, deaf people have been making theater for deaf people for decades. The National Theatre for the Deaf, founded in 1967, is one of the earliest and most prominent deaf theaters. However, today I want to use a different organization as an example: Deaf West Theatre.

Deaf actor Ed Waterstreet toured with the National Theatre for the Deaf for 15 years, but was not satisfied with what he perceived as a limited approach to deaf theater at the time. In 1991 he produced an all-American Sign Language version of the play The Gin Game. He chose that play because it made the deafness of the actors and characters incidental and not central to the conflict. His young theater company secured a 99-seat theater in North Hollywood and started using a model where ASL was translated into spoken English for hearing patrons who were not proficient in ASL.

They innovated further with a production of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest in which Nurse Ratched both spoke English and signed, whereas the patients only signed. The communication differences heightened the relationships between characters and intensified the script to a new level, which resonated with audiences and led to significant success.

The first Deaf West Broadway production was Big River in 2004. An adaptation of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the musical was first on Broadway in 1985 before being reimagined by Deaf West in 2001. The juxtaposition between deaf and hearing actors expertly wove into the show’s focus on the relationship between Black and white characters, and the production received two Tony Award nominations. Deaf West Theatre also received a special Tony Awards Honor for Excellence in recognition of their spectacular innovation on the medium.

One of the actors in Big River was Michael Arden, in his Broadway debut. He returned to Deaf West Theatre in 2014 to direct their production of Spring Awakening, a rock musical about the terrible lives of German teenagers in the 1890s. Those teens were struggling. The original Broadway cast of Spring Awakening included Andy Mientus, who is married to Michael Arden. Somewhere along the line they had the idea to collaborate with Deaf West on Spring Awakening, which is a match made in heaven. The iconic angst musical is fundamentally about communication problems, primarily in not giving teenagers proper sex education and in denying their voice and autonomy (with disastrous results all around). The careful selection of which characters would be played by hearing actors and which would be played by deaf actors (with hearing actors playing their “voices” in musical numbers) elevated the material to a whole new level of emotional resonance without changing a word.

The production transferred to Broadway in 2015 and was a landmark for accessibility on Broadway. Not only was every moment in the show signed, it featured the first actor using a wheelchair on Broadway, Ali Stroker. (Stroker returned to Broadway in 2019 in Oklahoma! and won a Tony Award for her performance as Ado Annie.) It was also the first Broadway show to provide interpretation for deaf-blind audience members. They even held a symposium on theater accessibility, since apparently everyone else needs a little help.

Oh yeah, and the revival absolutely slapped. As I mentioned, the incorporation of deafness into the existing themes of Spring Awakening was so natural it feels like it was written with that in mind. The ASL choreography was as gorgeous as it was functional, and they were absolutely robbed of a Tony nomination for choreography. They were nominated for Best Direction, Best Lighting Design, and Best Revival, although they didn’t take any awards home. Unfortunately there are no official recordings, audio or visual, but the Tony performance is a small snippet of how beautiful the show was. And the full show might be available… you know… on the internet.

A less boundary-breaking but still interesting note about this production is that the revival came only seven years after the original show closed. While Broadway musicals used to be revived every few years, we actually have enough shows now that revivals are rarer and usually only put on after a significant amount of time has passed. In this case, Deaf West’s take was so truly innovative that the usual unspoken rules didn’t apply. While I love new musicals, I am fully in support of revivals on existing shows that have something truly new to say.

Right now Deaf West Theatre is doing, uh, not much. But before COVID-19, they were producing the “highly visual” play Jean Cocteau’s Orphee, and have indicated that they’d like to bring it back after theaters reopen. The company also works in partnership with musical artists like Kelly Clarkson and Ingrid Michaelson to produce ASL videos for popular songs. Most recently, they collaborated with Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist in an episode featuring deaf characters and an ASL-only musical number. The show revolves around Zoey, who has the ability to hear people’s internal thoughts in song. I love that they didn’t show a deaf character’s “internal song” through singing—it’s expressed through movement, just like her real life. The character herself is played by Sandra Mae Frank, who starred in Spring Awakening as Wendla, and is accompanied by an ensemble of fifteen deaf actors. Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist also stars Skylar Astin from the original Broadway cast of Spring Awakening, because the casts from both productions will not stop winning.

Something New

• Speak of the filmed theater devil: What the Constitution Means to Me is coming to Amazon Prime on October 16. It was filmed at the Helen Hayes Theater during its last week on Broadway, and its creator and star Helen Schreck also signed a deal to create exclusive content for the platform. This is not a musical, but I am including it anyway because I had tickets to see it ONE WEEK after theaters closed. Despite the Amazon of it all, I am excited that it has been preserved and that now many more people, specifically me, can see it.

Something Borrowed

See now this would have been the perfect issue to link to Jonathan Groff reenacting the time he forgot the words in Spring Awakening, but I lack forethought. Instead, here’s a classic Easter Bonnet performance of the cast of Spring Awakening “auditioning” for Grease.

Something Blue

Jose Solís is one half of Token Theatre Friends, an absolutely brilliant podcast and publication, and he has an excellent Twitter feed of theater criticism & other media commentary.

Epilogue

Thanks so much for reading! If you enjoyed today’s issue, please share it with some friends who you think might enjoy it as well.