Deaf Awakening

When things collide normally those familiar with the original are very much against the change, however in the past week the ALS Deaf West Theatre version of Spring Awakening opened on broadway, the first sign language inclusive show to ever do so. Directed by Michael Arden the show was originally crowd funded for a string of performances in LA but was so well received it was immediately approached for a second run and then Broadway, none of the performers were recast resulting in 20 Broadway debuts most of which are deaf actors, including Ali Stroker the first person ever to perform on Broadway in a wheelchair.

I've always said that theatre leads the charge when it comes to inclusion of minorities and I stand by that. This year alone not only did we see a majority of women winning in non-segregated categories at the Tony awards, the first all female team won for Best Musical - the musical in question being a retelling of openly gay Alison Bechdel's life story of growing up with a gay father which includes a scene of 11 year-old Alison singing a song about her questioning her feelings a for a woman (Watch the Tony performance here, I may have cried a bit....) . This season Broadway (and the West End in some cases) has seen Autistic characters (The Curious Incident of the dog in the Nighttime), the first ever Asian-American woman to win Featured Role in a Musical (The King and I), the revival of Hedwig and the Angry Inch a show about Trans people, the rehearsal progress of Allegiance a new show starring George Takei about a family and their task to save their family from wrongful imprisonment of Japanese Americans during WW2. Plus the Tony Awards was hosted by Kristen Chenoweth and openly bisexual Alan Cumming making puns about his sexuality all night.

Ali Stroker in Rehearsals for her Broadway debut

Then you have Spring Awakening a show were if the actor is deaf, the character is deaf. The actors in the wheelchair, the characters in a wheelchair. Or in the case of Krysta Rodriguez if the actor has cancer, the character has cancer. The show also tackles teen suicide, teen pregnancy, sexuality and emotion/physical abuse from parents, it's a tough show but it opens your eyes to a lot of things.

The plot of spring awakening, something I didn't realise until now, is based on miscommunication. So the use of ASL just makes sense, it simply fits and once it was explained to me I was genuinely perplexed at why it wasn't done in the first place and annoyed at myself for not realising sooner. One of the great things about this revival is nothing fundamental about the show has changed, the songs are the same, the plot is the same the only difference is the use of ASL and the use of voice over actors for the deaf actors who can not speak the role audibly.

I had heard of the revival when it was still in LA but over looked it as just another production of the show and didn't really think anything of it. I've seen a modern adaptation of the play live at the West Yorkshire Playhouse a few years back, it was set in a creepy playground and used social media as a way of bringing it back up to date including the suicide of one the characters being via a Youtube video. The use of video within the production stuck with me because it felt like it added a new dimension to a otherwise well known plot so when I found out that the new LA version wasn't changing much it just didn't really grab my attention. It wasn't until it got it's second run and Andy Mientus was cast in his old role (He was in the original National Tour cast) that I realised I should really read about it, after that I was hooked.

I grew up in a school that was disability inclusive but I never encountered anyone who spoke solely though BSL and in all honesty, I never really thought about. Some of my friends know the basic BSL finger spelling alphabet but that's it, looking back I'm a bit ashamed of myself for never realising how many people need it. Ever since having my eyes opened to this I've noticed people everyday using sign language, people using cochlear implants and signing at the same time, just little things that I've overlooked for so long.

I also realised how inaccessible my own work is, take Youtube for example; I am aware that I speak incredibly fast and sometimes with a rather strange accent, if someone couldn't hear what I was saying they would not be able to lip-read either. Youtube does offer an automatic captioning service but it's so bad sometimes it's just useless. I could write the captions so that if someone did need them they would be accurate, however right now I don't because I never saw it as a problem before. I never thought how people need to attend special screenings of films if they need an interpreter or captioning, or if you want to got the theatre you need to warn them in-advance that you need assistance and then they will tell you what days are available, you can't choose the date they do.

I guess what I'm taking from all of this is that I want my work to experienced by as many people as possible and to do that I have to make the work as accessible as possible. I'm not entirely sure how but I think I'm going to start with captioning my videos, possibly learning a bit more sign language just something to help people who are currently overlooked.

Here is a preview of the show before it went to Broadway, as you can see the signs are integrated with the show and have a very fluid, almost choreography look to them.