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.

Post Film Daze.

For me a good indication of a good film is 1) I actually went to see it in the cinema 2) When I left the cinema it took me a while to come back to reality.

Also this is a review so spoiler alert. But the book has been around since 1933.

When I first heard around Testament of Youth it was because of actor Colin Morgan, who I’m a huge fan of. But for me to go to the cinema and watch it (therefore spending £10 on a ticket – it’s a serious commitment!) I have to do a bit of research around it first. I knew of the book before the movie was even brought up, a librarian recommended it to me when I was in school after I said I felt Private Peaceful didn’t capture the whole story, however I never got around to reading it. To 13 year old me Testament of Youth was just a sad story about a time I really had no interest in.

During my research I found out more about the principle cast and watched some behind the scenes footage so I knew what I was getting myself in for, plus I also knew not to get attached to many of the main characters. A mistake I’ve made too many times.

In the woods just before the 'meaningful' conversation.

My first opinion of the film was it was amazing; it captured the essence of Vera Brittins voice perfectly, almost poetic. Cinematographer Rob Hardy possibly over uses soft focus just a bit but other than that I think the cinematography was outstanding. There are 3 scenes that stick out for me
(well from my memory) the first in which Vera tells Ronald that she wants to be a writer and Roland becomes the first person to tell her that she should write. It’s rather minimalist, a two shot between Ronald and Vera in the woods but he shot is so tight on their faces with soft focus it is the literal viewing of ‘nothing else in the world exists’.

The next shot is the eye opener for me. It’s a crane, tracking shot of Vera when she has made her way to the front line, it follows her making her way through the lines of men on stretchers in between the medical cabins. She seems pretty nonplussed by the situation having ‘turned her mind off’ at the recommendation of a fellow nurse, however once she has made her way to the clearing the crane starts zooming out, Vera comes to a stop yet the crane keeps going and going, showing rows and rows of injured men. It’s the final wide shot that really indicates the reality and the brutality of the war, something that the director seems to have skirted around.

Finally we return to the soft focus, tight close up, this is nearing the end of the film and shows Vera beginning to rebuild her life. It shows Vera back at Oxford being shown a new life by her new tutoring partner who also served as a nurse in the war. You see Vera walking around under a blossom tree, admiring the world around her for the first time since she first saw Oxford in person.

Vera as a character is highly intelligent and stubborn, at the beginning of the film she is in constant argument with her parents over her perusing her degree in English, the only thing she has ever wanted. When she arrives you see the joy on her face, the sheer pleasure of being there and you feel it through the smooth yet quick camera movements making the audience feel fully immersed in Vera’s mind. When I came home I mentioned to my friend that if you don’t connect with Vera’s Character within the first 20 minutes then the rest of the film won’t have as much ‘clout’ as it ought to. I mean that in the sense that the camera movements mimic her train of thought immersing you in this world, exactly how reading her memoirs in the 1^st person would do.

I also mentioned that the film skirted around the gruesome brutality of war, something I didn’t realise when watching it, I only realise now having looked at some reviews, critics are using this against the film but honestly, I didn’t miss it.  I believe that war films have become pigeon holed when it comes to showing gore and active combat, now there was no shortage of blood in my opinion and you see your fair share of severed limbs and dead bodies. But something that must be addressed is this is a honest and detailed retelling of someone’s life that was deeply effected by war, not a war story with a female lead.

I also read that people thought there wasn’t enough ‘raw emotion’, again I have to disagree. It is my personal belief that those who think that people must completely break down and cry immediately when a loved one dies have not had to experience it for themselves, much less experience more than one at the same time. Peoples minds work in different ways and shock and outright denial cause delayed reactions and this is what I think we see in Vera. However something most people seem to have overlooked is Vera isn’t the best at talking, within the first 30 minutes of the film she has already had a huge argument with her parents, and been pretty rude to the others in her life, with her actions speak louder than words. To deal with her grief of Roland being sent to France she drops out Oxford to become a nurse, when Roland dies she doesn’t react until she has found some hidden letters in his desolate uniform, when Victor dies she moves to the front line, when Edward dies she runs into a field and submerges herself in mud to try and connect to his experience – she delays her grief by trying to be as useful as possible.

Now I have no idea why this film is still on my mind at 3:00am it may be because I admire it, it may be because I see far to much of myself in Vera than I care to admit but most of all, I recognise that today I witness the slow demise of a young woman as she became haunted by experiences that still happen today. And I don’t think that has quite registered yet, hence the post-film daze.