Hearing Difference
The Third Ear in Experimental, Deaf, and Multicultural Theater
Publication Year: 2006
Published by: Gallaudet University Press
Cover
Title Page, Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgments
Download PDF (394.1 KB)
pp. ix-x
Writing, for me, is another way of performing and no performance happens on its own. My thanks to many colleagues, including Ann Axtmann, Byung Ein Min, Heidi Holder, Aparna Zambare, Jeanne Heuving, Susan Franwsa, JoLynn Edwards, and Bruce Burgett. To many students, including Kathleen Burgess, Kathryn Ramos...
Chapter 1. The Third Ear
Download PDF (360.6 KB)
pp. 1-20
Hearing Difference is about the connections between hearing and deafness in experimental, Deaf, and multicultural theater. In this work, I focus on how we might articulate a Deaf aesthetic, and more specifically, on how we can understand moments of "deafness" in theater works that do not simply reinscribe...
Chapter 2. History of the Theater of the Third Ear
Download PDF (877.9 KB)
pp. 21-63
In this chapter, I chart a genealogy of the theater of the third ear and articulate links among sound, silence, the body, and synaesthesia in relationship to hearing and deafness. Early versions of these theaters emerge in the eighteenth century and find their exemplar in popular plays such as Jean Nicolas Bouilly's 1799...
Chapter 3. Performing Deafness: Robert Wilson
Download PDF (593.5 KB)
pp. 64-95
In 1970, Robert Wilson first staged Deafman Glance, a work that explored the mode of communication, predominantly visual and kinesthetic, that developed between Wilson, white and hearing, and Raymond Andrews, an African American deaf-mute. The piece, performed in silence, lasted anywhere from...
Chapter 4. Between the Two Worlds of Hearing and Deafness:The National Theater of the Deaf and Others
Download PDF (581.9 KB)
pp. 96-127
At approximately the same time that Robert Wilson began his theatrical career, the NTD began creating works that bridge the deaf and hearing worlds through their combination of sign and speech. In this new theatrical form, as hearing actors both speak and sign and deaf actors sign, this double language...
Chapter 5. Performing at the Edge of Hearing: Ping Chong, Augusto Boal, and Tara Arts
Download PDF (889.0 KB)
pp. 128-162
Since 1990, Ping Chong, an Asian American director, has developed two cycles of works, Undesirable Elements and the East/West Quartet, that articulate the importance of listening to performances at the edge of hearing in order to shift our understanding of cross-cultural issues. Undesirable Elements, Chong relates...
Chapter 6. Mixing Deafness and Ethnicity: Gesture and Silence
Download PDF (302.0 KB)
pp. 163-179
An examination of the use of gesture in two cross-cultural performance forms—ASL and mudras in Bharata Natyam, a classical Asian Indian dance—opens up a new understanding of the relationship among sound, silence, the moving body, and identity. In Ragamala's 2001 production...
Conclusion: Dancing Voices
Download PDF (160.0 KB)
pp. 180-188
Although I still identify my own personal genesis of the third ear with my experience of watching and listening to Leslie Uggarns and Mitch Miller, I do not own the headphones that my father crafted for me anymore. They have long since been relegated to the garbage heap-no longer functional with the much...
Works Cited
Download PDF (230.7 KB)
pp. 189-200
Index
Download PDF (98.0 KB)
pp. 201-206
E-ISBN-13: 9781563683770
E-ISBN-10: 1563683776
Print-ISBN-13: 9781563682902
Print-ISBN-10: 1563682907
Page Count: 216
Publication Year: 2006
