Hearing Difference: The Third Ear in Experimental, Deaf, and Multicultural Theater

Chapter 4. Between the Two Worlds of Hearing and Deafness:The National Theater of the Deaf and Others

Chapter 4 Between the Two Worlds of Hearing and Deafness: The National Theater of the Deaf and Others A t 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 merges image and sound, exploring the potential oflanguage as action in space. To engage with these performances, the hearing, deaf, and hard of hearing audiences listen with their eyes, invoking the space ofthe third ear. NTD's production ofOphelia (1992) provides an example in which the ontology of deafness informs the aesthetic of the performances. Ophelia, developed out of a collaborative exchange with Pilobolus, a modern dance company, shows how signing and choreography magnify each other and create a form of speaking through the body. NTD's work makes deafness visible, and, because the group focuses on the production of classical theater pieces, it achieves this visibility by inserting the presence of deaf people and the use of sign language into the cultural and theatrical mainstream. NTD's style rests on its unique use of sign language, and as a result, this group's work provides another moment in the discussion ofthe theory of deafness that challenges the tendency to align the speaking voice with language. NTD's work rearticulates the presence of the body, its silences, and the ways in which visuality can speak to us. Will Rhys, a hearing person and one of the artistic directors ofNTD, emphasizes that it is a theater that develops what he calls the "language of shape and space rather than the language of hearing." Rhys explains: BETWEEN THE TWO WORLDS OF HEARING AND DEAFNESS the philosophy of the company is that the productions are for all audiences. It's a heightened form of theater, like Kabuki or commedia dell'arte and some of the intense visual programs that Robert Wilson does. The sign language for a hearing audience becomes an extra visual element. And, ofcourse, the sign language for any deaf audience member becomes an inclusive element. (Carmel) In NTD's work, images shift rapidly from one to another, scene to scene; the use of signing provides a baseline of visual and kinesthetic order. Furthermore , the company's approach to staging and its plasticity in perspective often create a spatial organization that operates like film. Rhys indicates that the challenge of the work in this company is to enhance the strengths of each of the two languages, ASL and English, and to combine them to create a new theatrical form. There were no preexisting models for the development of a theater of the deaf that combines sign and speech from which NTD could draw, and as a result, founding director David Hays explains, the aesthetic has developed largely through a process of trial and errorI Nevertheless, NTD has a long history of interaction with a variety of performance modes that include Kabuki, Bharata Natyarn, opera, modern dance, Peter Brook's theatrical experiments, Pilobolus's choreography, and very recently, Ping Chong's performance compositions. Through these contacts, NTD has sought to develop a language theater that is grounded in a viable form and that activates the sensory registers in new ways, all aimed at making space speak. In other words, in the space of the performance, the use of signing as a visual and kinesthetic language has its own organizing principles that differ from the speech as a sound-based model of language. NTD, while basing its aesthetic of a viable coupling of sign and speech, continues to develop an acting style that emerges from the pictorial baseline that governs ASL. It is important to note that there are important differences between 1. Personal interview, April 1998. HEARING DIFFERENCE ASL and signed English, which is a method for using signing according to the vocabulary and organizing principles of English. ASL, on the other hand, has its own organizing principles that do not mimic English. As a result of NTD's "writing in the air" theatrics, the hearing audience listens through the third ear to the melding ofsound and visualkinesthetic image so that they can understand (or at least understand that a difference exists, even if they cannot fully understand the content) what is not contained solely in one language form or the...