Audiences, American Sign Language, and Deafness in Shakespeare Performance

Theater productions incorporating American Sign Language (ASL) and deaf actors have hitherto been only superficially discussed by Shakespeare performance scholars. While the premise that the dynamic co-presence of actors and audience creates the meanings of performance is fundamental to performance studies, this sparse scholarship does not consider how productions might generate different performative meanings and experiences for deaf audiences than for hearing ones. As a result, the key element of accessibility has been overlooked. Through close examination of four North American productions that incorporated ASL-speaking actors into the production, this essay compares the responses of hearing audiences to the author’s own as a deaf spectator, illustrating the different performative meanings generated by the incorporation of ASL and deaf actors. The author also discusses how choices at all levels of the production can be detrimental to accessibility and argues that hearing directors have an ethical responsibility to be inclusive of deaf audiences. This can be accomplished by centering deaf perspectives and experiences both onstage and in front-of-house practices. Scholars who study such performances should also orient themselves in an ethics of care for deaf audiences. Reviews and critical readings focused only on what takes place on stage, ignoring audience composition and accessibility considerations, perpetuate the exclusion of deaf spectators from the performance experience.