Deaf Side Story: Deaf Sharks, Hearing Jets, and a Classic American Musical

Cool/Tonight

shine. Educators fluent in ASL are not so scarce as they once were, but even today, those who know ASL may side with the majority view that education should bring deaf students as close as possible to full-fledged English-and-ASL bilingualism. This shifts the focus away from mastery of ASL, a skill that some schools tacitly assume can still be learned and practiced at home or amongst peers and mentors within the Deaf community. Instead, the academic curriculum is taught through various sign systems structured around an English base. Among these systems are Manually Coded English (MCE) and systems such as Signed English, Seeing Essential English (SEE I), Signing Exact English (SEE II), and Total Communication (TC). TC employs speech, the use of residual hearing, signing, and fingerspelling and is used in many schools. Like the other systems mentioned above, TC was developed to help deaf children learn to read and write English. Using slightly different strategies, these systems advocate using ASL signs in English word order. Some add markers (invented signs or fingerspelling) to make visible those elements of English that are not signed in ASL. For example, verb endings such as -ed and -ing do not have signs in ASL, so invented signs are added at the end of an otherwise accurate ASL sign in Signed English and SEE II. Fingerspelling, formally known as dactylology (but sometimes called the Great Invention), introduced a single handshape for each correspondent letter of the alphabet. Thus, for twentysix letters, there are twenty-six shapes. Because fingerspelling is a literal representation of spoken language, it has no syntax, no independent means of expressing thought or ideas. It delivers its information with the coolness of Morse or binary code. On the plus side, it is very—sometimes harshly—clear. When two signers fail to understand one another, fingerspelling provides a concrete , unambiguous solution. Whatever one may think of oralism as a method of communication , it is not without its dramatic uses onstage. Late in the America 99 second act of West Side Story, Anita risks entering Doc’s drugstore to deliver a message to Tony. She is soon set upon by the Jets, who in a flash of sudden violence, come close to raping her. (In the ongoing debate over the play’s stereotyping of Puerto Ricans, nothing much seems to be made of the fact that it is the Jets—the friendly, chummy Jets—who come closest to committing a rape.) Only Doc’s sudden arrival halts the mayhem. In the Mac/ISD production, this scene presents Diane with a serious dilemma, in that here, for the first and only time, the actress playing Anybodys and voicing Anita has lines for both characters in the same scene. Because Meredith cannot be both Anybodys and the voice of Anita simultaneously, Diane falls back on the fact that Olivia (as Anita) has exceptionally good speaking skills. When pressed too hard by the Jets, Olivia suddenly screams at them and, in perfect English, delivers her line—“Listen you!”—vocally. The Jets, stunned to discover that one of the “Puerto Rican spics” can talk, stand back and give her space. It turns out to be one of the most effective moments in the play, one that audience members specifically remember and comment upon when filling out post-show surveys. Christopher himself would prefer to avoid what he sees as the limiting terms of the communication debate. He would rather not be put in boxes and labeled—but, as he says with a resigned shrug, it’s something he has to live with. When pressed, he places himself firmly in the middle, which makes perfect sense given his choice of career. He will, as a performing artist, be in constant contact with the hearing world. Adopting an isolationist stance would be difficult, if not impossible. In any event, deafness is hardly the only cross he has to bear. As a black man and a dancer, he has more than enough boxes to go around without adding levels of deafness to the till.
100 Deaf Side Story If Mac has a national reputation in any department, it lies squarely on the shoulders of Deaf Education. Its heavily accredited teacher education program is the largest and oldest in Illinois and it now boasts an interpreter training program headed up by Bob Dramin. Graduates through the year 2000 receive either a B.S. or, if they...