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

Somewhere

brings out Andi, Anna, and Allison. They take their position and hold it because the action that follows is largely center stage. Tony’s first scenes (especially the song, “Something’s Coming”) eschew the stationary style in favor of shadowed interpretation. Zoning makes a rare appearance in the first of Maria’s bridal shop scenes, and then dissolves back to a modified blend of shadow and zone as the scene segues directly into the capacity crowd of “Dance at the Gym.” Phil assures Diane that although the audience will be hard-pressed to follow every last detail, it will only be worse if the interpreting doesn’t match the needs of the scene. He believes that what the interpreters must do is “find the builds in the scenes and hit them!” This is actor-speak, familiar territory for Diane, as relaxing for her as a good massage. She puts her energies back into tweaking the blocking and acting—especially Pearlene’s—and lets Phil place the interpreters as the builds demand. The blocking in the Jets’ scenes requires the most readjustment , because prior to Phil’s arrival, the interpreters had been stowed away on top of various scaffolds, especially the one that looms directly over Doc’s shop. This gave the Jets complete freedom to roam the stage and ensured there would be no sight line problems. In Phil’s brave new world, the interpreters join their Jet counterparts at ground level. Not only does the stage space become more crowded, but the Jets have to watch where they step or risk blocking an interpreter. Once again, the Jets close ranks and pout. Once more, Diane finds herself prying their good humor free as if they were oysters, not actors. It doesn’t help matters that she has a second request, not just of the Jets, but of the cast in general. In order not to shift focus unnecessarily away from the interpreters, she tells everyone, “Stop fidgeting. Remain alive onstage, but—keep your movements controlled.” In an all-hearing production, only the most unmotivated or excessive motions would need to be tamped down, but in West Side Story, with the deaf audience tracking back and forth 156 Deaf Side Story between performers and interpreters, it is essential that they not be cued accidentally or drawn to look in places where nothing of any import is happening. To achieve this, the interpreters have to relearn their roles. Diane, assuming that interpreting would be much like other acting, had asked her interpreting crew to be just as animated as the actors they signed for, but Phil suggests that this is too much, that the visual cues for the deaf (and possibly hearing) audience would be lost in the shuffle. Instead, he suggests that the interpreters come alive in spurts, as their lines come up. Thus, if all three female interpreters are onstage and Anna has a line to interpret, the other two interpreters turn their attention to her, as if she’s just caught the only available playground ball. Rather than staying in character themselves, it becomes their job to make Anna the focus of the moment. Only when all three sign together, as they do for “Gee, Officer I Feel Pretty 157 Tony and Doc (Jay Peterson) weigh their options in the basement of Doc’s soda shop. Sign interpreters Phil Fiorini and Andi Kreps stand below. Krupke,” do they have the luxury of remaining live the entire time. The trick, as Phil explains, is to avoid complete lapses into stasis during quieter moments, or in between lines. “Seize the focus,” he tells Andi, “and then, give it back.” Phil quickly realizes which sections will require the least reorganization: any sequence where the two rival gangs speak to each other (and to no one else). As Diane writes: Given the story we were trying to tell—the Jets and the Sharks fight because they do not speak the same language—we put the actors and the audience in the very situation that precipitated their rivalry. We took away all the standard tools of communication for each side and made the deaf actors stop signing while the hearing actors turned their voices off. As a result, they had to do what deaf and hearing people would do if faced with each other in their everyday lives: they gestured to each other using a crude form of PSE. The trick...