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Christopher’s early skittishness in speaking about his past (or even his present) has undergone a seismic shift of late, for he is about to star in This, a new play written by Raymond Luczak— and “this” means Christopher, as the play is based on his own life history. As Christopher writes, “Raymond Luczak, he is also deaf himself too, very good friend of mine. It is somewhat based on true story of me and my late best friend, that we were struggling being deaf, black . . . artist[s] in New York City. In those days, the world wasn’t ready for us or who we are. So, that’s basically what’s the story is all about. It will be happening in January” 2003. In the meantime, he continues to perform his one-man show, Fingers of Broken Dreams, an autobiographical performance piece told through dance and music. Pearlene Jo Theriot, who now enjoys using her last name when possible, has also continued her stage work, and West Side Story has served as inspiration in creating her own original theater piece, Tonight: After my sophomore year at Illinois School for the Deaf, I relocated to Model Secondary School for the Deaf (MSSD) for the last two years of high school. There, I co-directed and performed a different version of West Side Story. It was a different experience because we all were deaf and in high school. . . . Tonight was MSSD’s annual spring play production directed and staffed by only students. Garret Bose, also a student, and I directed about 20 other students. The audience was the gallaudet university community which included kendall school, mssd . . . alumnis, neighbors , family and friends from around the city . . . the play was 2 hours. . . . It was a big production that I decided to take a year off from performing afterwards and might be participating in the Gallaudet University’s Spring Production. Pearlene’s self-professed hatred of music has mellowed, although her focus on music remains, unsurprisingly, on the words. The songs she memorized for West Side Story “play in my head often up to today! Some of the lyrics apply to my daily living situations once in a while and boosts my days!” Dance is 208 Deaf Side Story still something of a bugbear, although she feels she is “doing better.” Looking back at West Side Story leaves Pearlene wondering what the experience would have been like had she been older. She turned fifteen during rehearsals, and, as she puts it, “Fourteen years old are inclined to be most shy performing some smooch-smooch love scenes than when they are in COLLEGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hence, I feel that if I perform now, it would be flashier! (Wink).” In a 2002 e-mail, she signs off with, “Always Maria, Pearlene Jo Theriot.” Mac and ISD have not mounted any further artistic collaborations . Steve Tavender is set to retire at the end of the fall 2002 academic semester, and Diane Brewer has already moved on, to the University of Evansville in Evansville, Indiana. Mac, despite a brand-new music and arts facility, continues to battle enrollment issues, and as a result, a number of faculty positions have been phased out, including that of the college chaplain—ironic, in that Mac remains a church-affiliated school. Terri Benz, who began teaching music at Mac shortly after West Side Story finished, now pulls double-duty as the college’s part-time Director of Religious Life. Even though she was with the West Side Story production from beginning to end, her initial challenge of “I just want to see how you’re going to pull this off!” still awaits an answer. She looks back today with the same wonderment as when she began, confessing she is “amazed that we were able to make it work!” Ever humble, Terri describes “a great well of respect for all the cast members, but mostly for those who couldn’t hear Diane’s direction [and] for those who acted with everything they had.” Diane’s place on the Mac faculty has been taken by Nancy Taylor, who, like Diane when she first arrived, is fresh off her dissertation work (at Tufts University in Boston). Under Nancy’s stewardship, Mac has produced Paula Vogel’s Pulitzer Prizewinning How I Learned to Drive and classics like the Bard’s Measure for Measure, among others. All of this information is easily retrieved from Mac’s Web page, which as of December 2002, still Epilogue 209 [3.138.114...

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