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

Chapter 6. Mixing Deafness and Ethnicity: Gesture and Silence

Chapter 6 Mixing Deafness and Ethnicity: Gesture and Silence A n examination of the use of gesture in tvvo cross-cultural performance forms-ASL and mudras in Bharata Natyam, a classical Asian Indian dance----opens up a new understanding of the relationship among sound, silence, the moving body, and identity. In Ragamala's 2001 production of Transposed Heads, Ranee Ramaswamy, a Bharata Natyam dancer, and Nicole Zapko, a deaf actress, perform the Indian classical story of Sita and her two lovers, Shridaman and Nanda. An intercultural work, it melds Bharata Natyam dance technique with its use of mudras) or hand gestures, and ASL signing. Two readers, Zarawaar Mistry and Carolyn Holbrook, tell the story from the side through speaking, while Zapko and Ramaswamy tell the story through their use of acting, dance, and gesture.1 In the central episode of the story, the goddess Kali agrees to bring the tvvo men, who have sacrificed themselves for each other, back to life, but by accident Sita places the wrong heads on each body. The motif of the transposed heads acts as way of contesting identity because it becomes unclear who "owns" which body and who is speaking for whom. Additionally, as a staging practice, this motif resonates metaphorically as an icon for how the !\iVo performers exemplify two ways of speaking. The transposition of meaning across gestural systems heightens the sense of how the body speaks through the use ofvisual-spatial means as it creates a hybrid space of polyvocality. 1. Grace Hamilton, a deaf actress, and Joyce Paul, a Bharata Natyarn dancer, have been very helpful in giving additional feedback on this chapter. HEARING DIFFERENCE In this version of a theater of the third ear, the aestheticized use of the gesture provides a method of "speaking through action." Each codified gestural system-presented in conjunction with the use of tvvo speaking voices----creates, at times, a heightened understanding through the simultaneity of speaking voice and gesture, and, at others, the use of gesturing shifts attention away from the speech to a language of space and shape. As a consequence, this approach, which is a complex layering of three different semiotic systems, highlights ways in which the human body can make manifest a system of meaning through the use of space. Rather than garner understanding ofthe story primarily through hearing, multiple channels for speaking through the sounding voice and the gesturing body are provided. Because the use of gesture, dance, and acting are in the foreground, understanding evolves through a type of body-to-body listening. We "hear" gesture articulated through the body ofthe performer and transmitted to the body ofthe audience. It is not always the case that we understand exactlywhat has been communicated, but nevertheless, because ofthe mixed performance media, the vety notion ofhearing becomes enriched. This work bridges both language and cultural systems to create an aesthetic space of exchange that indexes both deaf and ethnic, here South Asian, idenrity Eugenio Barba's Anthropology ofPeifOrmance----which focuses on an analysis of the theatrical, dance, and movement systems ofAsian theaterprovides a comparative context for understanding the intersection of language and body, sound, and silence. "There are only a few examples of attempts in the West to codify the hand and its gestures, examples in which theatrical interest appears, however most explicit on the theoretical and literary levels, and rarely influences conremporary practice" (132). As Barba indicates, until recently there have been limited attempts to work with codified gestures as a part of traditional staging practices. The lack of interest in the use of sign languages as a specific theatrical method has a long history rooted not only in the valorization ofspeaking voices, but also, in general, in a profound distrust of the body as a site of knowing, and, more specifically, in relation to the idea that there are other sign systems than that of the speaking voice. MIXING DEAFNESS AND ETHNICITY The interest in the use ofgestural languages has, however, been shifting. Barba continues: "In fact, it is possible to say that while the behaviour of the hands has been recreated, acquiring actual symbolic value, the only accurate codification in the occident has been the sign language used since ancient times by the deaf, and internally systemized only in the last century. But this codification belongs to the daily sphere" (132). Here Barba replays a moment in the Enlightenment discussion about gesture and deafness as the...