In This Musical, Some Sing, All Sign

From: New York Times
Nov. 10, 2002

By DAVID MERMELSTEIN

LOS ANGELES
What do you call a show in which deaf and hearing performers sing, dance, act — and sign? According to Ed Waterstreet, the founder of Deaf West Theater here, you call it a "deaf musical."

Over the last two years, Mr. Waterstreet and the choreographer and director Jeff Calhoun have collaborated to present traditional musical theater in this hybrid form. Initially, their work appeared at Deaf West, a 65-seat nonprofit theater in North Hollywood. Now, one of their productions has transferred to the Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles's most prestigious stage, where it opens on Thursday.

The project, directed by Mr. Calhoun, is a version of "Big River," the 1985 show by Roger Miller and William Hauptman that won seven Tony Awards on Broadway. Based on Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," it deals with serious issues, including racism and domestic violence.

In a recent interview, Mr. Calhoun said that deaf actors enhance a show concerned with intolerance. "Here's a black man and a deaf boy on a raft," he explained, referring to characters played by Rufus Bonds Jr. and Tyrone Giordano, respectively. "I can link Huck's plight with Jim's. There's a heightened sense of what it means to be an outcast."

Mr. Waterstreet, 59, who is deaf, and Mr. Calhoun, 42, had their first success in 2000 with a critically acclaimed deaf production of "Oliver!" It encouraged them to tackle "Big River," which last year sold out its 10-week run at Deaf West Theater and earned a host of local honors.

Because the show is rendered in sign language as well as spoken dialogue and song, Mr. Calhoun had to reassign some lines, in particular giving many of Huck's to the character of Mark Twain, who acts as the narrator. Otherwise, said Mr. Hauptman, who wrote the show's book, the production is "mostly true to the original."

Though the 18-member cast is about evenly divided between those who can and can't hear, Mr. Waterstreet insisted that a deaf actor play Huck. "Obviously, we wanted someone deaf at the center of the story," he said after a rehearsal, signing through an interpreter. But, he added, "you forget about who is hearing and who is deaf after a while. The emphasis is not on deafness at all."

Mr. Calhoun said he had tried to present a show that fully integrated deaf and hearing actors. "What I didn't know was how much my background would help," he added, "because the signing is all choreography." Mr. Calhoun choreographed and directed the 1994 revival of "Grease!" on Broadway, which was produced by his mentor, Tommy Tune, with whom he has worked on "Will Rogers Follies" (1991), "Tommy Tune Tonite!" (1992) and the ill-fated "Busker Alley" (1995).

In "Big River," Mr. Calhoun said, the hearing actors had to learn American Sign Language in addition to their lines, songs and dance steps. The deaf performers do not sing in the conventional sense. Instead, they "sing" with their hands, using American Sign Language to convey lyrics and spoken lines.

To serve both hearing and deaf audiences effectively, Mr. Calhoun embraced various methods of characterization. In addition to speaking and singing, all the hearing actors sign for themselves. The deaf actors sign their dialogue and song, while hearing actors elsewhere on the stage voice the deaf actors' parts. Huck's lines, for example, are signed by the actor playing him, but are spoken and sung by the character of Mark Twain. (There are no traditional sign-language interpreters to one side of the stage in this show, as all the signing is integrated into the action.)

Coordinating the different approaches was not easy, said Mr. Calhoun, who described the project as the most complicated he had undertaken. "It's the Rubik's Cube of theater," he said.

What resulted, said Gordon Davidson, the artistic director of the Mark Taper Forum, was a show in which deaf and hearing actors interact balletically. "Jeff has taken sign language and elevated it to choreography," Mr. Davidson said. "It is dance, but even more expressive."

To Mr. Davidson, presenting Deaf West's production is both newsworthy and nostalgic. This is the first time that the Taper has transferred a small Los Angeles production to its stage. The Taper's intermittent association with deaf theater began in 1979 with Mark Medoff's "Children of a Lesser God," which Mr. Davidson directed in Los Angeles and on Broadway.

Besides the signing, the most striking aspect of Deaf West's staging is the set. On Broadway, "Big River" was noted for its verisimilitude, but Mr. Calhoun abandoned realism for a fablelike atmosphere. He said the change better served deaf audiences while not detracting from the experience of hearing patrons. "The common denominator between the deaf and hearing communities is the written word," Mr. Calhoun said, "so I wanted the whole stage to look like Mark Twain's novel exploded all over the theater."

He instructed the set designer, Ray Klausen, to make giant reproductions of pages from the first edition of "Huckleberry Finn." These "pages," ranging in size from 6 by 8 feet to 10 by 16 feet, are variously scattered across the stage and even suspended above it.

Because the Taper is larger than Deaf West, the actors must adjust their performances, which affects the deaf actors more. "For the hearing actors, there are microphones," Mr. Waterstreet said. "But there is none of that for the deaf actors. They just have to sign bigger to reach the back row."

For Mr. Waterstreet, who founded Deaf West Theater in 1991, mounting a musical was a long-held dream. "I wanted to see the music," he said. But until he and Mr. Calhoun collaborated, he couldn't figure out how to meld music and sign language successfully. The relationship has been mutually beneficial. Mr. Calhoun's projects for Deaf West represent a break from his association with Mr. Tune. "I really wanted a chance to get out from Tommy's shadow," Mr. Calhoun said.

With their arrival at the Taper, Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Waterstreet are beginning to think of where they may next take "Big River." There is talk of transferring the show to New York, which could be speeded by a $4 million federal grant for touring from the Department of Education to Deaf West, according to Bill O'Brien, a producer at the theater. "We've been awarded the money to help us export our productions," he said, "and we are especially interested in New York." The prospect excites Mr. Calhoun and has caused Mr. Waterstreet to enlarge his ambitions. "If you want to dream big," he said, "you dream about Broadway."

David Mermelstein, the editorial director at KUSC-FM in Los Angeles, has reviewed theater for the L.A. Weekly and Daily Variety.

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