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The Ensemblist - Ep 60 ASL-10-29-15 11.31AM

[Start of recorded material 00:00]

Kevin Bianchi: Hey guys, it’s Kevin from The Ensemblist team. Normally, you hear my name at the end of the episode. But I thought I’d pop in at the beginning to let you know that it’s that time of year again, friends. We’re gathering questions for our annual Listener Questions Episode. Do you have a question about how Broadway really works? Tweet us at The Ensemblist and use the hashtag Ensemblist LQ. It can be a question about performing, technique, the business, social media, a specific show, even a specific ensemblist. Just tweet us at The Ensemblist and use the hashtag #Ensemblist LQ.

Mo Brady: You’re listening to The Ensemblist, the only podcast that shows you Broadway from the inside out. I’m Mo Brady.

Nikka Graff Lanzarone: And I’m Nikka Graff Lanzarone.

The idea for this episode started long before the Spring Awakening revival was announced. It started back in 2013 during a performance of The Jungle Book. Many of the larger regional theaters do an ASL-interpreted performance or two, and I find that my favorite day in a limited run is always ASL day. There’s an extra level of communication going on, something that taps into our very core human nature, to be understood, to tell stories, to figure out a way for everyone to get the same theatrical experience. As I watched the incredible interpreter, some work with Andre De Shields’ crazy “King Louie” ad-libs and bring a whole other hilarious side to his performance -- I mean, I was paying attention to everything I was supposed to be doing on stage. What are you talking about?

Mo: Of course you were, Nikka, yeah uh-huh.

Nikka: I was struck by how cool it was, and how I wanted to explore it further.

Mo: And then thankfully, the Spring Awakening revival did happen, and we got to see it. And we loved it, because Spring Awakening, you guys.

Nikka: Spring Awakening, you guys.

Mo: But also, this production of Spring Awakening transferred to Broadway from Los Angeles, where it was originally produced by the Deaf West Theatre Company. Deaf West is a professional resident sign language theatre, where productions are presented in American Sign Language with simultaneous translation in English, providing for all an enhanced theatrical experience.

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Nikka: And you’ll hear people mention Gallaudet University a bunch in this episode, so we thought we’d tell you a little bit more about it for context. Gallaudet University is a federally charted private university for the education of the deaf and hard of hearing, located in Washington D.C, founded in 1864. Gallaudet University is officially bilingual, with American Sign Language, commonly abbreviated ASL, and English used for instruction and by the college community.

Mo: On this episode, we speak to three people with vastly different experiences, performing American Sign Language on Broadway, a hearing actor, a hard of hearing actor, and a sign language interpreter. We asked them about how speaking in ASL is different when you’re performing in front of 1,000 audience members, what interpreters do to prepare, and the extra layer of metaphor that comes with adding ASL to theatrical text. Stay with us.

Josh Castille: Hello, I’m Josh Castille and I live in Hell’s Kitchen.

Nikka: Josh grew up in Louisiana, but as a hard of hearing actor, he found himself at Gallaudet University, studying theater.

Josh: I was studying deaf theater, and theater education. So I basically teach deaf people how to act. Going there, I had already done some training in high school, and at a professional theater company outside of high school. And so, I had all this training. And when I got to college, I kind of thought okay, so I’m ahead of the game. And then I realized I wasn’t, because I was ahead of the game in the hearing acting game, but not in the deaf acting game.

And the deaf acting game is so different, and has got these components of signing and visual expressions, and mouth morphemes that are entirely expressing your feelings and storyline through just that medium. So having come from the hearing world, where we use our voices to like crack and cry, and then walking into a classroom full of deaf people, and trying to use those techniques, it doesn’t work because they don’t hear me.

Cathy Markland: My name is Cathy Markland, and I live on the upper, Upper West Side. I live at 158th and Riverside Drive West.

Mo: Cathy is an American Sign Language interpreter, who like Josh, studied at Gallaudet. While she isn’t deaf or hard of hearing herself, Cathy believed that the school was the right place to get her career in interpretation started.

Cathy: Well, if I really want to do this right, you go to where the people speak the language. So I thought the only place I really know, where there’s a big group of people, using the language that I need to learn was Gallaudet. So I got in. It was very hard. My degree is sign communication.

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Nikka: Our third guest is a hearing actor, and veteran of such shows as A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, Tarzan, and Memphis, but he made his Broadway debut in a production that employed American Sign Language.

Kevin Massey: My name is Kevin Massey, and I just moved to Washington Heights, which is now called Hudson Heights in Manhattan. I was in a Deaf West production of Big River, and it incorporated sign language. Half the cast was deaf and half were hearing. And so, as a hearing actor, I signed and spoke at the same time. And the deaf actor would sign and we would voice for him or her.

Mo: In the last couple of decades, two Deaf West productions have crossed the country to hit Broadway. In 2003, the revival of the musical, Big River, that employed American Sign Language landed in NYC, after starting out on the West Coast, although Kevin hadn’t part of the show’s original outings.

Kevin: They had done it out at Deaf West, and then it did so well, they moved it to the Ahmanson, I believe, in LA. And then, they brought it into New York. And a long story short, I got an audition for it. And ended up booking it, and becoming a swing for the show, and made my Broadway debut, which Jeff Calhoun is awesome about doing. So Big River was my first experience with ASL. And in fact, when I was auditioning, I didn’t really know or understand how ASL was being a part of the show.

And then we, instead of a dance call, we had a sign call. And so, we learned [unintelligible 00:06:29 audio skip]. And that was really my first experience ever with sign language, but it was very much like dance. So, they saw how fast you picked it up. And some of it sort of made sense, in terms of words, but some of it didn’t. They were just movement that went along with music. In the beginning when I was first learning the show, I was pretty much only learning sign language, in terms of my lines and the music.

Now luckily, a lot of those same words, you can use in conversation as well. However, I came in a week later in the process. And so, not only did everybody else know each other, I literally couldn’t speak to half the cast, because I didn’t know their language. But eventually, I was starting to be slightly conversational with sign language.

Nikka: Josh has been a part of the Spring Awakening revival company from its very first staging, moving to LA from Gallaudet to do so.

Josh Castille: I got involved with the production because I moved to D.C. for college at Gallaudet University. And they sent a mass email to actors at Gallaudet, and asked them to go ahead and audition for Spring Awakening online, because they needed deaf actors. But yes, I dropped out of school and moved to LA to do a show for $100 a week.

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Mo: For the many Broadway shows that don’t use ASL on stage, deaf and hard of hearing audiences can still enjoy performances, thanks to the interpreters at a New York organization called Hands On. We asked Cathy, who has worked with the organization for over a decade, to talk about the extended process of preparing to interpret a show.

Cathy: So Hands On hires interpreters for mostly Off-Broadway theatre, but they have a nice relationship with three theaters that I work at often: the American Airlines Theatre on 42nd Street, the New Victory Theater for Children’s Theatre, and then also Studio 54. They have a subscription series. So they send out a flyer and say, would you like to sign up? And then, they pay through Hands On. And then, Beth meets them at the door, outside the ticket office, and gives them specific tickets. And they come sit in the deaf section, to see the interpreters in aligned with the theater.

When I’m signing a show, along with my team, we try to collaborate as much as we can, to give the deaf people an equivalent experience of what the hearing people are having. So, if we were to put it around quotes, meaning, hey guys, I don’t know how to sign this. But if you want to figure it out, it’s in quotes. Ask your neighbor. Ask your friend. Ask me later, and I’ll tell you. But right now, this is exactly what they’re saying. Most of the time for Broadway, we have three interpreters, because there tends to be five to ten characters. So I would take three characters.

My partner would take three, and another person would take three. So I can actually have a dialogue and reflect what the actors are doing up on stage. But in ASL, when you talk to another person and have a dialogue, you literally have a body shift in your shoulders. So you would move to the left, and either if the person was your father, you would have an eye gaze going up, because that shows authority. Or if you were being the child, then your shoulders would shift the opposite way, and have your eye gaze doing down. And of course, the trick of that is to learn what the actors are doing.

I’d like to go to this theater at least five times, but we also meet in people’s homes. We also do script work, and I’d say we meet at least two to three times extra. So there’s probably a total of ten times that the team is together, before we actually interpret the show.

Mo: Whether the production uses signing interpreters or signing actors, both use ASL coaches to help signers speak in a way that makes sense to deaf audiences. For Cathy and the troupe of interpreters, these coaches are guides to help their signs be as clear as possible.

Cathy: With Hands On, they tend to hire a coach or an advisor director who’s deaf, who puts a deaf eye on your translations, to say “You know, Cathy? That sentence, what it says here in the script, really doesn’t match.” And they will

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give you ideas to feed into it, and then you will make it your own interpretation.

Nikka: For Deaf West productions in both LA and on Broadway, the coaches are not only making sure signs are clear, but also that they’re theatrical in their storytelling, as Kevin told us.

Kevin: Like dance captains, we had ASL masters. There were two, as well as an assigned captain. And they work not only to teach you the sign, but also to interpret it, because it’s like translating it into another language. Sure, there could be a sign for that word, but there might be a better way to say the whole phrase that works better with the musicality, or the movement.

Nikka: On Spring Awakening, Josh and the company had a variety of coaches to teach the deaf members of the company not how to sign, but how to sign for the stage.

Josh: The ASL team consists of three people, with an ASL consultant. Anthony Natale is deaf and he has a cochlear implant. Shoshannah Stern is deaf as well, and she wears hearing aids. And Elizabeth Green is the hearing person. And they read “A Purple Summer,” and it took a full year to translate the show from English into ASL. Then we redid it at Inner-City Arts, which is the first time we did the show. We signed it, and we did it, and it was their first time troubleshooting, signing in front of a deaf crowd. So we got some input from the crowd. So we just had to work our way around that.

And then they brought in Linda Bove from “Sesame Street.” And she came in and was like, “When you sign it this way, it doesn’t make sense. When your mouth is mouth in the English word in that moment, it doesn’t make sense, so you have to stop. Your eye gaze has to look up, when you say heaven. Otherwise, you’re doing this motion that means nothing.” So she really, like, told us what was missing, what needed to be put in place. And the signing just kept evolving throughout the three stages. The ASL team really did a great job at picking their traditional signs that are proper for the dialogue.

But when we go into the songs, we use very like modern and hip slangs in signs. The ASL team gives [unintelligible 00:12:25]. Because they’ll tell us, you signed a certain sign. It doesn’t fit the stage. So we need to use another sign. We need to pick a sign that’s more visible for the audience to see, and really understand. So for example, “can’t” is my forefinger twisting and bending down. But there’s also the sign “can’t,” where both of my forefingers cross each other, and are a slapping motion. So the slapping motion is more visible on stage than can’t, which is a bent motion.

Mo: While spoken English is a very literal language, American Sign Language has its own structure and rules. Translating that language for musical theater

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storytelling can be very challenging, particularly when the text is flowery and metaphorical, as it is in Spring Awakening.

Cathy: ASL is not really a literal language. American Sign Language has its own grammar and structure. And for deaf people to understand it, you have to follow that structure.

Josh: Spring Awakening, as a show, is a very abstract. As we know, Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik love their metaphors. So that ASL, what happens is it brings the metaphor into a space that is more conceptually understandable. So for “A shadow passed, a shadow passed,” it’s such an abstract phrase that the ASL team, they had to read the book, “A Purple Summer,” which is the book that Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik wrote, explaining the meaning of where they got things, and the references. So the ASL team really focused on that, and they found a translation meaning.

So like, “a shadow passed, a shadow passed,” it’s dark and then it becomes light. And then a shadow is like figurines that pass by you. So it’s like, you know, as days go by, people are passing by. And I’m yearning and yearning for someone who’s just innocent and naïve, who used to be involved in this life. Which is still very abstract, but it brings it into an area that’s more conceptually understood without needing to hear it.

Nikka: While most deaf theater asks its actors to mouth the words they’re signing, we were surprised that the Deaf West actors were asked not to mouth the words during the songs. Josh explained why.

Josh: The deaf actors are not allowed to mouth the English words, because of the fact that the ASL translation is taking on the meaning of what you’re saying. So for example, if you say, “We’ve all got our junk and my junk is you.” What I’m signing is we all have an addiction and my addiction is you. So it’s always better to mouth what you’re signing, because it gives the deaf audiences the true meaning, rather than like an English meaning with a half ASL meaning. And it becomes like this mixed, weird confusing presentation of the word.

Nikka: So if the deaf and hard of hearing actors in Deaf West shows aren’t signing the literal translation of the spoken words, what are they signing? Josh and Kevin each shared their favorite translations from spoken English to ASL.

Josh: Like they were, it’s “Totally Fucked.” Because it’s “yeah, you’re fucked all right and all for spite,” you are pathetic and nothing. Like shove you to the side, and see you later is the sign.

Kevin: The one I remember and I love the most is [Huck] talking about sitting on a powder keg. And as if all the things he had done, he knew that everything was

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about to explode. And so, he would show setting up the powder keg, put the little light, and then you’d see the flame going to the powder keg and explode like that. As opposed to actually saying all the words, he was literally showing you the story in motion like that.

Mo Brady: Beyond the differences in the text, there are many other differences in creating theater for the deaf and hard of hearing. Cathy, Joshua, and Kevin all shared some of the unique challenges they’ve encountered.

Cathy: First of all, I’m not an actress. I’m a sign language interpreter. But within sign language, part of the language is to show the affect of what the person is doing. On Broadway, what I don’t want to do, I’m not there to steal the show. I am there to be of support service to the actors, and to have the deaf people know who the character is. So I want to make sure if there is a loud character, that I’m signing in some way that reflects some characteristics of that person.

Josh: A mouth morpheme basically is like the way you move your lips, the way your teeth are placed, the way that you move your mouth, in order to express certain things. So in ASL, you have to use your mouth. So if I would say, “I took a hike,” Your mouth is kind of soft. But if I “took a HIKE,” your teeth are clenched. Your lip has to purse up. So like there’s intonation of how I just said it, you see the two different meanings of hike. And there’s like certain rules and certain ways to express certain concepts that everyone can understand, without me having to explain it.

It’s a very interesting technique to use, even as a hearing actor, because you really understand what your mouth is doing. It tells a story. It tells emotions. It can quake. It can do so much more. So we have to focus on that. And especially in Spring Awakening, because the deaf actors are not allowed to mouth the English words.

Kevin: As a swing, I think I covered five different tracks. And then on top of that, there were maybe three or four different voices that I covered for as well. As a hearing actor, I covered all the hearing boys’ tracks, but they also voiced for other deaf or hard of hearing actors as well. Depending on who was out sometimes, you’d be talking to yourself, because you were voicing for one person. But you’d also voice for the other actor. One of the trickiest parts of the show for me, there were two twins that were in our show, and they spoke very fast. And so, that meant the signs were pretty fast.

And because I wasn’t going on for that role every night, you know, you bobble a line every once in a while. And luckily, most of the audience didn’t notice. But when you bobble a line in sign, you see your fellow deaf and hard of hearing actors kind of go, oh!

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Nikka: One of the signatures of a Deaf West production is that most often two actors are playing the same role, one who signs the words and a second who provides the voice acting for them.

Kevin: So when I was playing a character on stage, I would sign and speak at the same time. And when a hard of hearing or deaf actor would say their lines, they would be signing, and I would lend a voice to that one as well. So sometimes, I would be on stage next to them in the scene, and sometimes I would be on top, maybe looking down or on the side, and I would voice for that one.

Nikka: This collaboration poses a fun exercise for all the actors, as they have to come together for a cohesive interpretation of the role.

Kevin: Yeah, it’s a really fun job trying to match the way they’re signing, because you want to give them the voice that is theirs, and you’d want to honor them in that way. And if it’s a really funny high-pitched voice or something, it’s probably like being a voiceover artist. Sign language is really in facial expression language, and so you can really tell a lot, kind of what mood or what kind of pitch, if you will, they’re using with their face. And if they’re signing really fast and up here, or if it’s very long and big gestures. But you also, if it’s a little story like with the powder keg, you have to fit in the description into that story, so it matches with punch line as well. So there’s a bit of that going on, too, in terms of timing.

Josh: Collaborating with Daniel David Stewart has been a very unique experience, as an actor, because like I said, I’ve done hearing theater. So I always spoke for myself. I always signed, so I was used to that. We both had some pride and ego. We had to acknowledge it and be like, oh well, that’s got to go out, because this is not happening. So working with him is really interesting, because he had his perspective of the character. And I had my perspective on the character, and I could hear him voicing for me. So sometimes I’m like no, no, no, I don’t think he’s that like pathetic.

And he’s like, well no, it’s not pathetic. It’s more sympathetic. So we’d have serious discussions about like what this character did, and that just made me understand Ernst so much more. We have to be together. We have to connect. We have to both make the choices together. So it was very enlightening and very interesting.

Mo: One of the things that Nikka and I have been most fascinated with is how deaf and hard of hearing actors receive their cues, to enter, to exit, or sign or move, or pick up a prop, or move a set piece. It turns out there’s this really incredible intricate web of visual and physical cues being given on stage, that allow the hearing members of the company to cue their deaf and hard of hearing counterparts.

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Josh: Cues in the show are established by multiple things. But one of the things that I really enjoy is that we have our own actors’ cues that we notice from doing the show. So I’m always alert with my eyes. I’m always watching. And then we also have cues for the deaf actors, to really stay in sync, because we don’t have the beat of the music to continuously guide us. So there’s lights that come on and off during certain lines. There are touching cues. I know that Katie Boeck and Sandy have their own system of like if she’s signing too fast, she’ll like touch her in a way that it fits the character.

And like no one feels like “oh, she’s cueing her, because she can’t keep up.” No, it’s always cued in a way that feels natural in the moment. I can hear pretty well with my hearing aids, so I rely on the actual sound cues for myself. But for my deaf roommates, who play Wendla, Thea, and Otto, we bought these speakers. They are called iHome speakers, and basically they’re just little silos of sound. And so, when we plug them into the phone, and we play it, it would vibrate the speaker and we would hold it. So like for “Totally Fucked,” just like “yeah, you’re fucked, all right yeah.” [clapping out rhythm]

And so like, we would clap it altogether and we just did it over and over. And we’d just have to find the rhythm, and then we would finally eventually add the signs. And it also helped, because of the choreography. Spencer Liff has tried to imitate with the sound, like if it was on stage. So there’s a lot of like wave motions and rocky motions. They could feel the beat, the way that it was almost like washing, to touch me. Like, so the whole idea of us making a boat with a body, really made much more sense. Rather than it just being like make a boat, and walk in this tempo.

Kevin: I think a lot of the musical cues that they’re using for Spring Awakening is probably very similar to the style we used for Big River. It’s a lot of visual cues or physical touch. Not only to give them rhythm, because sometimes your signing is with a little bit of a sway, so they can feel the beat. And in the beginning, a lot of the hard of hearing actors would put their hands on the piano, to actually feel what it felt like for them. And then, we had little light cues like the crew does backstage, for their cues. But we’d have light cues for them to enter as well, so they knew when their time was.

But one of the things, once we got comfortable, we would always joke around with them. And the joke was, we would act like we were going to go on stage, and try to get them to go early. And there was one guy, and we got him good one night. We acted like we were going on, and he would never buy it, until this one night. And he got on stage, and he just stayed there, and he owned it until we joined him.

Mo: Whether it’s interpreters and members of the cast, or two onstage actors, appreciating each other’s work is a key part of the success of using ASL in

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performance. Cathy told us about one experience at The Public Theater, during Shakespeare in the Park this summer.

Cathy: During intermission at Cymbeline, the interpreting team and I had a chance to talk to Raul Esparza, and he has some family connections to the deaf world. And he was just really very impressed by, you know, you go from Shakespeare translated to English, and then the English to ASL. And then, you want to match up the English up into the Bard’s language, from how he wrote it. So at the very end of the show, when the cast was taking their curtain call and then it’s our time for them to throw the curtain call to us, Raul couldn’t have been more generous, the way he threw out his hand. So that was a really nice moment.

Kevin: I think my favorite part was the moment when they’re singing “I’m Waiting For the Light to Shine.” And there’s a big chorus going, “I’m waiting for it.” It opens up and everybody is signing furiously, and the song, and the music is huge. And then all of a sudden, there’s no sound at all, but everybody is signing just as furiously. And you for a moment, it just hits you like a ton of bricks, and you literally tear up. And I was a swing, so I watched the show many, many times, and it would hit me the same every single night. And it was so powerful, because all of a sudden, you were in his world and understood what he heard, and what he saw. And that by far is one of the most magical moments I’ve ever been a part of.

I think it’s really cool to figure out how to act with sign, in the same way you figure out how to act with words. And so with words, you realize that you can have different dynamics. You can have different speeds. You can accentuate different words in a sentence. And it’s similar with sign. You can do a big grand gesture, you know, boy or just boy. Or you can do a, “hm, it tastes really good.” Or you can go, “ummm, that tastes SO good,” sort of thing. But it’s all the same gesture. But you realize that’s a lot of inflection as well, whether it’s ummm with your hand, or also with your face.

Nikka: Special thanks to Joshua Castille, Cathy Markland, and Kevin Massey for sharing their stories with us this week. You can learn more about them, and how to connect with them online by visiting our website, theensemblist.com. The Ensemblist was produced today by me, Mo Brady.

Mo: You’re not Mo Brady. I’m Mo Brady. You’re Nikka Graff Lanzarone.

Nikka: Fine.

Mo: Our staff includes Chad Campbell, Jackson Cline and this guy: hey Kevin!

Kevin: Hey.

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Mo Brady: Hi.

Nikka: Hey.

Mo: Oh, he’s here. Special thanks to Warren Schatz and Matthew Murphy. And interstitial music for this episode was Sparks by Beach House.

Nikka: If you want to know more about providing accessibility to arts and cultural events for deaf and hard of hearing people in New York City, check out Hands On at handson.org.

Mo Brady: Hey Kevin, will you take this end stuff?

Nikka: Yeah, do it.

Kevin: Please help others find out about The Ensemblist by leaving us a rating and review in the iTunes Store. And follow The Ensemblist on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Tumblr, and Instagram, to see photos and videos from our guests’ experiences out there in the Broadway community. If you want to support The Ensemblist, you can do so today, by visiting theensemblist.com and clicking the donate link on the left hand side of the page. Thanks for listening, guys. Until next time.

Mo: You’re so good, Kevin.

Nikka: He’s so good.

Kevin: Guys, stop.

Nikka: You were like so good.

Kevin: I learned from the best.

Mo: You’re the prettiest.

[End of recorded material 00:27:16]

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