Vocality and Deaf Theatre When a Heari

Joshua Bastian Cole Vocality and Embodiment Prof. Peraino “How Do You Like My Voice?” Vocality and Deaf Theatre When a hearing actor was cast in the role of a deaf character in Rebecca Gilman's 2009 adaptation of Carson McCullers’s The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, a major mêlée erupted in New York as deaf actors protested the production at the New York Theatre Workshop. Linda Bove, a founding member of the National Theatre of the Deaf who is most well-known for introducing a generation of children to sign language with her long-running role as Linda the Librarian on “Sesame Street,” told the New York Times, “A hearing actor playing a deaf character is tantamount to putting a white actor in blackface” (Jones, “Deaf Star of Tribes Wants Theater World to Listen”). Figure 1: Linda Bove, center, with NTD, 1968 Bove’s strong statement reflects a belief maintained by many Deaf actors, but it does not hinder casting directors from continuing to hire hearing actors in deaf roles. When Tribes premiered in London’s Royal Court Theatre in 2010, playwright Nina Raine knew the deaf Cole 2 character Billy had to be cast with a Deaf actor, though some hearing performers did audition. Raine states: It just felt like patronizing the character somehow in doing this Deaf voice that wasn’t their own and they had no knowledge of what it means to be Deaf. When you start rehearsals, it’s also brilliant to have a Deaf person in the room because the play is about Deafness, so what would be the point of doing a play about Deafness and not having someone in the room who can tell you what it’s like firsthand? It would just be insane, I think. (qtd. in Buchwald, “Deaf Talent Seen and Heard”) It wasn’t until James (Joey) Caverly, who played Billy at SpeakEasy Stage in Boston, Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C., and Berkeley Rep, contacted Raine to tell her that a hearing actor had been cast in one of the U.S. stagings that she was even aware that this was happening. In response to Caverly’s request that she go on record and say that Billy had to be portrayed by a Deaf actor, Raine decided to include a note in the play’s reprinting strongly encouraging theatres to cast a Deaf actor. She also talked to her agent about making the same stipulation when theatre companies get the rights to Tribes. Speaking to American Theatre Magazine, Raine was hesitant to say that if you can’t find a Deaf actor, you can’t do the play, because as a director, she knows that sometimes things happen, like an actor becoming unavailable at the last minute. Still, she feels, a hearing actor should be a last resort. In the Off- Broadway production, the Deaf actor playing Billy, Russell Harvard, had a hearing understudy who also understudied the hearing role of the brother Daniel; that’s the way it’s usually done (Buchwald). In the article, Raine states, “What I wouldn’t want is for people to cast some totally ordinary actor and say, ‘Just act Deaf—it can’t be that hard.’ The thing is, if you can’t get a part as a Deaf actor when there’s a Deaf part, when are you going to get cast?” Cole 3 Raine prioritizes casting Deaf actors in deaf roles partially for their understanding of Deafness, but also because, as stated above, she is concerned with actors “doing this Deaf voice that wasn’t their own.” Katie LeClerc, star of the ABC Family series Switched at Birth, plays a Deaf character as a hearing actor with Ménière’s disease. She calls upon her own fluctuating hearing loss, resulting from Ménière’s Disease, to infuse her role with a dash of authenticity. She plays Daphne Vasquez, a Deaf teen who meets the family she never knew she had, and gets to share the screen with Lea Thompson (of Back to the Future fame) and Deaf actor Marlee Matlin, winner of the 1987 Academy Award for Children of a Lesser God. In the show, LeClerc puts on a “deaf accent” and wears hearing aids to enhance her visibility/audibility as a Deaf person. There are several episodes when the character LeClerc plays, Daphne, has dreams or hallucinations where she envisions herself as hearing. In those episodes, LeClerc uses what she calls her “real voice,” one that passes as hearing. To represent Deafness, she emphasizes certain speech patterns. In an interview for Ability Magazine, LeClerc explains that she was asked to “try a ‘deaf accent.’ It’s something we discussed in depth. We wanted to make sure my portrayal was respectful and done correctly. At the same time, we felt that using a deaf accent would be a really strong choice for the character” (Cooper, “Katie LeClerc Hear and Now”). In an interview for Wetpaint Entertainment, reporter Carita Rizzo asked LeClerc, “Do you think many people know that you don’t actually speak with — is it called a speech impediment?” LeClerc: I call it an accent. Rizzo: Do people know that you don’t speak with an accent in life? LeClerc: No. [Laughs] I am so excited for the fans of the show to get to be a part of my real voice. It was really, really funny because we’ve all been working together for about Cole 4 three years now, so as soon as they called “cut” after that first scene, Vanessa [Vanessa Marano co-stars as the hearing character Bay, who was switched at birth with LeClerc’s character, Daphne] went up to me like, “There’s something wrong. What's happening?” So it was kind of strange to use my normal speaking voice. I am so excited for people to see it, and when I get stopped on the street, the first thing they say is, “How do you do that thing with your voice?” And I just say, “Lots of practice.” Rizzo: How do you do it, actually? The accent — was that hard to perfect? Was it something you had to work on? LeClerc: It was the biggest challenge that I had ever had in my acting career, ever. It was a fine line to walk. I didn't want to come across as offensive because I don’t use that voice in my normal life, but it is also a requirement to add authenticity to the character. So I'm very familiar with the Deaf community, and my sister [who has a more advanced case of Ménière’s] and I sat down with an audiogram and really mapped out what Daphne’s specific hearing loss would be. And based on that specific hearing loss, what sounds she would be able to say and what sounds she wouldn’t be able to say. So it was a lot of work, and I’m so thankful for my sister’s assistance in that because without her, I don’t think the voice would have sounded as good. But it’s something I’m very proud of. (Rizzo, “Katie Leclerc Hypes Switched at Birth’s Alternate Reality Episode — Exclusive!”) As I have been writing this essay, I have gone back and forth between deaf and Deaf, and there is a reason for that. Before I continue exploring Deaf characters and actors, I am going to provide some context for the development of the Deaf community. Cole 5 Although sign language, or “manualism,” has been in use for centuries, originating in France and Spain, it has been viewed by many American hearing educators as “primitive” or “grotesque.” For more than a hundred years, a “methods war” raged in the U.S. over the use of sign language versus oral communication. Figure 2: an iconography of French signs, 1856 In the second half of the nineteenth century, the oralist movement spread through Europe and North America, inspiring politicians, philanthropists, and teachers with the dream of converting all deaf children from solitary outcasts into active citizens by merging them into hearing society (Rée 230). The debates were intensified by the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, who disapproved of sign language as an educational method for teaching deaf children. Bell espoused speech, lip-reading, and auditory training as the most Cole 6 practical methods for preparing deaf children for an oral/aural English-speaking society (Baldwin 12). Sign language institutions were reformed prohibiting the use of sign, and oralist schools were founded to integrate the deaf world into the hearing one. A hundred years later, oralist schools would be almost universally condemned on the grounds that they cater to the prejudices of hearing adults rather than the needs of deaf children. Figure 3: A speech lesson at the Royal School for the Deaf, Exeter, 1899 Though the oral method had some success, particularly for those with some vestigial hearing, the deaf schools did not work out as their founders had hoped—they were allowing the deaf to create a whole new social world for themselves, an exclusive society. With oralist schools, the deaf, for the first time, became a conspicuous social group. Many of them married and had children, selecting partners they met through their school. The oralist opponents of sign language were helping to bring about the separate deaf society they had intended to prevent. By Cole 7 constructing separate communities for themselves, based on their schools, the Deaf have been able to live together on their own terms without having to defer to the hearing world. By the middle of the nineteenth century, they were radically transforming their reputation.

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