Hell No! by Ingrid Michaelson & Deaf West Theater

Ingrid Michaelson, who I already loved for her ridiculous Time Machine¹ video with Donald Faisson, Rainn Wilson, Jorge Garcia, et al, released a redo of her latest single, Hell No, which is fully ASL & English.

People magazine ran an article which seems to have the only video link currently available.  Go watch it and come back!  I love that Ingrid was inspired by Deaf West Theater at the Tony's and asked them to work with her to broaden the audience. 

Hearies, if you ever wondered the difference between word-for-word and concept-for-concept interpreting, look at how many different ways there are to say "hell no!"  And it's not just the hands, it's really the facial expressions. 

Side note: one of my "that's a cool sign" signs shows up: WHATEVER.  Yes, it's done as a big ole' two-handed W, but I like it as a two-handed W with the wrist twist.  Super expressive.  You can hear the boredom and the flippancy within the visual. 

1 Time Machine does a lovely play on video running backwards to illustrate reversal of time. But if you want a geeky version, there's also Entropic Time, a parody of Billy Joel's "For the Longest Time". It's scientific!

EDIT: YouTube now has the ASL video.

French Christmas

Terping is tough!  You have to hear what's being said, hopefully hear things correctly, know your audience in terms of how to sign (including but not limited to ASL vs Pidgin Signed English or English word order, and at what vocabulary level), and you have to be a thesaurus.  And then there are the times when you have to be a linguist in other languages as well.  So it helps to have as much information in advance as possible.  

And then there are those moments. 

I was texting with a supremely capable interpreter who will be terping her church's Christmas program at DPAC (Durham Performing Arts Center, seats 2600).  And as she was planning things out she asked me, entirely as an aside, what Noël means.  She may be fluent in Spanish, but I took 5 years of French classes and immediately texted back that Noël is French for Christmas.  And then furiously typed, using gloss (English transcription of ASL, written in all caps for easy reading on the fly) to hopefully clear things up: Noël means CHRISTMAS, not FRENCH CHRISTMAS.  In French, the word Noël translates to Christmas in English.  

I can just see her terping FIRST FRENCH CHRISTMAS ANGEL PROCLAIM... (The first Noel the angel did say...) and I would be rolling on the floor in absolute stitches, but at the same time, fully culpable.

It's an awkward song.  The angels don't say "First Noël" or "shepherds in fields".  That entire first verse is: time (The first Noël/Christmas), subject (the angels), verb (did say), object (was to certain poor shepherds), and location (in fields as they lay).  Then location again (in fields), description of interrupted action (where they lay keeping their sheep), followed inexplicably by weather?! (on a cold winter's night that was so deep).  And deep, as far as I know, is not even a meteorological term, and is only in there because poetically it rhymes with sheep.  Only when you get to the chorus do you hear what the proclamation is: CHRISTMAS CHRISTMAS CHRISTMAS CHRISTMAS!  BORN KING ISRAEL.

Phew!

ASL is pretty.  And it is a lot of work to make it so.

Captioning for the deaf, because not all deaf are Deaf.

Blog post by Joyce "Xpressive Hands" Edmiston on the need for captions in worship in addition to ASL interpreters. 

"...The largest growing group of Disabled Americans [are] people with hearing loss. Many don't know Sign Language because their culture is the hearing culture. Their friends, family, social groups and communities do not use ASL. BUT Deaf and hard of hearing and people with hearing loss, as well as people learning English as a second language ALL benefit from having captions."

Happy reading!

Interpreter accomplishment: Counterpoint: UNLOCKED!

I love counterpoint.

Correction: I love singing counterpoint.
Wonderful grace of Jesus, for example.  Only hymn with a bass lead.  Great song.

But interpreting counterpoint?  I'm not an octopus, and even if I were...
For example, try fingerspelling C-A-T with one hand and D-O-G with the other hand.
It's tougher than you might think.



Today in church we sang "Everlasting God", and at 3:10 by this video, it splits into an call-echo part.  Then at 4:01 it shifts into a verse-chorus counterpoint.  That means different tunes and different WORDS for each part.

I managed to put the ladies' verse part on my left hand and the men's chorus part on my right hand so that, for the first time since I had a coterp that I could have join me for counterpoint songs, I didn't have to say, "I'm with you, and you're on your own."  (That's what I do for You are Holy, and for that matter, Wonderful Grace of Jesus, because there is simply no way.)  When we went from unison to echo I shifted my stance and indicated, "hang on, things are gonna get interesting", and when the counterpoint hit... it was impressive.  I nearly hooped and hollered and jumped around after the song ended.  In a presbyterian church, you just don't do that.  BUT IT WOULD HAVE BEEN UNDERSTANDABLE IF I DID. 

ASL storytelling

I've got a surprise for you:

That was the good surprise. Here's the shocker, though:
Rhymes don't mean anything in ASL.
Mother Goose?
The rhythm and cadence of "Jack and Jill went up the hill" kind of gets lost in JACK (sign-spell-sign to establish a namesign) JILL (sign-spell-sign) HILL GO WALK.
This is not to say that they don't sign the children's poems. They are part of the larger cultural experience. But poetry in ASL is a visual experience, not an auditory one.

As Hermione told Ron re Beedle the Bard, Muggles have entirely different stories. (I am not saying Deaf are Muggles. In fact, the Hearies are probably the Muggles in this analogy, in not knowing about an entire society that exists right within the larger community.)

When I first studied ASL, we learned several children's stories from within Deaf culture. For example, TRAIN STORY tells of a wild west train ambush, all by using the handshapes for the numbers 1-15 in order. (The first version of the story I learned, the white people surrender to the Native Americans. Later I learned a version in which the calvary swoops in and capture the Native Americans. Revisionist history?) We also did MAGIC POT to work on classifiers, using handshapes to illustrate size and motion. (Even without ASL, use your hands to show me the size & shape of a baseball. A basketball looks different, although it also is a ball. A high-bounce ball you'd probably only use one hand to show me the shape. A marble, maybe only two fingers.)

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Meet Sheena. She's 4yo and Deaf-of-Deaf. She is Deaf and her mother is Deaf. (Approx 90% of Deaf people are born to hearing people.) (And when Deaf have a Deaf child, there is rejoicing to have a child who is "like us". Like recognizing a family nose.)

She tells Twas the Night Before Christmas in full ASL (her native language). Please read this article before you watch the video. It will help you appreciate the linguistic complexity of what this little girl is doing.

Thanks to Tim for the find!

P.S. This spring's CVHS musical is Children of Eden, a retelling of the Adam & Eve, and Noah's Ark stories. It is a Bible-as-literature version, not a Christian perspective. A lot of fun, but we'll set aside the theology of it. Interpreted matinee Tues 4/8/2014.

You know more ASL than you may think

Source: Poorly Drawn Lines
Thanks to Rebecca for the find! Keep practicing, girl!

I do not think that means what you think it means.

Today's adult Sunday School and worship service were focused on building community. Our church leaders often say that "circles are better than rows", which is to say, the corporate worship is important, but accountability and personal growth comes in small groups (life groups/cell groups/discipleship groups). And there is no better way to bond than over food! Big Frog and I often enjoy lunch out with our Deafies after church. Which means that after worship we need to figure out what we want to eat and where.

Now, Big Frog and I are both hearies. And you should know that one of the BIG rules in Deaf Culture is: Don't correct a Deaf person's signs. If a hearie learns a sign from a Deaf person, the Deaf sign is right. Adopt their sign for future use, especially with that individual. By all means, ask for them to repeat it, to clarify, but their sign is right. There is so much regional sign that even from MD, where I learned ASL, to PA, where I live now and interact with Deaf, there are significant differences. Also, I have been signing longer than the Deaf couple at our church. Bite your tongue, girl!! (Bite your hands??)

There are four parts of describing a sign: 1) handshape, 2) location, 3) movement, 4) facial expression.

And changing just one element can be the difference between choosing a place for a TERRIBLE lunch and a LIGHT lunch.

Here are the signs, courtesy of SigningSavvy: TERRIBLE, as compared to LIGHT as in lightweight. The mental link that got twisted, I'm sure, is LIGHT/LAMP.

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They also are investigating different options for their next home, now that they've both retired. And prominent among those options is moving to Florida, where they have family. One individual in particular has been poking them for years to move south.

As my RVP said recently, an Action personality, by the time they tell you they're thinking of doing something, they've probably already done it. But a Stable personality researches and deliberates and weighs options.

But what the conscious mind thinks may not be quite what the subconscious mind is working towards. When we asked them what kind of timeframe they were thinking of moving, although the wife voiced YEAR, she signed HOUR.

Hopefully they'll tell me if I don't need to terp this week because they've packed up kit and caboodle and left the state.

Playing with the Interpreters

I always try to arrive early and make sure the pastor knows to expect me terping away down in his peripheral field of vision.¹ And maybe² even get any available outlines, key points, or possibly even full-text printouts I can get my hands on. It's especially important when there's a guest speaker who's may not be used to having an interpreter.

¹ Of course, those weeks when I teach 2nd/3rd immediately before worship, occasionally running over, the timing is a little more "interesting", but that's beside the point.
² Hopefully. Blessedly. OK, I never expect it. But I'm delighted when I get it.

ASL is a conceptual language and interpreting is not a word-for-word deal. But you have to work within "contact sign", which is to say, know your audience. The Deafies I interpret for in church now grew up oral deaf (lipreading and voicing), and in a church context. So they know both the English language and the language of the church.³ I don't have to explain concepts near as much as if I were working with new believers. But they think in English, so I use English word order far more than ASL grammar.

³ It does put me at a disadvantage when I interpret theater, however. The vocabulary I use the most is sermon vocabulary, not scat singing nor British poetry, to name a few.

But they understand metaphoric thinking and the visual nature of ASL. Like the song "His Eye is on the Sparrow". It's based on part of Matthew 6, part of Jesus' the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus encourages his followers not to worry.

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

"And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

So when my then-co-terp did the song in rehearsal, it was concept for concept. She signed about God watching over and caring for and knowing and loving his people even more than he did the tiny birds.

But when it came right down to it, her audience wasn't who we expected. That morning we had one deafie who was very much a word-for-word gal. All English all the time. Contact sign, right? Know your audience. OK, how to turn this around, on the fly, signing live...

There were eyeballs all over. There were birds everywhere. There were eyeballs on birds. (Remember, "His eye is on the sparrow.") It was kind of like a bloody horror story, too gruesome to watch, but too captivating to look away. And I was there in the pew, ready to feed the terp in the hot seat if she needed it.<sup>4

4</sup> Not really ready. I was ready with the concept for concept watching, keeping, caring, knowing, loving. No one could be ready for that melee.

But that individual, having grown up in the church, knew the song and probably had sung it when she was a kid, back when she had more hearing. And she understood eyes and birds and probably even sang along in her heart because the words on my co-terp's hands matched the words to the song that deaf woman remembered.

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Here's another example from the world of wordplay. When the Bug Man and his wife speak, the story can be from anywhere in the entire world, but one thing that is guaranteed is a twist ending. Like the time they brought an intricately carved wooden stool that a particular people group used as a pillow. I signed CHAIR (Vanna⁵) BED P-I-L-L-O-W.

The Bug Man loved the stool-pillows and asked if they could get some more samples. The tribe knew that the Bug Man was a collector of many things and dutifully set about collecting "stool samples" from not the pillow end.

⁵ Flourish at the stage, meaning "lookit".

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The pastor of the church I grew up with was big on memorable mneumonics. Sometimes rhyming, sometimes alliterative... Not so much in ASL.

If I had actually done any interpreting there, I would have better examples. But I can tell you from growing up there that the Abrahamic covenant is "Seed and Deed" and Ephesians is "Sit-Kneel-Walk-Stand". That concept would take to ASL better, although a given week in that sermon series was only on one posture of a disciple. BTW, if your hearing child isn't paying attention to the worship service, rest assured, their ears don't turn off, it goes in regardless. Not so with a deaf person. Think about it.

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I suspect my current pastor receives a "word of the day" and tries to use it in that day's conversations. It makes for fun interpreting, especially when he says, "Anthropomorphic! Glad I don't have to spell it but..."

I stopped cold, turned around, and interrupted the sermon with voice and sign, "But I have to!"<sup>6

6</sup> BUT I NEED

Honestly, if he hadn't said "spell", I would have explained "anthropomorphic" as "CHARACTER PERSON GOD APPLY"<sup>7

7</sup> Applying the characteristics of a person to God.

Which of course falls into this heading:

source: Becki's Book Blog

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It's always good for speakers/performers to interact with the friendly neighborhood interpreters, but it's really funny when you play with their heads.


Of course, in such situations, a professional will soldier on boldly... but the speaker offering a nice drink afterwards is often appropriate.

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P.S. Today I learned how to make dividing lines in html! And lines come in different sizes, too. Also, I remembered how to make block quotes without having to look it up. I'm growing as a person.

What show would you like to do?

If you had the skill, the time, the inclination, the resources, and the venue... in short, if all the stars aligned, what show would you like to act in, in what role (male or female; remember, all the stars are aligned)? Is it a different show from what you would direct if everything lined up?

When terping, the choices you can make are different. For example, even though we've asked and been turned down by CVHS, Elton John's Aida would be amazing! With three terps, my male co-terp could be Adam Pascal (Radames), I could be Heather Headley (Aida), and my female co-terp could be Sherie Rene Scott (Amneris). Easy. So much fun! And Elton! Unfortunately for us, CVHS intentionally chooses shows with a massive cast and lots of leads and named characters.

My female co-terp and I also had a long FB chat on Sweeney Todd. Which, in a post-Tim-Burton-version world, when she called Mrs Lovitt right off the bat, she was really calling dibs on Helena Bonham Carter. Because, after all, who wouldn't love to sing Bellatrix? Shepherd's pie peppered with actual shepherd, am I right? But if she's Helena Bonham Carter, and the default assumption is that of course our male co-terp would get Johnny Depp, I *still* win, big time! Because if I get all the bit parts, that means I get Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall, and Sasha Baron Cohen! Alan Rickman, y'all! Win upon win upon win. Always.

And with my particular penchant for tech theater, here's a special feature from the movie about making blood for film<sup>1 2  

1</sup> And just how crazy-much you need for effects, compared to the mere pints an actual human has flowing at a given moment.
² If you're squeamish about blood, please realize that movie blood is primarily high-fructose corn syrup.

At Toby's, the stage is in the round, which is amazing for closeness to the stage, as the worst seat in the house is a whopping 30' from the stage, and those in the front need to be cautioned to keep their toes tucked in lest they become part of the action. But it makes eliminating corpses interesting. What they did was create a platform filling half the floor at the center of the stage. When Pierelli died, his actor, the amazing Larry Munsey, tumbled thru a trapdoor and spent the balance of Act 1 inside the platform, on a camping mattress, with his ipod. As for the victims during "God, That's Good", there are four aisles for the stage. With Sweeney's barber chair installed in the middle of the platform, a body sling was ziplined from the balcony above one aisle down to Sweeney's chair, where he strapped in a victim and, with a tip of the chair, sent him whizzing down and out the opposite aisle. It was a wonder of tech theater. And kind of creepy. But that's Grand Guignol for you.

But my male co-terp doesn't want to do Sweeney Todd. He's not a Sondheim fan. And I can see how being Johnny Depp would have less appeal than being Alan Rickman³. Instead, his preference is Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat⁴, in which he actually played⁵ Joseph in a local-to-him production. Or he would like Jekyll and Hyde, which I actually have not yet seen.

³ Alan Rickman!
⁴Joseph is Big Frog's preference, too. Big Frog would be Reuben, who sings the Country song "One More Angel in Heaven".
⁵ Acted, not terped.

Once Upon a Mattress might be fun too. Or Guys and Dolls. Or Lion King⁶. Or Billy Elliot... and now we're back on an Elton kick⁷, there's always Aida...

⁶ Costuming would be a bigger challenge there than terping, although CVHS has a custom couturier who makes up their costumes.
⁷ Or were we never off one?

Poodle skirt and saddle shoes

We terp in character.  And, when we can, in costume.  Ryan got a leather jacket and rolled up his jeans ("Why was this ever considered cool?")  I borrowed a poodle skirt (from a Tap Pup, from the Jailhouse Rock number) and wore my black and whites.  Don't we look suitably fifties?

CVHS puts on a show that is beyond high school level.  It is beyond community theater level.  It is literally professional-grade theater.  And these kids are... well, kids!  For example, Stockard Channing was 33 when she was Rizzo in the John Travolta/Olivia Newton-John movie version.  The CVHS Rizzo was a freshman, which means she's, what, 13?  14?  And she was Rizzo.   (Fwiw, I had the thought this week that I should stop introducing myself as Lisa and be Mrs Swope when I'm at CV.)  You have to really plan ahead to get tickets to a CV musical.  The community knows they're phenomenal.  This year the tickets went on sale in 2 1/2 months ago and were sold out in two days.  TWO DAYS.  Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday matinee.  That's two more shows than they did the first year I terped the musical.  It's a blessing that they open up their final dress rehearsal to the senior centers in the area and let us bring our Deaf and Hard of Hearing friends, and those who support interpreted theater.

Here's some poorly taped rehearsal video of my favorite piece, Greased Lightning.  It's video of onstage, not of us.  And it can't hope to capture the energy and excitement of the song.  But let me point out that the coolest moves were the chain pushups (2:02) (in the interpreted show they got mid-song applause) and the running lights (2:22).  They unfortunately don't display well from this angle but they were utterly amazing live.


Every year I'm overwhelmed by the response from the audience, both those who come specifically to support interpreted theater, and also from those who don't know in advance that we'll be interpreting but get so sucked in that they specifically come up to us afterwards and say that they were watching us too.  This year even some of the kids said that when they were in the wings they would watch us.  I invited them to ASL social. 

One piece of note: 
We talked to the head usher and communicated with the JROTC ushering crew so they would be aware of the Deaf section.  Most of the first and last rows of seats were pulled out to accomodate wheelchairs.  Between the pit and the front row was walker parking.  But by the time the walkers were parked two deep the whole width of the theater the head usher was stressing.  "Can I park more walkers here?"  "Can I seat wheelchairs in the spaces in front of your section?"  We kept pushing back.  "They need sight line!"  "That's where we're standing to interpret!"  She even asked us if they could see us if we stood in the aisle to terp instead of where we had staked out.  Ummm... no.  The lighting crew had established that for us.  We'd asked for a slightly wider lit area, knowing that we sign BIG when we get into it.  And it's kind of important to see the terp.  Ryan laughingly said that if we stood in the aisle we could do hands-on-hands deaf-blind interpreting.  That's challenging on the best of days, in the best of times. 

Eventually, there were three full rows of walkers parked up front.  It was kind of ridiculous.  I compared it to visiting an Asian home: whoever goes home first has their pick of "Which shoes do I like best and want to go home with?", regardless of what shoes they came in wearing.  (Not really.  But I still think it.  And for whatever reason, I love taking photos of foyers filled with guests' shoes.)  Every single wheelchair space was filled, including three in front of our Deaf, albeit the far end of the row so they weren't obscuring anyone's view.  Although we told them that we would be obstructing theirs.  (By the end of the show they were enjoying watching us!) 

And the head usher's parting words to me were, "I didn't get to see the whole show.  But I saw the end of it.  And I understand why you needed light." 

Well, if every day you learn something, it's a great day.

Random Grease observations

In no particular order:

1) No ASL dictionary seems to list "rama-lama-lama-ka-dinga-da-ding-dong".
2) They don't seem to list "It's hyyyyyyydro-matic", either.
3) Nothing strikes fear into the hearts of men like raccoons. Go Rydell Ringtails! Really?
4) "Look at me, I'm Sandra Dee" seems to have the same music as "Christmas withe the Chipmunks". Alllllllllvin!
5) Who names their kid "Doody"?
6) As much as I hate listening to jive talk, terping it is even worse.
7) If I get stuck, I'm just going to hand jive and maybe do some jazz squares.

I can't believe the show is THIS WEEK.

Terping the good, the bad, and the ugly

NY Times article Interpreters bring live music to the deaf.

[I]nterpreters specialize in analyzing lyrics for the artist’s intent in a song. But sign language interpretation, no matter where it takes place, is about more than translating words into gestures and signs. The interpreter must communicate an overall experience by expressing the speaker’s tone, the meaning behind phrases and idioms, and even if someone’s cellphone interrupts an otherwise-silent lecture hall.

One year, Ms. Parker interpreted at a Sheryl Crow concert held to celebrate of one of Lance Armstrong’s Tour de France titles. He was asked to take over on the drums for one of Ms. Crow’s songs.

“Well,” Ms. Parker said, “he wasn’t any good.”

Ms. Parker let the discomfort show on her face as she imitated Mr. Armstrong’s uneven drumming. She nodded subtly to assure perplexed members of the deaf audience that she was indeed doing this on purpose.

As the audience reacted, Ms. Parker saw a deaf man elbow the hearing man next to him and cringe. The hearing man nodded and made a similar pained face.

Yet another reason I need to get to Austin for SXSW!

But in the meantime there's always Grease at CVHS! Tues April 9 is barrelling down upon us!

ASL-interpreted theater, part 4 - "I'd like to" vs "I'll work my butt off to make this happen"

There's a big gap between "I'd like to" and "I'm willing to put in the work to".

When I started interpreting it wasn't so much interpreting as signing, located in the hot seat.

Prior to that, I took classes and was "signing along" from my seat in church. There were a few times when I was asked to sign to music for a worship service, but on the whole that was performance sign. Like a dance I could choreograph in advance and rehearse until I was ready. With a CD it was easy. Even working with live music it was reasonably simple. Also I could set limitations as to what I was willing to do and how the group needed to flex to accomodate me. After all, they had asked me to do a particular service to enhance their performance¹. And in all things, it was to benefit the hearies who thought sign was pretty. No shame in that. It's how I got started learning sign.

¹ The one time that really fell through was when I was making visual something that, within a drama, was voiced offstage by a deceased character. I didn't memorize my piece because I would be signing a poem that was, again, voiced offstage. It worked perfectly well in rehearsal. During the performance the mic was either off or not receiving or not broadcasting to the monitor near me. So I tried to listen to the unamplified voice and remember my part. It was ugly. But the audience wasn't expected to read me either; they were supposed to be listening to the voice also. Oh well.

But as I took classes and met Deaf² people, I came to learn that, like in all foreign language classes, learning about the culture was far more important than mere vocabulary. When I moved to PA for college and began attending the church at which I still interpret, it was about the same time a deaf couple, who up to that point had been wholly reliant on lipreading, were losing hearing with age and were looking into learning ASL. That was the start of our church's Deaf fellowship.

² Deaf and deaf are different things. Those who cannot hear are deaf, with a lower-case "d". That has to do with the auditory processing. An audiologist can tell you how deaf you are by the way you respond to and the way your brain processes sound. For example, as an individual ages, their odds of losing hearing and becoming deaf increase. By contrast, Deaf, with a capital "D", are a people-group, or nation if you will, who use sign³. Some but not all deaf are Deaf. Some Deaf have perfectly good hearing, such as CODAs (children of Deaf adults) and interpreters, among others.
³ ASL is not the only sign language. Virtually every spoken language has a sign language, but ASL is predominant in the same way English is predominant. Also, British sign is also different from ASL, most notably in that British fingerspelling uses a two-handed alphabet, whereas ASL is a one-handed alphabet. One mainstream example of British sign is in the movie Four Weddings and a Funeral.
British fingerspelling. source: Elduaien academia

ASL fingerspelling. source: lifeprint.com

I reached a point where signing in my own seat wasn't pushing me. If I fell behind, it didn't matter. If I didn't know a word, I had no feedback to provide it. If I did something exceptionally well, no one noticed or cared.

Now I won't say I was signing well. But I asked the deaf couple (who were increasingly Deaf) and another ASL student who was similarly signing in her own seat, if they could help push me to learn. If I sat facing them, could they help correct me as I got things wrong? Or fill in words if I missed them, whether auditorily or vocabulary?

They said yes.

ASL sometimes finds you

Did I mention I got sucked into Switched at Birth by the all-ASL episode?

So I was looking online to see how many of the cast were fluent before the show and I found this great Slate article which includes how Katie Leclerc puts on a deaf accent to play Daphne, one of the titular switched daughters and one of the Deaf students. Leclerc learned ASL to fulfill a high school foreign language requirement, prior to learning she herself had Ménière's disease, which exhibits itself in fluctuating hearing loss due to fluid in the inner ear.

Leclerc thinks of Daphne’s speaking voice as being like any other accent, but rather than working with a dialect coach, she researched it with the help of her sister, an ASL teacher who also has Ménière’s. “She and I sat down, and we pulled out an audiogram, and we mapped out Daphne’s specific hearing loss and chose sounds that she could say and couldn’t say based on her exact hearing loss,” Leclerc told me. “It’s a very specific choice. From there, I just made my family crazy and spoke with the accent for two months until I felt I could do it.” When the show goes on hiatus, and she goes months without using Daphne’s voice, Leclerc pulls out the audiogram again and studies it until the accent becomes second nature.

I highly recommend you read the whole article.

Switched at Birth

Off-the-cuff thoughts on the Uprising episode, presented all in ASL (in no particular order):

1) Wow, Deaf President Now was 25 years ago?
1a) Wow... not one of the characters in the show (correction, not one of those students) would have been alive then.

I remember learning about DPN¹ in my first ASL class as a reasonably recent event.
Ummm... my first ASL class was in 1996. Since then Gallaudet has had two other presidents.

¹The Deaf students (and in short order, faculty, alumni and supporters) took a stand because the mostly-hearing board of Gallaudet chose of the three qualified candidates (two Deaf, one hearing-and-completely-non-signing), the hearing one. They wanted a Deaf president and a majority Deaf board. They also wanted the Board chair out. A quote (that she has persistently denied) supposedly was that "Deaf people cannot function in a hearing world." The Deaf wanted one of their own in leadership. After a week of boycotting classes, barring the gates, marching, and peaceful protest, I. King Jordan, one of the two Deaf candidates and a Gallaudet dean, was appointed the first Deaf president in the whole 100+ years of Gallaudet's history. The protest is remembered as one of the first times the general public was able to see that "Deaf people can do anything, except hear."

2) How many of the actors knew ASL before the show? How many know it now?

3) Is there anything Marlee Matlin can't do? Dancing with the Stars, negotiating with hostile high schoolers and a school board... I know she's the only Deaf actress with an Oscar, but sometimes I feel like she gets pulled out as "the" Deaf actress. I wonder if the Deaf are super-proud of her or tired of her being the only one?
3a) I miss Linda Bove. Do you remember her, from Sesame Street? I wonder how many kids she inspired to learn at least a little ASL? I wonder how many people she showed that you just treat her as a normal neighbor?

4) I really hate the camera angles where the signer's back is to the camera. Those over-the-shoulder shots where you need to see the reaction of the other person. Can't see the hands!

5) It's hard to watch hands when captions come onscreen! I usually have captions on but I'm not usually trying to read sign.
5a) Have you ever thought how hard it must be for a deaf kid to watch TV? To have to learn to read in order to watch a show? What a blessing we live now in an era of Skype and YouTube and other video conferencing software, that deaf kids don't have to learn to spell in order to "Say hi to Grandma, sweetie!"

6) Sucked in. Too bad there's only one episode left this season.

Switched at Birth goes all-ASL tonight!

ASL is tough to do on TV and in movies. To get a full-face view of the signer, it requires a lot of camera cuts. When I go to ASL socials, it's even difficult to follow a conversation with two people across a circle; it can get a bit like watching tennis. What usually happens for tv is an arty shot with everything voiced. It's enough for hearies to know "someone's signing". For example, in Mr Holland's Opus, when the principal is showing the parents around the Deaf school, she signs and speaks, but the visual is entirely in silhouette as the three adults walk, backlit, down a hallway. Or when Marlee Matlin does an interview, the default camera angle, as for most interviews, is a headshot. Her hands go in and out of frame, making it difficult to watch the signing. And where is her interpreter? Ostensibly to the side of the camera, which is not the same eye-gaze (direction) as looking at the interviewer.

BTW, it's tougher than you would think to voice and sign at the same time. The words don't come in the same order, for one thing. Personally, I consider voice interpreting, from ASL into English, significantly more difficult than interpreting English into ASL.

I say all this to help you appreciate the difficulty and the importance of tonight's Switched at Birth going all-ASL! Kudos to the showrunners for making this happen. Here's a compelling interview with the show creator, Lizzy Weiss.

The concept of the episode is 'this is what life is like for a deaf person.' Every scene has at least one deaf person in it, that was our rule. We would never cut away to two hearing people, because they wouldn't be signing to each other, and we wanted to keep our concept. I guess we could have done a scene from the POV of a deaf person of two hearing people talking, but then we would not have captioned the conversation; we would have shown what it's like to be deaf in a world in which most everyone speaks only. We do scenes all the time in which we sim com, so the challenge was to do something different. Once we struck upon the concept of 'this is from the perspective of a deaf person', our 'rules' fell into place.

Interview available at hitfix.com.
The Uprising episode of Switched at Birth airs on ABC Family (FIOS 199) at 8p tonight, Monday, March 4, 2013.

Full disclosure:
I have followed TV columnist Alan Sepinwall since I started compulsively following Chuck. I enjoy his insights and am glad for his access to showrunners and writers, but I particularly enjoy his interactions with the fanbases.
FWIW, I have not followed Switched at Birth to this point. But I am very excited for today's episode and I hope it engages me enough to continue to watch the show.
+++++++++++++
Update:
Additional info:
Huffington Post article

ASL-interpreted Theater, part 2 - Idioms and translating

Many moons ago, I watched the movie Cats while hanging out at a friend's house. Kind of. I fell asleep somewhere in the middle of the first act and made my excuses to go home at intermission. As I recall, my general impression was that James Earl Jones¹ dressed up as a fat cat² and all the cats sang about themselves. And the one song I'd heard of before, Memory, was evidently in the second act because I didn't get that far.

¹ It wasn't James Earl Jones.
² Not rich, just literally fat. And a cat. A really big, fat cat.

So, not my favorite musical.

But I only get asked to interpret one musical per year.
And I don't get to choose what show they do at CVHS, although I keep dropping suggestions³.
Thing is, I'm not actually an interpreter by trade. I'm a church terp, which is to say, I'm a hack. I'm not state-certified. But when you're doing the terping as a labour of love⁵ and not for pay, even a hack can get in on the action. My co-terp graciously says I'm a very gifted hack. And I like doing the theater pieces.

³ Aida! Elton John's Aida! But as passionate as I am about that show⁴, the CVHS director has told me every year that they intentionally choose shows with big casts and lots of leads. And Aida has... three.
⁴ And about Elton.
⁵ I put the "u" in labour because I felt British. More about that later.

But whereas I knew Les Mis going into that show, I did not know Cats at all. So my co-terp and I started with the soundtrack. Get it into your head⁶. For those that didn't know, the entire plot of Cats is that this group of cats⁸ hang out together and sing-act-perform-show off in hopes of being chosen the one cat per year who gets to go to the Heavyside Layer, which ostensibly is Cat Heaven. The source material is a book of poetry by TS Eliot; each poem describes one cat.

⁶ Apologies to Big Frog, who also got Cats into his head. Three years later, he still occasionally breaks into "I have a gumby cat in mind/her name is JennyAnyDots. He, like I, has always been succeptible to Broadway Tourettes.^7
7 Thanks to Garrison Keillor, A Prairie Home Companion, and Guy Noir for that diagnosis. Full transcript and audio available here.
⁸ Is there a collective noun for cats?

So the translation work was tougher than expected because there were far more steps than usual. From Poetry to Prose, but it was in British. Then from British to American, from American to ASL. Wiki is your friend. Wiki is your friend. Wiki is your friend.

Here are several unexpecteds we found:
1) Beau Brummell was an arbiter of fashion in 19th century England. The cat Bustopher Jones was "this Brummell of cats" because his markings looked like a suit with spats. Fortunately we knew what spats were in a wearable sense, as opposed to in a catfight sense, because Bustopher Jones certainly wouldn't stoop to that.
2) The cat Gus's real name is "Asparagus, but that's such a fuss to pronounce" translated remarkably simply to A-S-P-A-R-A-G-U-S FINGERSPELL (stare at hand, hit hand to show misspell, look perplexed).
3) Strasburg pie goes straight into the category of "don't eat British foods". According to The Ad-dressing of Cats, like caviar, one would use it to tempt a cat. But it's duck foie gras, wrapped in bacon, wrapped in puff pastry, served on a bed of pickles.

Ewwwwwwwwwww.
4) Know your audience. We made the decision to do a "Vanna White" for when Old Deuteronomy progressed up the opposite-side aisle because the lyrics were the same thing about 20x: murmurs of disbelief and "I believe it is Old Deuteronomy." He moved slowly and had a lot of cats delighted to see him. But our Deaf wanted to know what was being said. Our decision was to not sign the same thing over and over. But we should have at least indicated that the same words were being repeated ad nauseum.
5) Mind your edges. Cats is an all-aisles-used show. Actors in full cat mode were prowling up center aisles, side aisles, dancing their way into the audience. If they were human characters, the actors would have walked up the middle of the aisle. But cats slink around edges and between seats. And they demand attention. They want to be petted behind the ears. But only with their timing. And if you pull their tails, nothing good can come of it.


PS In personal growth, I've learned html for italics and superscript. So hopefully this makes my ramblings easier to track out of and back into the text.

ASL-interpreted Theater, part 3 - Sharing the words or sharing the experience?

The music is iconic.



What's Phantom without that pipe organ?

But what if you can't hear the music? If you are, in fact, Deaf or hard of hearing and attending interpreted theater?

So how can the interpreters translate that theme music into something tactile?

It's not in ASL.
There's no sign for pipe organ that shows the intensity of that music.
Even facial expressions can't convey it.
So what to do?

Wait for it...

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Hasn't everyone, at some point, hummed into a balloon just to feel the vibrations against their hands?
Like sitting on an amplifier, holding the black balloons translated the music into something tactile.

It's not all signs, it's communicating what's happening.

What prep goes into ASL-interpreted theater?

Five years ago at Christmastime, I got a slightly random email from "your friendly neighborhood interpreter", asking me if I wanted to do Les Misérables with him.

If anyone asks you if you want to do Les Mis, DO IT! How often does an opportunity like that roll around?

My love of Les Mis began in San Francisco when I was 8 years old. While my parents and brother and I were on our triennial* visit to the Left Coast, my uncle had a surprise for the whole extended family. He had a friend who had connections, and a group of about 30 of us, family and work friends and neighborhood friends, had tickets to see a (traveling?) production. Evidently he had been prepping his kids for this for awhile; my cousins already could sing several key numbers, and who spent the intervening week trying to teach me On My Own**.

*Triennial: every three years. Not to be confused with triannual, which is three times per year.

** Which is still my favorite Les Mis song.

I think it might have been the first professional production I ever saw -- my family had yet to go to Toby's***, even. Our seats were in the second balcony of a theater that (to an 8yo) looked like it seated thousands, possibly the entire local population. I wanted to rent opera glasses, for no reason other than they were strapped to the back of the seat in front of me, available for rent for "one silver quarter".

*** For those that don't know, my parents have volunteered for years at Toby's, the Dinner Theatre of Columbia, processing door prizes. They've also taken countless groups to shows. And lest you disparage it as "just" dinner theater, Toby's actors have gone into Broadway, the Capitol Steps, Nashville, etc. And there are few youth in Howard County who haven't been impacted by their training programs for teens. Also, Toby's is nominated for nine Helen Hayes Awards**** this year, eight of which are for The Color Purple.

**** The regional version of the Tony's.

The show overwhelmed me. I was most impacted by (SPOILER ALERT) the rotating stage, the emergence of the barricade, and the visual of the bridge rising as Javert jumped into the river. I guess that was an early hint that my future was in tech theater, not on the acting end of things. But coming out of the show, and remember I was only eight, I told my parents that I wanted to be the child Cosette and the adult Eponine.

Fast forward twenty years to my co-terp's email.

As an interpreter, I don't have to choose Cosette or Eponine. I get to be BOTH.

With one guy and one girl interpreting, I got to be not only child Cosette and adult Eponine, but also Fantine, Mme Thenardier, adult Cosette, basically every female onstage. Really, half the characters in total, including Javert. So cool! If you're keeping track and you know your Les Mis, you may have noticed that this means also (SPOILERS) three BIG death scenes. THREE. In one show. And not just in a Mad Mechanicals "Act 3: Everyone Dies" simplification, either. THREE. DEATHS. Big ole drama. I Dreamed a Dream, A Little Drop of Rain, and Javert's Suicide. Soooooo COOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLL! Let me tell you, that would never happen if I were an actor.

But I didn't know that yet. I had one email at Christmastime saying "are you interested?" And then silence as my co-terp left after Christmas break to go to Tennesee. Where he lives. And I live in Pennsylvania. And the high school we were interpreting for is also in PA. Further complicating things, he's an alumnus of the school, and I had no contacts at all there. And he's not exactly the most plan-ahead-ish kind of guy. So after months of silence, I got a phonecall on a Monday saying, "So, are you still interested in terping Les Mis? If so, I'm in town and if you can join me at the high school tonight we can start practicing. Our show is Thursday."

To quote Papa Bear in The Bike Lesson, "This is what you should not do. Let that be a lesson to you."

Fortunately, I knew Les Mis inside and outside and upside down. Well, I could sing all the alto parts anyways. Four years of high school choir will do that to you. Oh, and Madame taught us "J'Avais Rêve"*****, the French version of "I Dreamed a Dream". Which is not a word for word translation. Remember this concept when we get to talking about ASL interpreting.

***** Oh so much darker in French! The English is "I dreamed a dream in time gone by/When hope was high and life worth living/I dreamed that love would never die/I dreamed that God would be forgiving." The French translates back to English as "I dreamed of another life/But life killed my dreams/As one snuffs out the cries/Of an animal one's killing..."

The interpreted show went off remarkably well on three days' rehearsal. On such a timeframe, the biggest part was get the soundtrack into my head. CDs in the car, scripts with me everywhere I went, and just go for it! Again, good thing I knew the story and the characters and was emotionally connected with them going into things.

The main thing I had to keep in mind was that I was communicating what was going on onstage. Once the words were reinforced in my head, I worked on getting my hands to keep pace with the phrasing (but not the words! English to ASL is never word for word!). It was freeing for me to remember to get ahead sometimes and simply "Vanna White"****** at the stage. For example (SPOILERS), at those most-impactful pieces for me: the revolving stage, the emergence of the barricade, and the jump off the bridge. Also, counterpoint. With four hands, we mostly picked up all that was going on onstage. But at the close of Act 1, One Day More has six different stories going on. Not six voices, six stories. Every single character is onstage singing their heart out. There's Marius/Cosette, Eponine, Valjean, Javert, M/Mme Thenardier, and the students. But what's being expressed is that change is on the way. The hearing audience ******* doesn't pick up every single word, either, just an impression of everyone singing about tomorrow and what will happen to them. So as terps, we caught what we could and left what we couldn't get to... and kept shoulder-shifting.

****** Flourish. C'mon, if you didn't know what I meant, you need to watch more TV.

******* "Hearies"

Wait, "What's shoulder-shifting?", you ask? Picture a comic strip. You have a character in each corner in the first panel, but in the second panel there's just words. Who's saying it? All you need is the barest indication of the direction from which the words come. You don't need to draw the character again. Or in a list of pros and cons, or any comparison sheet. You don't need to label every single statement, just indicate which side it's on. That's as simple as shoulder shifting is. You create characters near and far, left and right, and suddenly you can have a dialogue that expresses clearly who says what.

Of course, it's easier if you know your source material going into things like we did with Les Mis. This clearly is going to become a multipart post, but just a heads-up, this year's interpreted show is Grease, at CVHS, 1p on Tues 4/9. Our matinee is technically the final dress rehearsal, so it is unticketed, but if you come we expect you to sit in the Deaf section, towards the front, to SUPPORT INTERPRETED THEATER. Donations accepted, and support the CVHS music department. Let me go a step beyond that. Donations are encouraged, even expected. At CV, the show always sells out, and tickets go for $12 adults/$10 seniors/students.