MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING: Gallaudet University's Theatre Arts Department and Amaryllis Theatre Company Partner on Shakespeare in American Sign Language

Washington, DC and Philadelphia. Washington, DC’s Gallaudet University, the nation’s most esteemed university for deaf students, and Amaryllis Theatre Company, a professional company in Philadelphia that works with deaf and hearing actors on a regular basis, have partnered this year on a project to translate Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing into American Sign Language and co-produce the play in both cities with students and theatre faculty from Gallaudet and ten professional actors from around the country.

The project began in 2003 when Amaryllis started working on its second ASL Shakespeare production after a critically and popularly successful Twelfth Night, produced in 2001. “This time we wanted very much to open the project to students from Gallaudet,” explains Mimi Kenney Smith, Producing Artistic Director of Amaryllis and the director of the production. “Unlike hearing students around the world who read Shakespeare in English or in scholarly translations, Deaf students do not have the opportunity to study Shakespeare in their native language. Even though most are bi-lingual, Shakespeare is difficult for all students. When you communicate primarily through your body and eyes instead of through your voice and ears, reading Shakespeare’s complicated poetic language becomes that much more difficult, and except for Twelfth Night, scholarly translations in ASL simply do not exist.”

To change that situation, Amaryllis offered to provide the videotape of its Twelfth Night production as a model and to have two Shakespeare scholars associated with Amaryllis join with two Gallaudet professors in teaching a class on ASL translation at Gallaudet. That class, entitled “Hands on Shakespeare,” gave students from Gallaudet an in-depth look at both Twelfth Night and Much Ado About Nothing and engaged them in actually creating translations of three scenes from Much Ado. Peter Novak from the University of San Francisco, who led a team of Deaf actors in the translation of Twelfth Night and directed the production at Amaryllis, conducted two workshops for the students on ASL translation, helping them to understand how to create rhyme, for example, in a non-sound based language, and how to incorporate mime into traditional ASL. Much Ado’s master translators Aaron Weir Kelstone from Rochester Institute of Technology and Robert De Mayo, an actor/translator from Amaryllis who also worked on Twelfth Night, gave workshops on themes and styles in the current translation. Then Stephen Smith, Assistant Chair of English at La Salle University in Philadelphia, the dramaturg for Much Ado, and Gallaudet professors Willy Conley, Chair of Theatre, and Jennifer Nelson, a Shakespeare scholar in the English Department, led the students in their own translations of selected scenes. The best of the students’ translations will be incorporated into the professional translation and used in the production this spring.

This semester, another class at Gallaudet is participating in the project. Students from Gallaudet professor Angela Farrand’s “Drama Education” class are developing a study guide on CD-rom and paper and a series of workshops for elementary, middle and high school students from area schools who come to see the production.

The production of Much Ado will be acted in synchronized American Sign Language and spoken English, making the show accessible to all audiences. Director Smith explains an additional perk that comes with this kind of performance: “We would expect the ASL translation to make Shakespeare available to Deaf audiences; that’s the point. But what’s also interesting is that the combination of gesture and spoken English makes Shakespeare’s difficult language far more understandable to hearing audiences. It also creates amazing theatre.” Reviews of Amaryllis’ earlier ASL Shakespeare production confirm Smith’s opinion. A critic for New York’s Backstage, for example, wrote, “This Twelfth Night was most impressive for its clarity; once hearing audiences adjusted to voices coming from other actors, we were swept away by the translation’s mystifying beauty, which played like choreography,” while the Philadelphia Inquirer’s reviewer commented, “The lines are spoken with feeling and expressiveness and the acting is so vivid that the characters and scenes come immediately to life.”

Much Ado runs for eleven performances at Gallaudet’s Elstad Auditorium. The show previews on Thursday, April 20 at 8pm, opens Friday, April 21 at 7pm and runs on Saturday, April 22, Thursday, Friday and Saturday April 27 through 29 at 8pm and Sunday, April 23 and 30 at 2pm. Student matinees are scheduled for Saturday, April 22 at 2pm and Thursday and Friday, April 27 and 28 at 10am. Post-show workshops are available after the two matinee performances. Ticket Prices: full-time Gallaudet University students receive one free ticket; $12 for non-Gallaudet students and groups of 10 people or more; $15 for Gallaudet faculty/ staff/alums and senior citizens 65 years and older; $20 for general public.

Tickets are available through tickets@amaryllistheatre.org Groups should contact Patrick Doran at 215-717-2173 or through e-mail at tickets@amaryllistheatre.org All performances are accessible to persons with disabilities, including wheelchair seating, assistive listening, audio description and Braille and large print programs.

Amaryllis Theatre Company is the professional theatrical producing arm of VSA arts of Pennsylvania. VSA arts, founded in 1974 by Jean Kennedy Smith, works through affiliates throughout the U.S. and in 60 countries to make sure that people with disabilities can learn through, participate in, and enjoy the arts. VSA arts is an affiliate of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

For more information or details please visit : http://depts.gallaudet.edu/theatre/Events/much-ado-pr.html