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LUANE: So Damn Yankees is a baseball musical. We picked this because
Bob Panara, who our theater is named after,
he's very into baseball. Musical theatre actually turns out to be quite good
because the storylines are clear
and clean. The characters are
easily understandable even if you don't know sign language
The songs become more like poetry when you interpret them.
They're like ASL poetry.
The dancing is no problem. We've got some fantastic deaf dancers involved.
We have video monitors backstage, so
they're communicating via video and TV screens the same way you would like a
video phone.
We don't use headsets.
It's being called from our production stage manager in the booth
who is communicating with stage right and stage left through
like a video phone and signing and calling the cues that way
JAMAL (interpreted): Yes, both groups of people can come and enjoy it.
The songs are all signed and voiced,
we love to have music and the dancing
and the voice actors combined with the sign actors
make it a great experience. Everyone gets involved.
The deaf people also dance and sign the songs.
The hearing people dance and they sign the songs too.
It's a really nice experience.
LUANE: We're doing something a little tricky with the interpreting
and how deaf and hearing are partnered.
Generally you expect to just be deaf (actors) on stage with
the hearing as a voice-over or sometimes you've seen them shadowed where they're
right next to each other all the time
and this is kind of more imbedded. HUNTER: The character himself is deaf, he will be
signing all the lines and then I'll be voicing his lines at the same time.
My role is actually
the assistant to him, but at the same time I'm playing
his voice. So I kind of don't have my own voice
I'm his voice trying to have my own character at the same.
LUANE: So the hearing cover each other. The hearing cover...
whoever's signing, someone's speaking in order to make sure everyone
understands. But you may not see who the speaker is.
Then there are other times when they are perfectly paired,
for instance, Lola's songs, they're virtually twins
it's like watching a mirror image.
It's complicated. I wouldn't say it's a problem, but
you have basically three languages: you've got spoken English
and you've got sign language and then you have the music. And all three have to be
in sync. And all three have a very specific internal rhythm.
So making them all match up, that's a little tricky.
But when it happens, it's almost magical to see.