I mentioned earlier that one of the extraordinary things about Big River and for that matter any production done
by Deaf West is that it's done in two languages simultaneously, in English and in ASL.
And I noticed in the program that there are four people whose credits are sign masters for Big River.
And I wanted to ask to explain what that actually means.
It obviously is more than just the person who translated the show.
But what are the sign masters and who wants to answer that question?
I'm not equipped to give you the best answer.
But from my point of view, I can tell you they are the unsung heroes of this.
They are responsible as anybody for any success that this show is having.
Bill is probably the appropriate person.
Well, I think we should hear from the hearing and deaf actors too.
But what I would add to that is that from my perspective
definitely there has been a progression I think of when the hearing and the deaf cultures came together.
The sign translations had to become more fine-tuned towards bringing all of that together.
I think one of the most meaningful ways that it winds up, the outcome winds up being that what we hear
as a hearing audience & what the deaf actor is saying and emoting in meaning is exactly on the same page.
And that becomes sort of I think the magic for an audience member who in some ways has a similar path
that Huck and Jim have, where they start out from perspectives of cultures that don't really get each other.
You know, there's a divide that they're reaching across.
And I think the same thing happens between the people on stage and the people in the audience who are
predominantly hearing where by the end of the show they are watching Ty and they absolutely
are feeling and you know being affected by this guy who's communicating to them
in a language that's absolutely foreign. But they can tell that what he's saying is exactly what they're hearing.
And that is only the result of meticulous translations so that the idioms and the humor and the class...
He's the least educated and smartest guy up there,
and that's reflected in the sign language as much as it is in how you hear it. So there's just a lot of intricate stuff
that a lot of time goes into, and definitely I think the translations are a big part of what the engine of this is.
And which leads me to comment that the hearing audience watches me sign,
and they maybe don't understand sign language, and yet they see what I'm saying.
And it's on the same lines as to what is being spoken,
and that goes directly to the role of the translator, the team of four.
They had to do a lot of investigating of finding the meaning of the English that's in the script,
because the script was written originally in English, so that's pretty much frozen. We had to follow the script.
And then we had to analyze what's the meaning of each line which sometimes we could have spent an hour,
two hours, even three hours on figuring out one little line. I mean Dan knows.
And you did! (LAUGHTER)
Dan knows, we spent so much time together, but it was great, because we wanted to find an equivalent,
something that brought the ASL up to it, brought the English up to it.
And that's the intrinsic affect of having both languages.
And in order to add to that, the next step after finding the meaning is what sign do you use specifically?
There might be one sign that just is too modern for the era in which the show is performed in.
So we had to be very careful in selecting our signs.
And perhaps one sign that we selected wouldn't match the character, so there were a lot of
intricacies involved in the task of the ASL masters.
And actually the ASL masters is a new concept in our theatre. I think it only began a few years ago.
Previous to that, we would never have an ASL master. The actor would translate their own script.
One person would pick one sign, and maybe we'd teach somebody else the sign.
But there was no overall coordination.
So, a few years ago, we started to recognize the need for an ASL master, and that's one reason that Big River is
so beautiful and that everyone has commented and applauded us for that. It's gorgeous.