(orchestra building)
♫ It's the bitch of living
♫ Living in your head ♫
- Moritz Stiefel, I need hardly remind you
that of all our pupils, you are in no position
to be taking liberties.
I will not warn you again.
("The Bitch of Living" by Duncan Sheik)
♫ God I dreamed there was an angel
♫ Who could hear me through the wall ♫
- I depend on a lot of cues
because I cannot hear a single thing.
Not the tiniest little sound,
no beats, no music, nothing.
("Bitch of Living" by Duncan Sheik)
♫ Nothing but your hand
♫ Just the bitch of living
♫ As someone you can't stand ♫
- We have several different kinds of cues
that we use in the show.
The main one, and the one that I prefer,
are actor driven cues.
And those are derived from normal looking,
pedestrian movements that a person would make,
and that don't draw your eye.
Like folding your arms, leaning forward,
looking over at an actor, simple body shift.
It's, I think, the most complicated piece,
and the part that the audience
doesn't notice at all.
- I've been doing this,
(gasp)
right before I sing the lyrics,
so there's this kind of one second delay.
So I'll lift my head,
they know one second after that to start their sign.
- A tiny little thing like nodding your head
at the right time could really screw up a whole number.
♫ You wanna laugh, it's too absurd
♫ You start to ask, can't hear a word
♫ You wanna crash and burn
♫ Right, tell me more ♫
- I have someone who's sitting with his hand on the bed
and when his right hand opens,
and I see that, then I crumple the paper.
Now, when another person stands up,
that is my cue to start signing.
And I guess it sort of goes on like that.
- And each time Daniel takes a letter
that's a cue that he's about to get ready.
And then we have an actor take the letter from him
at the beginning of every one of his musical phrases.
♫ They're not my home, not anymore
♫ Not like they so were before ♫
- It creates a lot of really interesting moments
where, you know, on one side of the stage
you'll see me singing the song,
with Daniel, while he's signing the thing.
And we just create this kind of
really unique experience that I've personally
never seen on a stage before.
("Mama Who Bore Me" by Duncan Sheik)
- Music is not an art form that's typically available
to the deaf community.
So, in this production, we're not just bringing
sign language to hearing people,
we're bringing musicals into the deaf community as well.
So, to do that, we have to make music
accessible to a deaf audience.
So, one thing that we work really hard to do
is bring the emotion that's in the
fabric of the musical and the story
into the language that we use to perform the music.
- In the translation process,
you've got to match the rhythm.
The composer wrote a certain rhythm into these lines,
say, four beats to a line.
How are we going to find a sign translation
that matches that rhythm smoothly?
Is it a strong piece of music?
Or is it soft?
That's an important part of the translation.
As a deaf person, I've never heard music before.
So I depend on the hearing members of our team.
Once we understand from them how the music goes,
we try to find an equivalent.
- I've learned a lot through the process.
It's an incredible challenge,
probably the most challenging role I've ever had,
but it's been fantastic.
If another musical was offered to me,
I mean, I'd take it immediately.
I love music, it's really been wonderful.
♫ Then there were none
♫ Then there were none ♫
(applause)