Friday, April 08, 2016
Lacking Diversity in Deaf Theatre
HowlRound: In American theatre, practicing diversity and inclusion is critical in casting more actors of color. There is a severe lack of employment opportunities for deaf and hard of hearing actors of color. Promoting a greater number of these actors in the theatre requires a necessary change—a commitment to not only recognize, but also hire talented deaf and hard of hearing theatre artists of color.
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I feel that this is getting to be a bit exhausting. I have never been one to say “I don’t see race” and shit like that because I feel like it’s a lie and it erases a lot. You should see and understand the pieces that make up a person, such as race and deafness, you just shouldn’t let it define you. But at the same time I think it is about time for minorities of all kinds to ban together. At this point it doesn’t seem to be a specific problem, but instead that it is discrimination over everyone that isn’t the exact status quo. Now don’t get me wrong, there is a clear racial bias, especially with this situation where there are so many fewer people of color being casted, but when I consider that last week I read an article on deaf people in general not cast enough, and then this article it says deaf people of color aren’t being cast enough, I think the problem is larger than specific individual attacks. Perhaps a better way to address this clear inequality for anyone who isn’t hollywood’s/broadway’s norm, is for us all to ban together and start demanding the dismantling of making every stage feature the same types of people, instead of every minority group fighting for itself.
I don’t know. Even I am not too sold on this concept.
I remember when I first started signing and being involved in the Deaf community in my hometown. There where a couple years where I was able to actually take classes on American Sign Language and Deaf culture. I remember the teacher going over how sign language was developed in America. In 1817, Gallaudet and Clerc formed a school for the Deaf in Connecticut. The students learned French Sign Language, and since it was an extremely isolated community, the language developed rapidly into what has become ASL. Since this all happened in the early 1800s, the unspoken reality of the development of this language is that all the students were white. When the first black school for the deaf was finally founded, the students were all black. Once again, they were taught the now developed ASL. And once again, because it was a very small and isolated community, the language evolves very quickly into another form of sign language. So in the 20th century, you now have two separate cultures, with different languages and social expectations. A black deaf person and a white deaf person could barely communicate with each other. There is still controversy over this language. Now Deaf children are taught ASL, the language that was developed in the first, all-white, schools. Deaf history, as it is taught, is almost exclusively white. Black Deaf culture and language is dieing, it's terrible.
Anyways, the entire point of that is to say that this is an ongoing problem in Deaf culture that isn't just limited to the theater. The two cultures have only recently been integrated. It's something that needs to be fixed by teaching the history of both cultures and teaching both languages, rather than trying to stamp out history and "slang". This problem isn't just limited to sign languages either. Look at English. We are taught primarily white history in schools and "proper" English is derived from white culture. Don't erase a culture.
While I understand that argument being made here, I think it can be incredibly difficult to have conversations about diversity in an industry that struggles to stay afloat, financially. At the end of the day, companies don't have the money, and if they do have the money, it's usually short lived enough that they feel as though they shouldn't waste their money on a risky "diverse" play. Yes, diversity is a major topic of our industry and should certainly be recognized, no matter the circumstances, however, the fact of the matter is that producers and producing organizations feel as though they are taking a risk when they produce something with either diverse characters or a diverse cast. While I'm speaking mostly on assumption, and I don't have any numbers to back up my claims, I could definitely predict that "diverse" shows bring in less money for the companies they're being produced at, mostly because their audiences are old white people, who unfortunately, probably just want to watch more white people on stage.
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