Theatre Development Fund – TDF: Craig Lucas' new play I Was Most Alive with You at Playwrights Horizons is about a family coping with a series of calamities that recall the biblical story of Job. But ask Sabrina Dennison to describe the show and she declares it's "complicated." She says this in American Sign Language (ASL) because that is her first language, but she doesn't use the traditional sign of wiggling her index fingers while crossing her arms. Instead, she wiggles all ten digits -- that's how complicated it's been.
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Two years ago, I worked my first “sensory friendly” performance. I love the idea of taking the audience’s varying experiences and how they process information and incorporating that into how a show is performed. Though we didn’t have the resources to open up our production to deaf audiences in the way that “I Was Most Alive with You” does, there was an understanding among the design team that that was the next logical step.
Reading about this production was not only inspirational but it was simply satisfying to know that this is happening somewhere and that there is a desire in the community to make theater accessible in different way to people that may not be able to experience it in a traditional format. It makes me think how far we can take these “accommodations” – and I struggle to label them as accommodations because I believe that they are most effective when they are also artistic choices that are well incorporated. Simply having an interpreter on the side of the stage is not as striking as having two casts performing simultaneously and working together to create something beautiful.
I think the next ambitious step would be theater for the blind.
Have the two ‘casts’ work together sounds like a brilliant way to make this show bilingual. I’m particularly interesting in the GalaPro app. Traditionally phones are seen as a distraction. Though obviously the actors in this show and audience know why the person has their phone out, I wonder if in other shows where ASL is not a focal point, if performers and other audience members would be understanding and accepting of cell phone use. That being said, I hope that this technology becomes more prevalent in theater. Another thing that I found particularly interesting in this article is that Dennison refers to the play as a work in progress. Often times we think of shows being completed after opening, but they are still adapting and working the play. I wish the article showed more of the design because I think that would have allowed me to gain more of a sense of the show.
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