When talking about my
involvement with Aditi Brennan Kapil’s new show Love Person, which features “two
couples, three cultures, and four languages,” people inevitably ask me
what I do as an ASL signmaster. Simply put, my job is to look at each performer’s
American Sign Language (ASL) translation of the English text and make sure that
the translation fits the character’s signing and educational background.
Sometimes I will examine the meaning of a certain line and provide a clearer
translation. Or I may correct a performer’s choice of sign for a certain
word; for instance, in ASL, there are at least three signs for the word “apply.” We
must not look to the English word itself but to the ultimate meaning of the
word for the correct sign.
There have been a great
many misunderstandings about ASL itself. First off, it is not “English
on the hands,” but a truly bona
fide language unto itself, with its own syntax, grammar, vocabulary,
idioms, and so on. While many hearing people see ASL as a particularly
expressive language, which it is so in the hands of those particularly
gifted in the nuances of fluency, it is a far more complex language
than what most people realize. Once hearing people get beyond the
novelty of fingerspelling, they often find themselves lost while
learning signs and syntax because it is so not simply “English
on the hands.” Furthermore,
ASL has many dialects and “accents.” Someone well-versed
in ASL can detect the regional influences in a Deaf acquaintance’s
signing, in the same way that a hearing person might hear a Boston
accent or a Texan twang in a person’s voice. Because the story
of Love Person takes place in Minneapolis, I had to clarify some
of the Minnesotan signs for Alexandria Wailes, a Deaf actress from
New York, who plays the Deaf character Free.
Yet ASL translation
is not the only thing I do as a signmaster. I must think about
how hearing and Deaf characters might typically interact “in
real life.” Because Risa Brainin, the director of Love Person,
and Aditi Brennan Kapil, the writer of the show, are both hearing,
they wanted the show to be Deaf-accurate in terms of how other hearing
characters onstage would behave towards Free. People who use ASL as
a primary means of communication also have what’s called “Deaf
culture.” A few examples of Deaf culture would include flipping
the light switch in a room or stamping a foot on the floor to get a
Deaf person’s attention as opposed to yelling the person’s
name. Hearing characters onstage must look at the Deaf character
in the face rather than walking and turning away while talking. Sometimes
when a hearing character looks away while Free is signing, Free may
repeat her line so that the hearing character truly knows what she
said. This is a subtle thing, but it happens a lot among Deaf people.
However subtle, all
of these things seem so obvious to us Deaf people that we often
take them for granted. But for any production that integrates both
ASL and English, and hearing non-signing characters, we must think
about how to make interactions between Deaf and hearing people
onstage realistic. Language alone does not a play make; believable
human interaction does. And that’s
what an ASL signmaster does. ![]()
