Theater Prizing Visual Over Verbal

Deaf Playwrights Create 'Nonlinear' Scripts

Playwright Monique Holt held the script for her latest work -- a single sheet of paper. No words were on it, only pictures.

Some of the props she planned to incorporate into her short play, a cookie sheet and nine aluminum foil "planets," would be backstage, projected on a giant screen.

"It's been a wonderful process," Holt said. "The biggest problem I had was showing what night was."

Holt's piece "The Night Was So Hungry That It Ate the Moon" was presented last week as part of an intense set of workshops on visual theater for three deaf playwrights. The sessions were held at Gallaudet University, the college for the deaf and hard of hearing in Northeast Washington.

The three playwrights worked with experts in the arts community from across the country -- some hearing-impaired and some not -- to learn the art of visual theater, which encourages the use of multimedia, puppetry and audience participation instead of the reliance on spoken language in traditional theater.

Peter Cook, a deaf storyteller from Chicago and one of the experts, said the Visual Playwrights Retreat teaches deaf playwrights to use an array of expressive media to present their works.

"Traditionally, deaf theater takes written scripts and translates to American Sign Language" before the scene is set up, Cook said. "This has given us an opportunity to skip that translation step."

The program began last year with a partnership between the university and the arts advocacy group Quest: arts for everyone. It also provided a two-week intensive set of workshops to three select deaf playwrights last year.

Tim McCarty, president of Quest, said visual theater emphasizes the technical aspects of a show, allowing for audience participation and less reliance on spoken language.

He said production companies such as Cirque du Soleil and the Pilobolus Dance Theatre are notable successes in the medium, but too few universities expose their students to visual theater, an art form that should not be restricted to the deaf community.

"It's literally a handful of institutions that have an extensive curriculum," McCarty said.

"Almost all the theater programs in this country concentrate on the written word. Most people think a script has to be these linear words," McCarty added.

In student playwright Shanny Mow's world, Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, is portrayed as an evil man.

"The telephone denies deaf people access," Mow said. "It was a decisive thing."