Music to All Ears

'Nobody's Perfect' Explores Childen's Attitudes About Deafness

"Nobody's Perfect," which explores how kids with disabilities are treated, features both deaf and hearing actors. (By Dayna Smith -- For The Washington Post)

In a small rehearsal room deep in the Kennedy Center, four actresses playing 9- and 10-year-olds shriek in delight at an imaginary purple pizza: "Purple! Disgusting! Yeah!!!" Later in the scene they burst into song about their pal Megan's "perfect purple party" for her 10th birthday.

Megan is deaf and her friends communicate with her in American Sign Language (ASL) or when apart via the Internet. The new girl in school, the perfect-acting Alexis, puts a dent in Megan's jaunty self-confidence by seeming to be put off by her deafness and turning down an invitation to her party.

And thereby hangs the pigtail in "Nobody's Perfect," which explores in a lighthearted way how kids treat kids with disabilities.

Based on the kid-lit book by deaf actress Marlee Matlin and Doug Cooney, the world premiere musical marks a joint venture between the Kennedy Center's Theater for Young Audiences and VSA Arts. It will run Oct. 19-Nov. 3 at the center's Family Theater. Cooney, a Los Angeles-based author, playwright, teacher and performer, adapted the book for the stage and wrote the lyrics. Deborah Wicks La Puma composed the tunes.

Cooney and director Coy Middlebrook, who earned his ASL chops assistant-directing Deaf West's hit version of the musical "Big River" on Broadway, on tour and at Ford's Theatre, speak of the complexity of staging any such show.

There are "three different languages flying through the storytelling" at all times -- music, speech and sign language, explains Middlebrook. In rehearsals, ASL experts help the hearing actors refine their signing and, in the case of Middlebrook's longtime collaborator Alexandria Wailes, translate the dialogue into ASL that is "in sync with either the dialogue or the musical measure," Middlebrook says.

Cooney notes "the unique challenge of adapting it for the stage was trying to figure out how to make it a musical and comprehensible by the sign language community . . . and the hearing community at the same time." The show should also make clear, he adds, "the hurdles in communication that Megan would experience in the authentic world."

In an e-mail to Backstage about lessons from her own childhood that infuse her Megan books, Matlin, now a mother of four, writes, "Being deaf was not a handicap to me, so why should others fret about it, or treat me any differently . . . I want kids to be able to enjoy, revel and embrace their uniqueness . . . the real 'handicap' of deafness isn't in the ear; it's in the mind."

A sign-language novice when he began working with Matlin on the trilogy based on her childhood, Cooney kept it that way "so that I would see it with a child's eyes . . . a hearing child's naivete." In the process, he came to understand why younger hearing kids easily glom onto signing. "Kids are particularly drawn to the code. . . . Can you imagine, a child being able to speak sign language in a classroom? It's a blast." (The author of a popular kids' novel, "The Beloved Dearly," Cooney jokes that "in certain fourth- and fifth-grade classrooms, I'm a rock star.")

In the role of Megan, deaf actress Tami Lee Santimyer sometimes signs and sometimes speaks. In only one scene does Megan sign without anyone interpreting into the spoken word, giving the audience a chance "to see her in her true language, in a situation where she can express herself without having to reach beyond her own language," Middlebrook says.

If kids come away from "Nobody's Perfect" with nothing else, he says, they should realize that "the only real thing you need to communicate with somebody else is the willingness . . . just that intention, [and] you'll get the job done."

Headed in Many Directions

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Newly free of his duties as artistic director of Theater Alliance after six years, Jeremy Skidmore has been following his ambition to go freelance and direct on as many stages as possible.