Nina Raine’s TRIBES (at SpeakEasy Stage
through Oct 12th) is a play about different, sometimes warring
communities. In this often funny drama of ideas, assimilation is the nub.
Should a Deaf person immerse himself in the deaf world or straddle both the deaf
and hearing worlds? What is language? If it isn’t spoken and heard, how else do
we communicate? The family in TRIBES has not taught ASL to their deaf son
because, they say, it would marginalize him. That decision, they discover, will
ignite a firestorm.
CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD, written in 1980,
covers similar territory when a Deaf woman falls in love with a hearing man.
Should she struggle in a world which does little to accommodate her or find
fulfillment in the deaf world? (CHILDREN was written before cochlear implants,
which raised a ruckus among child rights activists, you may remember, because
the child had no say in the decision for surgery.) Raine sidesteps the cochlear
issue altogether in favor of a domestic free-for-all where the value of
“language” is debated at fever pitch.
This is a family that shouts a lot but hardly
ever listens. Raine has given almost everyone a different affliction. Father is
a bully. Mother swallows her suffering. Sister has no self confidence and a
severely mentally ill brother is hearing accusatory voices. The only well
adjusted member of the family seems to be the brother who is deaf. (If only
Raine had not given him “Annie Dookhan” syndrome, a condition we’re painfully
familiar with here in Boston
when Dookhan falsified evidence in hundreds of court cases, causing those
convictions to be overturned). It doesn’t add anything, except distraction, to
the story.
Raine runs rings around the debate with
metaphors: The voices which taunt the brother, the mother finally finding her
voice in writing, the sister who has majored in voice and the Deaf son given a
voice through sign language. You can imagine the din. I even felt
overwhelmed by the family and I could go home without them.
I did take away something extremely valuable
from the play, though. It raises issues we should all be thinking about in a
self absorbed hearing world. And it jogged my memory, reminding me how
miraculous ‘hearing with your eyes’ can be. Two lovely instances have been
restored to me.
When PHANTOM OF THE OPERA first toured, my
newspaper sent me to the blockbuster musical with a group of Deaf students who
would experience the music through sign language. The ASL interpreter followed
the rising notes of an aria with her hand, grabbing the high note at the top
with her fist, her hand descending with the music slowly to her chest. The
students “ahh’d” following the arc of the sound perfectly. They gasped at the
thrill of what they saw in the face and hands of the interpreter and what they
could clearly see/hear as her hands sculpted the air. (We were too far away to
see any facial expressions on the performers.) She acted/signed the entire
musical with her whole being and it remains one of the most exquisite performances
I’ve ever witnessed.
When my friend, Janine, was taking Lamaze
classes, her instructor suggested she learn “baby” sign language, too. She
signed to her gorgeous baby girl right from birth and so did we. This babe in
arms signed until she learned spoken language. I remember a game she loved to
play with me. By signing “light” she could get me to turn off and on the
overhead light as many times as she wanted, laughing with delight at how easy
it was to control an adult. When we went outside, she would point to the sun
and sign “light,” knowing full well, I’m sure, that I couldn’t switch that one
off or on. We all stopped signing when she began to talk and I, for one, miss
it.
Director M. Bevin O’Gara has a stellar cast
to transform Raine’s ideas into human beings. Adrianne Krstansky and Patrick
Shea as the parents have an uphill battle because of their self-centered
point-of-view, “protecting” their son from Deaf people. At one point, O’Gara
has Krstansky and Shea trekking the perimeter of the stage, following each
other, arguing about nothing, making us laugh and making us realize what Billy
and his siblings have endured. It’s no wonder James Caverly as Billy can’t wait
to get away from them. Caverly gives a tour de force as the young man who
discovers freedom in the palm of his hand.
Erica Spyres, too, dazzles as his tour guide
into the Deaf community. Raine cleverly uses the piano to show what Spyres’
character is feeling as she loses her hearing. Arshan Gailus’ soaring sound
design treats us to Mozart and Callas so we know what Kathryn Myles’ singer
aspires to (and probably will not achieve). Garrett Herzig’s graphics of sound
waves let us “see” Mozart’s notes undulate as living vibrations not just as music,
an ingenious way for the hearing audience to alter their perspective for a
moment.
Nael Nacer breaks your heart as the brother
losing his hold on reality, frightened that he is losing his brother, too. That
relationship is the one which gives TRIBES its real frailty and humanity.
