Hello all:
My city is about to have its GLBT Pride celebration, complete with an Interfaith church service which is divvied up among various community groups. One of those groups is a chorus which I belong to. We will be performing two songs, which I will interpret into ASL. However, the organizers are having no luck locating somebody to interpret the rest of this service (everybody in town is WAY booked up), and I am in no way qualified to 'terp the whole service myself.
Would it be really, really weird for me to step up and do these two songs anyways, even if they end up being the only ASL there? I really want our group to be visible as a group that signs all its events, even these little run-out gigs!
Some background here.
I have always been hard-of-hearing, grew up mainstreamed, without any Sign except for a bit of Signed English they tried to teach me in High School which made very little sense to my visually-oriented brain. I do have enough hearing to sing in choruses, which I have done since the age of 8 and up until now. Then 5 years ago, my brilliant spouse dragged me to an ASL class, the light bulb flashed over my head, and I have been wanting to sign, rather than sing, ever since. And have been having a great time making Deaf friends and getting to local Signed events. Only now am I beginning to get proficient enough to grab up some of my chorus' songs away from the professional terps (but they still get the spoken-word stuff, hehe).
My city is about to have its GLBT Pride celebration, complete with an Interfaith church service which is divvied up among various community groups. One of those groups is a chorus which I belong to. We will be performing two songs, which I will interpret into ASL. However, the organizers are having no luck locating somebody to interpret the rest of this service (everybody in town is WAY booked up), and I am in no way qualified to 'terp the whole service myself.
Would it be really, really weird for me to step up and do these two songs anyways, even if they end up being the only ASL there? I really want our group to be visible as a group that signs all its events, even these little run-out gigs!
Some background here.
I have always been hard-of-hearing, grew up mainstreamed, without any Sign except for a bit of Signed English they tried to teach me in High School which made very little sense to my visually-oriented brain. I do have enough hearing to sing in choruses, which I have done since the age of 8 and up until now. Then 5 years ago, my brilliant spouse dragged me to an ASL class, the light bulb flashed over my head, and I have been wanting to sign, rather than sing, ever since. And have been having a great time making Deaf friends and getting to local Signed events. Only now am I beginning to get proficient enough to grab up some of my chorus' songs away from the professional terps (but they still get the spoken-word stuff, hehe).