Miss-Delectable
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Come on, feel the Noise at the High Performance Rodeo
Put yourself in the shoes of a deaf person and imagine trying to take in a night at the theatre or a concert or at the movies.
Consider how much you’d be missing in each of those experiences and how alienated that would make you feel from every other hearing person in the room.
Who would have thought that disconnect was a two-way street?
Cole Cseke and Jamie Duns-don, co-artistic directors of Calgary’s Verb Theatre, learned this was the case as they began developing Noise, Verb’s “vibration-based musical for the deaf and hearing,” to be performed at the Cathedral Church of the Redeemer on Wednesday as part of the High Performance Rodeo.
While researching for the production, Dunsdon attended a poetry reading for the deaf. “A deaf poet performed in sign language and he was doing nonsense poetry, like Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky,” relays Cseke. “He’s signing words that don’t really exist in sign language because they are nonsense words, so he’s combining signs and sort of inventing a new language.
“Visually it was really interesting, like watching contemporary dance, almost. But without having that deep understanding of sign language, Jamie could watch but she could never know the words being invented.”
With Noise, Verb means to bridge that seemingly unbridgeable gap. “The goal is to create something so that no matter where an audience member lands in the spectrum of hearing, we’ll have a show that everyone can experience equally,” Cseke says. “Differently but equally.”
Although Noise is not yet a fully realized show — the High Performance Rodeo gig is more of a workshop for the production’s full-on launch, intended for October — a storyline has been developed. One subplot involves a nightclub DJ who’s losing his hearing and his budding romance with a deaf girl.
Created in conjunction with experimental musical theatre ensemble The Bitter Suite Society and local singer-songwriter Kris Demeanor, one way Noise will attempt to reach the deaf is through music that involves vibration. With the right subwoofers and acoustics, Verb and its collaborators seek to create sounds that patrons will actually feel, vibrating in their guts.
There’s also an intended visual element to the music. Strategically placed packing peanuts on a speaker cabinet will bounce along to the beat of the music quite nicely, for example.
The show will include dancers doing routines that incorporate sign language and there will be images and videos on big screens, getting the story across to the deaf members of the audience.
What inspired Verb to create a musical that would be entertaining to the deaf?
The project is in keeping with the underground company’s mandate to create unconventional theatre experiences that speak to communities in the city that are marginalized and, largely, unheard. Past Verb shows have focused on battered women and people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.
Part of that outreaching involves tapping into these select communities and getting its members to participate in the show. Noise will feature deaf performers working alongside theatre professionals.
Cseke adds that the deaf community specifically appealed to Verb’s theatrical instincts. “Their forms of communication are so visual and physical that it’s inherently theatrical,” he says.
If Verb pulls off Noise successfully, Cseke believes the musical will give people in both the deaf and hearing camps a deeper understanding of the challenges each of them face.
What challenges does hearing pose? “Noise,” says Cseke. “We’re exploring that Calgary can be an extremely noisy place. . . . People are always moving fast and on the run. There’s lots of cars and traffic. But deaf folks experience noise, too, in their own way.”
When hearing people engage the deaf, for example, there’s a tendency to “overcompensate” says Cseke, through exaggerated facial expressions and sweeping hand gestures. “That’s one of the ways in which they experience a very noisy conversation. To them, it’s almost like we’re yelling at them.”
The online world, embraced by the deaf for its never-ending supply of written text and visuals, can also be overwhelming. “It’s a great tool for people in the deaf community, but with all the pop-ups and flash advertising, the Internet has also become quite a noisy place visually,” Cseke says.
But the deaf also have gifts to share with the hearing. “There can be a real intimacy in a lot of deaf gatherings,” Cseke points out. “Eye contact and body language is so important so there’s a real sense of connection. That’s something we can learn from them.”
This may turn out to be the great gift of Noise, Cseke suggests.
“I think both groups will learn by finding this shared understanding.”
Put yourself in the shoes of a deaf person and imagine trying to take in a night at the theatre or a concert or at the movies.
Consider how much you’d be missing in each of those experiences and how alienated that would make you feel from every other hearing person in the room.
Who would have thought that disconnect was a two-way street?
Cole Cseke and Jamie Duns-don, co-artistic directors of Calgary’s Verb Theatre, learned this was the case as they began developing Noise, Verb’s “vibration-based musical for the deaf and hearing,” to be performed at the Cathedral Church of the Redeemer on Wednesday as part of the High Performance Rodeo.
While researching for the production, Dunsdon attended a poetry reading for the deaf. “A deaf poet performed in sign language and he was doing nonsense poetry, like Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky,” relays Cseke. “He’s signing words that don’t really exist in sign language because they are nonsense words, so he’s combining signs and sort of inventing a new language.
“Visually it was really interesting, like watching contemporary dance, almost. But without having that deep understanding of sign language, Jamie could watch but she could never know the words being invented.”
With Noise, Verb means to bridge that seemingly unbridgeable gap. “The goal is to create something so that no matter where an audience member lands in the spectrum of hearing, we’ll have a show that everyone can experience equally,” Cseke says. “Differently but equally.”
Although Noise is not yet a fully realized show — the High Performance Rodeo gig is more of a workshop for the production’s full-on launch, intended for October — a storyline has been developed. One subplot involves a nightclub DJ who’s losing his hearing and his budding romance with a deaf girl.
Created in conjunction with experimental musical theatre ensemble The Bitter Suite Society and local singer-songwriter Kris Demeanor, one way Noise will attempt to reach the deaf is through music that involves vibration. With the right subwoofers and acoustics, Verb and its collaborators seek to create sounds that patrons will actually feel, vibrating in their guts.
There’s also an intended visual element to the music. Strategically placed packing peanuts on a speaker cabinet will bounce along to the beat of the music quite nicely, for example.
The show will include dancers doing routines that incorporate sign language and there will be images and videos on big screens, getting the story across to the deaf members of the audience.
What inspired Verb to create a musical that would be entertaining to the deaf?
The project is in keeping with the underground company’s mandate to create unconventional theatre experiences that speak to communities in the city that are marginalized and, largely, unheard. Past Verb shows have focused on battered women and people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.
Part of that outreaching involves tapping into these select communities and getting its members to participate in the show. Noise will feature deaf performers working alongside theatre professionals.
Cseke adds that the deaf community specifically appealed to Verb’s theatrical instincts. “Their forms of communication are so visual and physical that it’s inherently theatrical,” he says.
If Verb pulls off Noise successfully, Cseke believes the musical will give people in both the deaf and hearing camps a deeper understanding of the challenges each of them face.
What challenges does hearing pose? “Noise,” says Cseke. “We’re exploring that Calgary can be an extremely noisy place. . . . People are always moving fast and on the run. There’s lots of cars and traffic. But deaf folks experience noise, too, in their own way.”
When hearing people engage the deaf, for example, there’s a tendency to “overcompensate” says Cseke, through exaggerated facial expressions and sweeping hand gestures. “That’s one of the ways in which they experience a very noisy conversation. To them, it’s almost like we’re yelling at them.”
The online world, embraced by the deaf for its never-ending supply of written text and visuals, can also be overwhelming. “It’s a great tool for people in the deaf community, but with all the pop-ups and flash advertising, the Internet has also become quite a noisy place visually,” Cseke says.
But the deaf also have gifts to share with the hearing. “There can be a real intimacy in a lot of deaf gatherings,” Cseke points out. “Eye contact and body language is so important so there’s a real sense of connection. That’s something we can learn from them.”
This may turn out to be the great gift of Noise, Cseke suggests.
“I think both groups will learn by finding this shared understanding.”