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APP.COM - Deaf audience granted full access to holiday musical | Asbury Park Press Online
If you happened to wander into the lobby of the Fine Arts Theater at Ocean County College in Toms River on a recent Saturday night, it probably wouldn't take long to guess the type of performance scheduled for the evening.
One woman was wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with "Children of a Lesser God," the decades-ago Broadway play and movie about students and teachers in a fictional school for the deaf. Another sported the logo for Gallaudet University, the nation's university for deaf students in Washington. Then, too, there were all those people signing.
But the college's annual ASL Rock 'n' Roll Holiday Show isn't one of those American Sign Language-set-to-music concerts mostly for hearing people. It's an original, designed exclusively for deaf people, in their language, and presented by ASL students from the college's interpreter training program, said program instructor Kathy Basilotto.
About 90 percent of the audience is deaf, she said — some from the Ocean Deaf Club in Lakehurst and the South Jersey Deaf Club in Brick — with the remainder family members and friends, plus friends and family of the interpreter-performers.
The recorded songs play loud, so the hearing people can enjoy the lyrics and the deaf people can feel the vibrations in their seats. And deaf audience members at this production "don't have to miss the action while watching an interpreter off to the side," she said, because the performers sign center-stage. Basilotto, too, performed with the students — gracefully leading the troupe in traditional and updated Christmas carols and even a rap rendition.
Some members of her family — she was among the minority, growing up in a family where six of 10 siblings were deaf — also attended the show, joining in the deaf-style applause, hands held high with fingers waving.
Like their teacher, the interpreters-in-training sought ASL proficiency for personal and varying reasons.
Adrienne Andersen, 21, of Toms River is a first-year interpreter trainer and a volunteer at Childrens Specialized Hospital in Toms River and also works with deaf children at Cattus Island park and at church.
"My goal is to teach nonverbal autistic people to sign," said Andersen, adding she has a cousin with the disorder.
Self-taught signer
Leah Madoff, 23, is moving from Pennsylvania to Matawan specifically for the OCC program, she said. She began learning sign at the age of 6 months, from her mother.
"My mother wanted me to be bilingual, but she didn't know Italian and my father refused to teach me Russian, so she bought books and taught herself sign, which she then taught me." Vocational noncredit classes followed, and for a month before coming to OCC, Madoff lived in a deaf community. That immersion enabled her to skip the basics and enter the second year of OCC's 2 1/2-year interpreter training program. After graduation she plans to enter a 12-month research program, learning sign language in 12 different countries, to qualify as a presenter at major conventions.
Others entered the field because they became intrigued with the spatial and expressive language: Kelsey Maguire of Brick, after seeing Basilotto interpreting at her church; Bryn Farace of Berkeley, when she worked in New York and watched students from a deaf school signing on the train; and Rikki Traina of Brick, while attending a class with a deaf girl and her interpreters "and I became more interested in the language than the class itself."
The application of the silent language for nonspeaking special education students also drew some teachers to the program, such as Kimberly Bochichik, a third-year interpreter training student who teaches special education in Manalapan and also taught her 2-year-old son to sign.
Third-year student and special education teacher Michelle DeSantis of Manchester said her class planned to see the show the following Tuesday, when the entire performance is repeated for mainstreamed students and those in deaf or other special education schools.
Scheduled each year in the middle of the giving season, the ASL holiday show is an event of reciprocity, for the deaf community and the interpreters-in-training who will one day provide a communication bridge for those who don't hear or speak.
The students put their lessons into practice onstage and, during intermission, in the lobby; those not performing sold tickets and served refreshments.
Besides the show, members of the area deaf community can enjoy another socialization opportunity, interacting with a variety of people. And because the show is a fundraiser, their purchase of concert tickets is a payback of sorts, supporting the interpreter training program.
Another fundraiser for the program — a cruise to Bermuda next summer with accommodations for deaf passengers — is being organized by the program's sign language club.
If you happened to wander into the lobby of the Fine Arts Theater at Ocean County College in Toms River on a recent Saturday night, it probably wouldn't take long to guess the type of performance scheduled for the evening.
One woman was wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with "Children of a Lesser God," the decades-ago Broadway play and movie about students and teachers in a fictional school for the deaf. Another sported the logo for Gallaudet University, the nation's university for deaf students in Washington. Then, too, there were all those people signing.
But the college's annual ASL Rock 'n' Roll Holiday Show isn't one of those American Sign Language-set-to-music concerts mostly for hearing people. It's an original, designed exclusively for deaf people, in their language, and presented by ASL students from the college's interpreter training program, said program instructor Kathy Basilotto.
About 90 percent of the audience is deaf, she said — some from the Ocean Deaf Club in Lakehurst and the South Jersey Deaf Club in Brick — with the remainder family members and friends, plus friends and family of the interpreter-performers.
The recorded songs play loud, so the hearing people can enjoy the lyrics and the deaf people can feel the vibrations in their seats. And deaf audience members at this production "don't have to miss the action while watching an interpreter off to the side," she said, because the performers sign center-stage. Basilotto, too, performed with the students — gracefully leading the troupe in traditional and updated Christmas carols and even a rap rendition.
Some members of her family — she was among the minority, growing up in a family where six of 10 siblings were deaf — also attended the show, joining in the deaf-style applause, hands held high with fingers waving.
Like their teacher, the interpreters-in-training sought ASL proficiency for personal and varying reasons.
Adrienne Andersen, 21, of Toms River is a first-year interpreter trainer and a volunteer at Childrens Specialized Hospital in Toms River and also works with deaf children at Cattus Island park and at church.
"My goal is to teach nonverbal autistic people to sign," said Andersen, adding she has a cousin with the disorder.
Self-taught signer
Leah Madoff, 23, is moving from Pennsylvania to Matawan specifically for the OCC program, she said. She began learning sign at the age of 6 months, from her mother.
"My mother wanted me to be bilingual, but she didn't know Italian and my father refused to teach me Russian, so she bought books and taught herself sign, which she then taught me." Vocational noncredit classes followed, and for a month before coming to OCC, Madoff lived in a deaf community. That immersion enabled her to skip the basics and enter the second year of OCC's 2 1/2-year interpreter training program. After graduation she plans to enter a 12-month research program, learning sign language in 12 different countries, to qualify as a presenter at major conventions.
Others entered the field because they became intrigued with the spatial and expressive language: Kelsey Maguire of Brick, after seeing Basilotto interpreting at her church; Bryn Farace of Berkeley, when she worked in New York and watched students from a deaf school signing on the train; and Rikki Traina of Brick, while attending a class with a deaf girl and her interpreters "and I became more interested in the language than the class itself."
The application of the silent language for nonspeaking special education students also drew some teachers to the program, such as Kimberly Bochichik, a third-year interpreter training student who teaches special education in Manalapan and also taught her 2-year-old son to sign.
Third-year student and special education teacher Michelle DeSantis of Manchester said her class planned to see the show the following Tuesday, when the entire performance is repeated for mainstreamed students and those in deaf or other special education schools.
Scheduled each year in the middle of the giving season, the ASL holiday show is an event of reciprocity, for the deaf community and the interpreters-in-training who will one day provide a communication bridge for those who don't hear or speak.
The students put their lessons into practice onstage and, during intermission, in the lobby; those not performing sold tickets and served refreshments.
Besides the show, members of the area deaf community can enjoy another socialization opportunity, interacting with a variety of people. And because the show is a fundraiser, their purchase of concert tickets is a payback of sorts, supporting the interpreter training program.
Another fundraiser for the program — a cruise to Bermuda next summer with accommodations for deaf passengers — is being organized by the program's sign language club.