Miss-Delectable
New Member
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2004
- Messages
- 17,160
- Reaction score
- 7
News-Leader.com | Sarah Overstreet
The voices came from a darkened theatre. They weren't ones anyone could hear, but they were voices, just the same, that hadn't been there before.
They were voices brought to listeners via the hands. As Alan, Sean and Michael Cheek, and their close family friend Sadé Lopez, watched a performance of "The Magnificent 7" two weeks ago at Branson's White House Theatre, they were also able to see pre-recorded American Sign Language interpreters bring the story to them. Large, flat-screen TVs were right in their line of sight between them, the TVs and performers on the stage.
It marked a first for parents Mike and Linda Cheek of Springfield and their three deaf sons (son Sean was at his job at McDonald's during our interview): Their first Branson show where the boys could understand what was being said without Mom or Dad having to give up some of their enjoyment of the performance to serve as translators.
Is that hard to do, you might ask, to try to watch a performance and interpret it into a different language at the same time?
Darned tootin'. Imagine having tickets on Broadway for "Phantom of the Opera" with your Spanish-speaking friend, and during the whole musical you interpret every word to him from English into Spanish, often turning your head toward him and away from the stage to whisper, so as not to bother other patrons.
The boys were thrilled by their experience at "The Magnificent 7."
"It was perfect, excellent, magnificent," 14-year-old Alan says of the show where impersonators bring to life seven generations of show business, with prominent entertainers such as Elvis and Michael Jackson. "At the end of the performance I got my jacket signed by the two stars."
"The actors and interpreter were choreographed together," Sadé, 22, observes. "It was wow!"
"It's amazing how they changed their clothes so fast," as they switched from one character to the next, Alan says.
"I explained to them, 'Velcro,'" says Linda Cheek, and laughs.
The boys all loved the troupe recreating the Village People and their song, "YMCA." The letters the actors make with their bodies, as did the original group, mirror the actual letters in the fingerspelled alphabet. "They really got involved," Linda says, unlike other musical programs the kids have attended. "They did YMCA with them."
The signed show was the first of what entrepreneur Randy Boude hopes will become a trademark of Branson: productions where pre-recorded interpretation is available for any deaf patron who comes, anytime. According to an estimate by the Gallaudet Research Institute, federal data and published research estimates that 140 out of every 1,000 people in the U.S. have some kind of hearing loss.
Boude and his wife Julie, a sign language interpreter, started Signed Entertainment Enterprises (S.E.E.) in hopes of making Branson just the first of many vacation destinations "deaf and hard-of-hearing friendly."
"I know there's a lot of interest," Boude says. "We got 16,000 hits in one night on our press release, and 6,700 on our Web site the first night," Randy Boude says.
Boude says he has been negotiating with representatives from several Branson shows, including the Sight and Sound Theatre, the Jim Stafford show and Dixie Stampede.
A business pays to get S.E.E. training and certification, and then can advertise their service to hearing-impaired people. Boude says several shows outside Branson — including some in Las Vegas and Australia — have contacted him about the possibility of setting up the S.E.E. program.
S.E.E. employees held a press conference in Branson Tuesday, where Boude explained to a crowd of deaf and hard-of-hearing people, their friends and families how the system will work. Two Branson hotels have already incorporated "face-to-face" technology, sets of typing devices where deaf customers can type in their desires and questions and a clerk on the other side of the counter can type back; pay telephones using telecommunications devices for the deaf (TDDs); and TDDs available for guests' rooms.
Another hope for Branson is a series of restaurants with menus on the table so deaf people can order from there without having to bridge a communication barrier. A "deaf welcome center" within a building near Branson Landing will feature employees who speak sign language. The center will act much like a tourism center to help deaf visitors negotiate the city and choose deaf-friendly entertainment and hotels.
Linda Cheek has her fingers crossed that more area entertainment spots will become "deaf friendly" soon. The kids already have favorite shows on their wish list:
The Showboat Branson Belle. "It would be perfect," says Alan, who has been on a day cruise and loved it. Ditto for the shows at Silver Dollar City, such as in the saloon, and Dixie Stampede.
Magician and comic Kirby Van Birch would be another, the kids say.
Linda hopes the Jim Stafford show will join the group. "Mike (her husband) and I went there, and after seeing it, we think the kids would really enjoy the comedy. He uses a lot of play on words."
Godspeed, Boudes. Watching the enjoyment on Lopez' and the Cheek family's faces as they recalled rare experience of live entertainment for their whole family, you'd well understand the importance of this project.
And news spreads through the American deaf community even faster than through letters or the network of e-mails linking our veterans. If Branson's veteran-oriented draws can attract 100,000 American military veterans and their families every year, I can see a "deaf-friendly" Branson making it the nation's number-one tourist spot for the hearing-impaired population.
The voices came from a darkened theatre. They weren't ones anyone could hear, but they were voices, just the same, that hadn't been there before.
They were voices brought to listeners via the hands. As Alan, Sean and Michael Cheek, and their close family friend Sadé Lopez, watched a performance of "The Magnificent 7" two weeks ago at Branson's White House Theatre, they were also able to see pre-recorded American Sign Language interpreters bring the story to them. Large, flat-screen TVs were right in their line of sight between them, the TVs and performers on the stage.
It marked a first for parents Mike and Linda Cheek of Springfield and their three deaf sons (son Sean was at his job at McDonald's during our interview): Their first Branson show where the boys could understand what was being said without Mom or Dad having to give up some of their enjoyment of the performance to serve as translators.
Is that hard to do, you might ask, to try to watch a performance and interpret it into a different language at the same time?
Darned tootin'. Imagine having tickets on Broadway for "Phantom of the Opera" with your Spanish-speaking friend, and during the whole musical you interpret every word to him from English into Spanish, often turning your head toward him and away from the stage to whisper, so as not to bother other patrons.
The boys were thrilled by their experience at "The Magnificent 7."
"It was perfect, excellent, magnificent," 14-year-old Alan says of the show where impersonators bring to life seven generations of show business, with prominent entertainers such as Elvis and Michael Jackson. "At the end of the performance I got my jacket signed by the two stars."
"The actors and interpreter were choreographed together," Sadé, 22, observes. "It was wow!"
"It's amazing how they changed their clothes so fast," as they switched from one character to the next, Alan says.
"I explained to them, 'Velcro,'" says Linda Cheek, and laughs.
The boys all loved the troupe recreating the Village People and their song, "YMCA." The letters the actors make with their bodies, as did the original group, mirror the actual letters in the fingerspelled alphabet. "They really got involved," Linda says, unlike other musical programs the kids have attended. "They did YMCA with them."
The signed show was the first of what entrepreneur Randy Boude hopes will become a trademark of Branson: productions where pre-recorded interpretation is available for any deaf patron who comes, anytime. According to an estimate by the Gallaudet Research Institute, federal data and published research estimates that 140 out of every 1,000 people in the U.S. have some kind of hearing loss.
Boude and his wife Julie, a sign language interpreter, started Signed Entertainment Enterprises (S.E.E.) in hopes of making Branson just the first of many vacation destinations "deaf and hard-of-hearing friendly."
"I know there's a lot of interest," Boude says. "We got 16,000 hits in one night on our press release, and 6,700 on our Web site the first night," Randy Boude says.
Boude says he has been negotiating with representatives from several Branson shows, including the Sight and Sound Theatre, the Jim Stafford show and Dixie Stampede.
A business pays to get S.E.E. training and certification, and then can advertise their service to hearing-impaired people. Boude says several shows outside Branson — including some in Las Vegas and Australia — have contacted him about the possibility of setting up the S.E.E. program.
S.E.E. employees held a press conference in Branson Tuesday, where Boude explained to a crowd of deaf and hard-of-hearing people, their friends and families how the system will work. Two Branson hotels have already incorporated "face-to-face" technology, sets of typing devices where deaf customers can type in their desires and questions and a clerk on the other side of the counter can type back; pay telephones using telecommunications devices for the deaf (TDDs); and TDDs available for guests' rooms.
Another hope for Branson is a series of restaurants with menus on the table so deaf people can order from there without having to bridge a communication barrier. A "deaf welcome center" within a building near Branson Landing will feature employees who speak sign language. The center will act much like a tourism center to help deaf visitors negotiate the city and choose deaf-friendly entertainment and hotels.
Linda Cheek has her fingers crossed that more area entertainment spots will become "deaf friendly" soon. The kids already have favorite shows on their wish list:
The Showboat Branson Belle. "It would be perfect," says Alan, who has been on a day cruise and loved it. Ditto for the shows at Silver Dollar City, such as in the saloon, and Dixie Stampede.
Magician and comic Kirby Van Birch would be another, the kids say.
Linda hopes the Jim Stafford show will join the group. "Mike (her husband) and I went there, and after seeing it, we think the kids would really enjoy the comedy. He uses a lot of play on words."
Godspeed, Boudes. Watching the enjoyment on Lopez' and the Cheek family's faces as they recalled rare experience of live entertainment for their whole family, you'd well understand the importance of this project.
And news spreads through the American deaf community even faster than through letters or the network of e-mails linking our veterans. If Branson's veteran-oriented draws can attract 100,000 American military veterans and their families every year, I can see a "deaf-friendly" Branson making it the nation's number-one tourist spot for the hearing-impaired population.