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When Lauren Rhodes performs the title role in “Eurydice” for City Lights Theater Company this weekend, Leah Cohen will be acting the same part alongside her on stage. But Cohen also will be doing a bit more — using American Sign Language.
Welcome to the newest twist on bilingual theater. While it’s becoming more common for theater productions to have performances interpreted for non-hearing audiences, Lisa Mallette, City Lights’ executive artistic director and the director of this show, wanted to bridge the gap even more.
“At City Lights, we’re always talking about deepening the audience’s engagement with the work,” she said. “By its very nature, if someone is deaf and is watching the show they’re usually taken out of the play because they have to look over to the side or read subtitles. But here the sign language is part of the storytelling.”
Mallette says she has wanted to build a show like this for years, and finally found the right one in Sarah Ruhl’s play, a retelling of the Greek myth of Orpheus, who journeyed to the underworld to find his dead wife, Eurydice. Ruhl retells the story from Eurydice’s point of view, as she struggles to communicate with her dead father just as Orpheus tries to reach her.
“The play is about communication — or the inability to communicate,” said Mallette, who received permission from Ruhl herself to expand the play’s cast to accommodate the ASL-performing actors.
Each of the roles is being played by both an English-speaking actor and an ASL actor. The actors don’t really view themselves as playing separate roles but two halves of a whole. In some scenes, Robert Sean Campbell, who plays Orpheus in English, interacts with Stephanie Foisy, who also plays Orpheus in ASL.
“Rob and I have worked closely together on several different parts where I need to know what Orpheus is thinking so I can think the same way and match his affect,” said Foisy, who is not deaf but has worked for more than 20 years as an ASL interpreter. “It also helps me choose the signs that I use.”
That’s important because ASL is not a word-for-word translation of English, so the actors have to decide which signs best serve the story while keeping the pace of the language together.
Rhodes, who plays the English-speaking Eurydice, said the dual performances have added a whole new dimension to the play. “It has been so interesting with all the character pairs to see how the characters relate to each other,” she said. “It makes the characters so much richer and makes their relationship with the others so much more dynamic.”
Mallette says an essential part of the production has been having JAC Cook serve as the show’s ASL Master. Cook, who is deaf, watched the ASL performers during rehearsals to make sure the story was coming through clearly. She also moved around the theater, checking different vantage points to make sure that the ASL actors weren’t blocked by the set or other actors.
“She’s there for our wrap-up meetings, and we make sure all our directions are interpreted for her,” Mallette said. “And she’s made suggestions that we have incorporated into the show.”
For Dane K. Lentz, who plays the ASL version of the Lord of the Underworld, works as a show interpreter but says being front and center instead of off to the side of the stage has been a tremendous feeling. And he has an even more personal reason for pride in the show. He is the hearing child of deaf adults, and his mom and stepdad will be coming up from Riverside to see the show. “Being able to represent my first language on stage is a blessing,” he said.
Erik Gandolfi, Lentz’s English-speaking counterpart, said he’s never experienced anything like this during his 30-year career in theater and hopes to see ASL integrated into more shows in the future.
“This is completely within the mission of City Lights and what they want to do,” he said. “Theater has always been an embracing, welcoming world of all types, of all genders and preferences. It’s the melting pot of all things cultural and literal.”
The show, which runs through April 14, starts two nights of previews Thursday, with opening night on Saturday. Tickets are available at www.cltc.org.