Children of a Lesser God opens Sept. 13; plays Thurs.-Sat., 8 pm; Sun., 2 pm; (special school matinees Sept. 22, 29 and Oct. 6); through Oct. 11. Tickets: $25. Deaf West Theatre, 5112 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood; Theatermania.com or 866.811.4111. For other information call 818.762.2773 Voice or 866.954.2986 VP or deafwest.org
In 1979 at the Mark Taper Forum, Artistic Director Gordon Davidson experimented with a new concept in theatre that combined American Sign Language with spoken English. He worked closely and tirelessly with playwright Mark Medoff through many ideas and drafts until his historically groundbreaking play Children of a Lesser God took shape.
Jonathan Barlow Lee
The following year the play exploded on Broadway, swept the Tonys and became an international success spawning dozens of tours and a motion picture. Through the entire process, sitting aside playwright and director was stage manager Jonathan Barlow Lee. After guiding the play through its initial Taper run, Lee became integral to the success of the many touring productions, putting new actors into the show that would become a phenomenon and infuse the world with an understanding and appreciation of sign language.
Three decades later American Sign Language has become enormously popular, even beyond the deaf community. Part of that wave has been the creation and tremendous growth of the nation’s foremost theatre of the hearing impaired: DeafWest. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the seminal play, DeafWest invited Lee to revive Children of a Lesser God. He is excited and proud to be able to make it even more approachable to the deaf than it was when it first premiered.
Lee explains his more contemporary vision. “It has been tremendously freeing to approach the show from a new point of view with a new cast. The main thing changing about the new production is making it fully accessible to deaf audiences. We’re using a lot more sign language. The parts we are not signing we are captioning. In the old production the hard of hearing characters, when speaking to hearing, did not sign, why would they? But we realized the hearing actors, when speaking to deaf characters, talk – the lead character James Leeds never shuts up when he is alone with his deaf student Sarah Norman. Why not take that convention and expand it? Make it work both ways. Now the hard if hearing actors are signing to the hearing actors who are also signing and speaking. The only person not doing both is Sarah.”
At the time of the original production signing was mostly unknown in the hearing world. Leading actor John Rubenstein had to take a crash course. Lee explains, “John had no prior exposure to sign language until a couple of week before rehearsal. He was learning how to do it. I went to his house with Gordon and a sign language expert and realized he was going to be able to pull this off. The actors playing James in those days were all people with no signing experience. Every one of them had a different style of signing. I have to say in those days the intelligibility of the sign language to a deaf audience was not as high a priority as it is at DeafWest. For this production we are making the production fully accessible to deaf audiences. Every line James signs has to be not only intelligible to actors on stage but to the deaf people in the audience.
Lee’s professional experience is not in directing. He began as a stage manager and has been the Taper’s production manager for 20 years. He is excited about this challenge and happy for his management experience. “What is wonderful about being a director who understands production is that I have a better sense of what is possible and not possible going in. In order to make the waiver thing happen you have to bring in all sorts of favors and make magic happen. You don’t have the resources to try something that may not succeed. Working with designer John Iocavelli, who has done the set at, we’ve managed to create something lovely in the DeafWest space. As a result we’ve put together a set that fits beautifully. The original production was very spare. Just benches, motorized, so as people moved from scene to scene the benches that defined the spaces had a little life of their own. A concept that never quite worked. At DeafWest, because of the architecture of the building, we’ve expanded up so now there are two levels. There is a more realistic approach to the physicality. It is still spare, which is required by the production because they bounce around from place to place, but we’re trying to be a bit more evocative about location than in the original production. So far it seems to be working out for the show.”
His enthusiasm makes it clear Lee has been bitten by the directing bug. “I have to tell you I love it. I love not having to be negotiating between people with artistic points of view but to be the person in the room whose artistic point of view seems to matter the most. It is a very collaborative process. Based on what I have seen the show is really going to be a good reintroduction to LA theatregoers to this wonderful play. It is very hard to do well because it puts such a strain on the people who are both verbally acting and acting through sign language. I am very fortunate to have this magnificent cast who is able to pull it all off.” Shoshannah Stern (from TV’s Jericho and Weeds) plays Sarah and Matthew Jaeger is James. Rounding out the cast are Brian M. Cole, Rebecca Ann Johnson, Marilyn McIntrye, Tami Lee Santimyer and Time Winters.
Feature image shows Shoshannah Stern and Matthew Jaeger by Michael Lamont. The headshot of director Jonathan Barlow Lee by Craig Schwartz.
Article by Tom Provenzano
