The Deaf West production of Spring Awakening at the Brooks Atkinson tangibly enhances an acclaimed musical about rebellious and repressed adolescents. By cleverly pairing deaf actors who are signing with hearing actors who are singing, Deaf West has made the show the most accessible on Broadway, but also forged it into something theatrically exceptional.
Complete review at DC Theatre Scene
My essay for Howlround: Three Reasons To Cheer Deaf West’s Spring Awakening, and One Thing To Hope for the Future
The reasons, in short: 1. strikingly relevant. 2. incorporating sign language and English, hearing and deaf performers, adding depth and beauty. 3. brings accessibility and inclusion to new heights. But not high enough.
Click on any photograph to see it enlarged, and for captions.
Marlee Matlin
(seated left to right) Joshua Castille, Austin P. McKenzie, Daniel N. Durant, standing Alex Wyse, Miles Barbee, Andy Mientus
Joshua Castille and Andy Mientus on top of the piano Daniel David Stewart seated at the piano, Miles Barbee seated on the ground
Sandra Mae Frank as Wendla and Austin P McKenzie as Melchior
Daniel N. Durant as Moritz, Austin P. McKenzie as Melchior, and Alex Boniello as the voice of Moritz
Spring Awakening
Katie Boeck as the voice of Wendla, and Sandra Mae Frank as Wendla in “Mama Who Bore Me”
Daniel N. Durant and Krysta Rodriguez
Treshelle Edmond
Austin P McKenzie and Patrick Page
Austin P McKenzie and fellow boy students
Daniel L. Durant in Spring Awakening
Katie Boeck and Sandra Mae Frank as Wendla and her voice, with Camryn Manhein as their mother, Frau Bergman. Wendla and her mother, Frau Bergman: Wendla insists that her mother finally explain the birds and the bees to her. Pressured by this persistence, Wendla’s mother agrees to do so, but stumbles and stutters, and finally says: For a woman to bear a child, she must love her husband, only him, “with her whole….heart.” End of lesson. This gets an enormous laugh, and not just because she’s chickened out. Camryn Manheim, who plays the mother (the one stand-out adult performance), is both speaking and signing her part. After she says “whole,” she puts her hands together near her waist to form the ASL sign for “vagina,” but then quickly moves it up to her heart and says the word “heart” instead. (The reason why everybody in the audience can get this joke, even those who know not a single ASL sign, is that the sign for vagina – the outstretched thumb and forefinger of both hands touching one another — looks unmistakably like a vagina. That took forever just now to describe in print, but it happens in a moment on stage.)
Russell Harvard and Daniel N. Durant
Austin P McKenzie with company
