The Confusion of Communication and Miscommunication
Tacoma Little Theatre has just opened a BIG HIT for the Puget Sound theatre community with their stunning production of Mark Medoff’s play, Children of a Lesser God, the 1980 winner of the Tony, Drama Desk and Olivier Awards for Best Play.
Although the script describes the vicissitudes of the courtship and marriage of a hearing man, James Leeds, and a non-speaking deaf woman, Sarah Norman, who communicates by signing, their personal conflicts reflect the polarized ideologies which have plagued deaf education since its beginning.
These ideological conflicts were particularly virulent in the 1970’s, because of the increase (12,000) in the number of deaf infants born as a result of the rubella epidemics of the early 1960’s. N.B If a pregnant woman catches rubella in the first trimester, the baby may be born deaf.
The two different methods of educating the deaf are “oralism” and “signing”. On the one hand, sign language tends to isolate the deaf community from the mainstream, but it is its own culture and is its own language community. Signing can be learned earlier and more quickly thereby promoting more sophisticated language acquisition. “Oralism,” where deaf people are taught to speak and lip-read on the other hand, has its pitfalls, because lip-reading can never be accurate. For example, there is no visual distinction between a “P” and a “B”, and many other sounds.
One of the problems during this highly polarized controversy, was that the “experts” many of them being “hearing” pundits, never asked the deaf individuals, what was best for them. In Children of a Lesser God this political conflict, within the larger community, was played out in the interpersonal conflict, between the husband and wife. James, the hearing husband literally and figuratively speaks for his deaf wife in the same way that the “hearing” pundits spoke about what was best for the deaf community.
As the play opens, a young enthusiastic speech therapist, James Leeds, is working in a deaf school with some success among the hard of hearing, but is a little over-protective. A completely deaf 26 year old, Sarah Norman, reluctantly comes to Mr. Leeds for speech lessons. Although highly intelligent, she is working as a maid in the school, from which she graduated, because she has no interest in going out into the hearing world.
Mr. Leeds, an imperfect signer, tries to get her to speak, but Sarah resists. The two have heated discussions about whether signing or speech is better and in doing so the controversies around deaf education of that era, are debated. As they get to know each other and tell their life stories, she reveals what many disabled children go through: family rejection and sexual abuse. In the end they fall in love and marry before the intermission.
In the second act, having moved off campus, they adjust to married life. Complicating this process, Sarah has to learn to live in the hearing world, which puts a burden on him as he exhausts himself translating for her. He also experiences the frustration of not being able to share his love of music with her. Both of them have issues with control and he is rather too fond of making “you statements” and tends to “psychobabbleize” her. On the other hand, she has her own intransigence. These sorts of behavior were more acceptable in the pre-John Bradshaw and Oprah era, when everybody was still influenced by Existential philosophy and psychology.
Just to complicate matters, a subplot is introduced to illustrate another controversy played out in deaf education, which culminated in a major student protest at Gallaudet University, ( the Washington D.C. university for the deaf.) The protest concerned whether to hire deaf teachers there and at other similar schools. N.B. In the 1880’s when “oralism” began to dominate deaf education, deaf teachers were dismissed from deaf schools, and signing was not only forbidden but punished and stigmatized.
A pushy seemingly self-serving liberal lawyer, who Republicans nowadays would call a “social justice warrior,” Edna Klein, tries to get Sarah to appear in court in a lawsuit over discrimination at the school where Sarah spent 20 years. James Leeds, her husband, further undermines their relationship and her autonomy by negotiating behind her back causing a major rupture.
However, the script is not just a didactic diatribe about the controversies surrounding deaf education, it is full of humor and jokes about miscommunication, while containing some profound universal truths about communication within interpersonal relationships. On a very basic level, it is also about the struggle of every newly married couple as they fight over whose culture or whose communication style their relationship will adopt.
The frustration and disappointment he feels when he realizes how deeply it affects him that he cannot share his love of music with her, is something all relationships go through. First one notices everything two people have in common, then one notices all the differences, then one compromises…or not.
Everything in this production was truly excellent. A lot of the credit goes to the director Rick Honor, who assembled a fabulous cast, sound design and chose a set, designed by Blake R. York, which worked perfectly for the show. By using a virtually bare stage as a set with several platforms, plain boxes and chairs, the numerous scene changes were executed swiftly. Also the austere starkness and lack of color of the set, kept the audience focused on the sign language and on the actors. I found myself more attuned to the body language and how expressive the signing was. Beyond a doubt, there was definite sarcasm in the signing of Michelle Mary Schaefer, the actress who played Sarah Norman to perfection.
Other stand-outs in the cast were Jeremy Lynch as the teacher/husband James Leeds. His signing was appropriately not as good as Sarah’s, but his voice was commanding, and he brought all the confusion and bewilderment of a rather patriarchal male trying to figure out how to save his marriage. Kai Winchester and Melanie Gladstone performances as James Leeds’ other students were right on the money. Kerry Bringman, who initially appears to be unsympathetic, put in a nuanced performance as an experienced elder who tried to impart the wisdom acquired by experience on to the younger generation.
Fortunately, since the play was written, there has been a lot of progress in deaf education as a result of the ADA -American for Disabilities Act and something called Total Communication, where each individual is assessed and they decide which type of communication works best. Deaf children are mainstreamed with interpreters and deaf people are not told that it is in their best interests to “integrate” but it is accepted that they constitute a separate language and cultural group.
Nowadays, ASL is taught as a foreign language. I believe that this powerful play probably helped bring about these changes; however this play is not dated. Even though our society is more civilized about persons with disabilities, more than ever we still have communication difficulties as did these two individuals that had nothing to do with the difficulty caused by the medium of communication but had to do with issues of control and dominance. We can all learn from seeing this play.
For the hearing impaired there are TV screens with subtitles, visible from the audience and also some ASL interpreted performances. Tacoma Little Theatre, has a big lobby with an excellent bar and lots of snacks including hot pop-corn. This show is well worth the drive from Seattle and street parking is available.
Children of a Lesser God Tacoma Little Theatre, 210 North I Street, Tacoma, WA 98403. Fri & Sat 7:30; Sun 2:00 pm.Thru Feb 4, 2018 Tickets https://www.tix4.centerstageticketing.com/sites/tacomalittletheatre/showdates.php?s_id=181 Info: www.tacomalittletheatre.com (253)272-2281