Preview
Tony award -winning play portrays struggles of the deaf
By LESLIE MEEDS
Boy meets girl, a common theme. Yet the
commonality is lost in the newness of the
concept in the Tony Award winning play.
Children of a Lesser Cod. The drama portrays
the love, courtship and marital conflicts be
tween a deaf woman and a hearing man. For
the deaf, it brings the problems of the rich
world of silence to an ignorant, hearing
public.
Boyr Jim Leeds, meets girl,. Sarah Norman
at a school for the deaf Jim, a young
speech teacher and Sarah, a deaf student.
Together they attempt to resolve their con
flicts until Sarah must choose between two
worlds.
Children of a Lesser Cod, the first Broad
way on tour production of the season, will
be performed Nov. 21 and 22 jn Memorial
Hall. Jonathan Lee directs the seven-member
cast of the touring company with Phillip
Reeves and Freda Norman as Jim and Sarah.
The company will give two evening perfor
mances and one Saturday matinee.
The seed for playwright Mark Medoff s
Children came from the dilemma of Phyllis
Frelich, an accomplished deaf actress and
founding member of the National Theatre of
the Deaf. Frelich was born the oldest of nine
deaf children bom to deaf parents and at
tended Devil's Lake School for the deaf in
North Dakota and Gallaudet College in
Washington, a liberal arts college, where she
became interested in theatre.
Frelich met Medoff through her husband,
Robert Steinberg, a hearing actor and scene
designer who was doing, the sets and lights
for one of Medoff's plays. The Conversion of
Aaron Weiss. Inspired by the interplay be
tween the couple, Medoff promised to write
a plat for Frelich. After all, Frelich was right;
there were no roles in "hearing" theatre for
deaf actors.
Medoff kept his promise. The first produc
tion of Children starred Frelich and Steinberg
in the lead roles at the New Mexico State
University (Medoff was the chairman of the
Drama Department).
A notable aspect of this play is its move
ment from the regional theatre and a work
shop production to a Broadway production.
As many of the new plays are originated and
nurtured in environments outside of New
York, the commercial theatre is reaching
greater levels of decentralization.
Later that year. Children snuck into the
repertory at the Mark Taper Forum in Los
Angeles. Director Cordon Davidson (Tony
award winner for best direction of The Shad
ow Box) chose the more experienced John
Rubinstein for the male role. Rubinstein, who
speaks both roles in the play, learned to sign
fluently in three weeks. . v
The Los Angeles production was a success:
Children went to Broadway in March 1980.
Despite the producers' initial apprehensions
about staging a play in which one of the lead
ing characters never speaks a word, Children
broke even after its second week in New
York. ':
....
Children gives its hearing audiences a
glimpse of the sound of sign. The hearing im
paired can also hear the sounds, for the tour
ing company utilizes a portable Infrared
Listening System. The system converts sound
into infrared light, then back to sound inside
individual wireless headsets worn by audi
ence members with as much as 75 percent
hearing impairment
Children of a Lesser Cod brings newness
to a common theme. Through the relation
ship between a deaf woman and a hearing
man, the difficulties of the deaf shine
through. These realistic difficulties of the
deaf are metaphors for the difficulty of all
human communication.
For ticket information "check the Box Of
fice in the Carolina union or call 9621449.
..
Leslie Meeds is a contributor to Spotlight.
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Freda Mermen, FhHIp Reeves end Herbert DuVal in a sceno from Children of A Lesser God,
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The Wolf pack knows how to really
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MIAMI (FLA) OVER NC STATE BY 10
UNC OVER DUKE BY 6
OPENING SOON: THE UPPERDECK "ASCEND TRADITION"5
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Spotlight, November 19, 7987
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