Deaf Emerging Artists Festival this week in NY city

From IRT Theater:

The IRT Theater Deaf Emerging Artists Festival (D.E.A.F.) is an annual one-week program of performances, screenings and workshops aimed at creating common ground for Deaf and hearing artists.

D.E.A.F. 2010 will be June 1-6 at IRT: 154 Christopher St., #3B, NY, NY. Tickets can be purchased at: www.brownpapertickets.com/event/111711.

JUNE 1&2 (TUES/WEDS) – 7PM
MO2 Productions: UNcontentED LOVE

An hour long visual presentation of spats, physical fights, repressed desires and lovers’ misunderstandings. And perhaps a hopeful kiss. This production takes many of the pearls created by Shakespeare and makes a new necklace. These re-strung fun old scenes take on new life and meaning. These excerpts from Shakespeare’s plays are performed in a striking visual presentation that includes ASL, VGC [Visual Gestural Communication], spoken English, and physical movements. The poetry comes alive in this accessible bringing together of characters from Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Two Gentlemen from Verona and more.

Directors: Monique Holt and Tim Chamberlain
Stage Manager: Thadeus Brown
Light Designer: Norah Matthews
MO2 Ensemble: James Caverly, Colin Analco, Sandra Frank, Aaron Halleck, Amelia Hensley, Annette McAllister, Michael Sprouse, and Caroline Suggs

JUNE 2 (WED) – 8:30 PM (FREE)
Open Mic Night

“Taking Stage Night” Tonight YOU take the stage – do you have a monologue? A poem? Can you tell a great story or maybe dance? When you come to see this show you will have an opportunity to sign-up to step on stage yourself. You can join the regular performers, NYC professionals, NTID students, published poets and people who are taking that first big risk of showing what they can do to an audience or you can sit back relax and watch a variety show. At the end of the evening everyone will have time to drink, be social, chat and share ideas.

JUNE 3 (THUR) – 7PM
BOX (pictured)

Every BOX has six sides, twelve edges, and eight corners. It is consistent. It is what’s expected. It does not change. We often make ourselves slaves to finite expectations. When does our BOX become a prison?

Told predominantly through movement, this theater piece contemplates the safety, the comfort, and the joy of the BOX we know, all the while asking us to consider the possibilities that can arise when one is willing to step outside of that with which we are familiar and perhaps love more than anything else, in order to experience or perchance even to create something new.

Are you intrepid, or are you content with the finite definition of happiness and success that our social order dictates? Find out as you take this theatrical journey exploring a life lived inside and outside the BOX.

BOX made its debut at the 2009 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. “. . . thought provoking, innovative, interesting . . . not for traditionalists.” - broadwaybaby.com

JUNE 4 (FRI) – 7PM
DR2

David Rivera and Douglas Ridloff are the yin and yang of ASL. The storytelling masters complement each other as DR2—salty and sweet, funny and dark, hot and cool. The duo hurls story after story celebrating the tribulations and triumphs of Deafhood in academia and life beyond, hitting every single ASL genre: poetry using handshapes and numbers, cinematic storytelling, stand-up comedy and a fun thing called duo signing. Their voiced performance provides the link between Deafhood and the rest of the world. You just have to come and see for yourself.

June 5 (SAT) – 2-4PM
Del-Sign workshop

“Del-Sign workshop”, a fun hands-on acting workshop using a fusion Physical technique blending the foundations of François Delsarte movement and the Foundations of American Sign Language taught by Luane Davis Haggerty, Ph.D. co-Founder of IRT and professor/director for the National Technical Institute of Technology Performing arts department, with the assistance of NTID Student actors from the recent production of “Little Women”.

JUNE 5 (SAT) – 7PM
Eddie Swayze: ASL poetry performance
Film screening: Miriam Nathan Lerner: The Heart of the Hydrogen Jukebox

In 1984 at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf in Rochester, New York, poet Allan Ginsburg gavea reading attended not just by hearing audience members, but by several deaf people as well. Some had been translating English poetry into sign for years, but had not yet experimented with the idea of composing original poetry in American Sign Language – which is never written, but communicates through rich and intricate signs and body gestures that must be seen to be understood. An audience member translated part of Ginsburg’s written poem “Howl” into sign language: the phrase “hydrogen jukebox.” Watching the translation, Ginsburg was floored. He experienced an “Ah ha!” moment, and so did the entire audience. A new ASL poetry was born that night. It’s a literature of the flesh. It is kinetic, gorgeous, heart-rending, sexy, and its history makes beautiful cinema.

In The Heart of the Hydrogen Jukebox, Lerner has collected years of archival footage showing the proto-history of deaf poetry all the way back to the first filmed rendition, and proceeding to the Ginsburg breakthrough and decades beyond.

June 6 (SUN) – 2PM
New York Deaf Theatre

In a special presentation from New York Deaf Theatre, Andy Vasnick, a Deaf
actor who was last seen in the motion picture, “Gerald”, as a young man’s
recently-discovered grandfather who happens to also be autistic, shares some
special experiences he’s had over the years, and takes questions from the
audience, too.