The Curtain Theatre in Shoreditch in the late 1500s.
Phyllis Frelich and John Rubinstein in Children of a Lesser God, a 1980 play about the love of a deaf woman and a hearing man that was inspired by her relationship with her husband Robert Steinberg.
Phyllis Frelich with Children of a Lesser God playwright Mark Medoff.
Children of a Lesser God star Phyllis Frelich with her husband Robert Steinberg, left, and playwright Mark Medoff.
A trailer for the 1986 film version of Children of a Lesser God, which starred deaf actress Marlee Matlin.
Top, from left to right, lecturer Donald Bangs, deaf writer Jamie Berke and academic Kevin Nolan’s book – three deaf activists trying to educate the world about deaf culture. Above, Gallaudet University in Washington DC, USA, which has led advances in education of deaf and hard-of-hearing students for more than 150 years.
The character Token Black, from the American cartoon series South Park, is a deliberate dig at the way television, film and theatre often use token minority characters to tick a diversity box – something that can happen with deaf characters in mainstream productions.
These two films by M. Night Shyamalan may be cinematically impressive but they are prime examples of the kind of Hollywood movies that can be critically damaging to the representation of disorders on screen.
Charlotte Arrowsmith as the servant Curtis in the RSC’s production of The Taming of the Shrew. Although the character is not written as deaf, in this production she was played as deaf, completed with sign language and interpretation problems with characters who didn’t understand sign language.
Actress Charlotte Arrowsmith talks about landing her groundbreaking role with the RSC.
America’s National Theatre of the Deaf – leading the way for modern deaf theatre from 1967.
Paula Garfield started the UK’s first deaf-led deaf theatre company, Deafinitely Theatre, in 2002.
A New Zealand theatre company performs At The End of My Hands, a play based on stories from the actors’ own lives, designed to connect deaf people with the hearing world.
Positive steps seem to be being made in changing the public perception of deaf culture. Hopefully one day the sense of ‘otherness’ will be eradicated completely.
