By Misha Berson, Seattle Times theater critic
Thursday, June 2, 2005

Deciphering a bilingual Broadway musical may sound like an arduous exercise.

Fortunately, there is nothing laborious about the splendid touring production of "Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" at the Paramount Theatre. On the contrary: It is a sweet revelation.

Putting aside for a moment that this show is simultaneously communicated from the stage in American Sign Language (ASL), and in spoken word and song, it is also imaginatively directed, well-acted and beautifully sung.

Yet this recent Broadway version of a prime 1985 musical based on the watershed Mark Twain novel is unique in its adroit integration of two languages. And that adds a new theatrical dimension to an enduring story.

Every moment of "Big River" is accessible to hearing patrons and to those who are deaf but conversant in sign language.

Huck, the pre-Civil War runaway who takes the journey of his young life down the mighty Mississippi, is embodied with high-spirited gusto by deaf actor Tyrone Giordano. Huck's role is voiced, however, by versatile Michael Flanigan, who also serves as the show's narrator, the dry-witted author Twain.

As Huck's companion Jim, an escaped black slave seeking freedom in the North, magnetic David Aron Damane does his own vocalizing while also signing.

And Huck's ne'er-do-well father Pap is played both by Troy Kotsur and Erick Devine, cavorting in comic unison. (Pap is double-trouble anyway, so it fits.)

It takes a scene or two to get used to the various communication styles. But very soon one marvels over the ensemble's seamless, cross-linguistic unity.

Director Jeff Calhoun's Broadway staging (which evolved from an original 2001 version of "Big River" at Deaf West Theatre in Los Angeles) keeps the show in captivating motion (with a few slips into overly broad buffoonery). And Ray Klausen's set design is utterly ingenious.

The stage is simply adorned with tall facsimiles of sepia-toned, illustrated pages and the cover from Twain's 1885 novel.

And as the hinged set-pieces open, out tumble colorful incidents, characters and locales from Huck and Jim's odyssey.

Calhoun also often steers our gaze to a simple raft, where the initially mistrustful Jim and Huck share quiet reveries ªEand nasty run-ins with two charlatans.

In one scam, adeptly condensed in William Hauptman's book for "Big River," the self-crowned rascals sell Jim to a farmer ªEwho turns out to be the uncle of Huck's old pal Tom Sawyer (vigorously enacted by former Seattle performer Benjamin Schrader).

The charms of the Tony Award-honored score for "Big River," by the late Roger Miller are in good hands. From hymns to hoedowns, the homespun tunes are affectingly sung, and set off by conductor Steven Landau's small, capable pit band.

Flanigan offers Huck's songs in a sweetwater tenor that's honey on the ears. Damane's solo "Free at Last" is hearty and moving. And when the two harmonize on the lovely "River in the Rain" and the questing "Worlds Apart," the music gleams and glistens.

Outstanding Gwen Stewart delivers the gospel lament "How Blest We Are" with keening urgency and stunning range.

"Big River" is very suitable for adolescents as well as adults. But as Twain's book does, it uses a derogatory term for blacks in historical context. That's made the novel so controversial in our age, some communities have banned it for its "racist" language.

But in any form, "Huckleberry Finn" is a story of moral outrage and regret over America's racial scars and religious hypocrisy.

As leading black novelist Ralph Ellison wrote of Huck Finn, "He knew, as did Mark Twain, that Jim was not only a slave but a human being [and] a symbol of humanity ... and in freeing Jim, Huck makes a bid to free himself of the conventionalized evil taken for civilization. ... "

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By Misha Berson, Seattle Times theater critic
Thursday, June 2, 2005

"Many hearing people are puzzled why my theater is doing anything with music," says deaf theater producer Ed Waterstreet. "But I remember when I was a kid, I loved going with my families to musicals. I didn't understand much, but I thought, 'Someday I'd love to see a show like this with sign language.' "

Waterstreet realized that dream years later, as artistic head of the L.A. troupe he still runs, Deaf West Theatre.

And now he's delighted that Deaf West Theatre's most popular show, a signed and sung version of the toe-tapping musical "Big River," is on national tour after having made it to Broadway (in 2004), where it earned two Tony Award nominations, and a Tony Honor for Excellence in Theatre.

Not bad at all for a bilingual production that started out in 2001 at DWT's tiny 66-seat playhouse in North Hollywood.

It wasn't Waterstreet's first musical project for the theater ? that was a version of "Oliver!" for deaf and hearing actors.

"People loved it," he recalls, through a sign-language interpreter. "But our audience was 75 percent hearing and 25 percent deaf. That was back in the day, when we were trying to build a deaf audience."

"Big River," the Roger Miller-scored tuner based on Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," helped in that effort. "We chose it because there's so much storytelling in it, and for its themes of black vs. white, diversity and difference in America."

Five sign-language experts created a script for the actors to sign, while the hearing actors also spoke and sang the show's original book and score.

"We wanted to parallel the play in ASL," Waterstreet says, "not substitute one language for another."

A smash hit in L.A., "Big River" thrived, Waterstreet contends, because, "Hearing patrons could actually see the music while also hearing it, and deaf people got a rhythmic portrayal of the story in sign language."

A former actor with the pioneering National Theatre of the Deaf, Waterstreet says he's now forging a new kind of deaf/hearing drama that's "more inclusive and interactive."

"I understand some deaf people want a separate culture with a peer deaf community," he says. "But my philosophy is to bring both worlds, both cultures together."

The nationwide success of "Big River" (there now are two touring companies of the show) is a first big step. And Deaf West Theatre soon will expand into a larger venue in North Hollywood. More information on the company is at www.deafwest.org

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By JOE ADCOCK, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER THEATER CRITIC
Friday, May 27, 2005

Ed Waterstreet's eyes open wide. His hands are at shoulder level, fingers spread. He has the astonished, disbelieving look of a person who perhaps saw a train take flight or an airplane enter a subway tunnel.

Actually, what he's doing is describing the reaction he got from Broadway director/choreographer Jeff Calhoun when he was trying to persuade him to stage a musical using deaf actors. Waterstreet is artistic director of Deaf West Theatre in Los Angeles.

"Deaf actors?! In a musical?!" he exclaims (in sign language -- interpreter Joanna Ball supplies the voiceover). Waterstreet wore down Calhoun's resistance. Their production of "Big River," a 1985 musical based on Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," opened four years ago. Eventually it played on Broadway. A touring production opens Tuesday at the Paramount Theatre.

Waterstreet was in town earlier this month to speak at the Community Service Center for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. Waterstreet himself is deaf, the result of meningitis when he was 2. For 12 years he worked with the National Theatre of the Deaf.

Twenty years ago, he and his wife, deaf actress Linda Bove, sought new opportunities and challenges in Los Angeles. Bove became a "Sesame Street' regular -- Linda the Librarian. Waterstreet's jobs included playing the father in "Love Is Never Silent," a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie that aired on TV in 1985. The job provided some contacts that proved useful when Waterstreet went on to do what he really wanted to do: start his own stage company that featured deaf performers.

That company has been in operation since 1991. "TV and film are expensive and complicated," Waterstreet says. "If you want to set up an organization that fosters deaf artists, live theater is the simplest way to go."

Waterstreet started with your basic, inexpensive, two-character, one-set production: "The Gin Game." But as Deaf West gained momentum, Waterstreet's artistic ambitions also revved up. By 2000 he was ready for, yes, a musical. He chose "Oliver!"

"Using both deaf and hearing actors is useful when there's a clear power difference or social split in the show you're producing," Waterstreet said (through Ball) during an interview. "I went to the Wisconsin School for the Deaf. Like in most schools for the deaf, the staff and teachers are hearing people. And the students are deaf."

One also might mention that the National Theatre of the Deaf has traditionally been headed by a hearing artistic director.

"In our 'Oliver!,' " Waterstreet continues, "the orphans were played by deaf performers and the people who have power over them were played by hearing actors." The deaf cast members signed their lines and lyrics. Interpreters spoke and sang for them.

"The same distinction worked for us in 'Romeo and Juliet' in 1998," Waterstreet continues. "Romeo and his family were deaf. Juliet and her people were hearing. In our 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,' the doctors and nurses were hearing. The patients were deaf. In 'Big River,' Huck is deaf and Jim is hearing." (Jim is the runaway slave Huck helps to raft his way to freedom.)

When he was growing up, Waterstreet was fascinated, and frustrated, by his family's enthusiasm for music and theater. He has three brothers and a sister. "Of course, they took me along when they went to church or to a show," he says. "They didn't want to leave me home. I'd watch them. It was amazing. Afterward they'd try to explain how the music had affected them. Even though I never really understood, I was tremendously impressed."

Waterstreet was born in Green Bay. When he went to Gallaudet University for the Deaf he "naturally," as he puts it, played football. More importantly, he got involved in dramatics.

When "Big River" became a very big deal, Waterstreet put his Los Angeles home base on hold. After the tour winds down, he's intends to get the Deaf West operation in North Hollywood up and running again. He's thinking of a remount of "Oliver!" -- an elaborate full-scale production that could go on tour with maybe a stop on Broadway.

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By BRETT OPPEGAARD, Columbian staff writer
Friday, May 27, 2005

Too many things keep people away from the theater, from high ticket prices to elitism to ignorance and ambivalence about the form.

On rare occasions, though, a show reaches out to the disenfranchised and encourages them to try this wondrous intellectual and social activity, too.

"Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" originally was produced by Deaf West Theatre for patrons attuned with the hard of hearing. A musical for the deaf seems oxymoronic. Yet such close-mindedness is part of what's keeping theater from the masses, insular thinking indicating a lack of creativity.

This national touring show, continuing through Sunday in Portland's Keller Auditorium, demonstrates how even people who can't hear the music or singing voices can get great pleasure from such a stage production.

An ambassador of sorts to both worlds, this piece blends American Sign Language with the typical aspects of a musical to connect the deaf and the hearing, giving both something significant to think about.

It's no coincidence that Mark Twain's tale of a young man named Huck Finn was chosen. The story recounts Finn's adventures with a runaway slave called Jim, giving parallels to the plight of the deaf. In short, both blacks and the deaf have faced similar struggles in attempts to be recognized as full and complete human beings in America.

But there's also the brilliant technical side of this show to admire. The cast is roughly half deaf, unable to hear cues. To make that work, cast members have to communicate through touch and visual signals, which are virtually transparent to the audience. Considering the complexity of the techniques, it's startlingly smooth to observe.

Especially when the music stops. And the singing stops. And the cast acts out portions of the play with no sound, making it so quiet in the auditorium that the people with hearing in the room can imagine what the deaf sitting nearby are experiencing.

The sign language meanwhile bursts from its functional roots into beautifully choreographed movement akin to dance. The actors, in turn, are unusually physical in their storytelling, particularly when working in matched pairs, one deaf, one not.

Considering the sensitivity of the subject matter, including repeated use of the N-word, the most critical character to the modernization of the piece is Jim, played by Jerold Solomon. Solomon supplies unwavering strength to the role, intrinsically showing that no matter what the circumstances, one can maintain dignity, principles, morals and values. Almost every action he takes underlines the theme that everyone is important in their own ways.

With all of its attractive parts, "Big River" unfortunately neglects a couple of the most crucial. The songs are merely adequate -- not particularly memorable -- made even less impressive by an undersized ensemble of musicians. Much of the nuance of Twain's tale is lost in generalities. Some of the secondary characters are not amplified enough, making portions of the show incomprehensible, and the staging is underwhelming, pretty much just oversized book pages as backdrops.

The audience reaction on opening night, though, affects my perception of those flaws. At the end of each scene, I could look around and see dozens, maybe hundreds, of hands raised with fingers wiggling. That's the way deaf people applaud.

This is a show for me, and my ears, but it's also for them. Art forms constantly need to be challenged and broken apart like this, so they can be rebuilt into something different and better and more relevant. Theater, especially, needs to keep striving for ways to break down the barriers separating it from the general public. In new ways, and all sorts of ways, more people should be encouraged to come inside and give it a try.

If you go

What: Deaf West Theatre's version of "Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."

When: 7:30 tonight through Saturday, with additional performances at 2 p.m. Saturday and 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday.

Where: Portland's Keller Auditorium, 222 S.W. Clay St.

Cost: $24 to $66.

Tickets: To reserve seats, call Ticketmaster at 360-573-7700 or Portland Opera's box office at 866-739-6737. On the Web: www.portlandopera.org or www.broadwayacross america.com.

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Grant Butler
Friday, May 27, 2005

"BIG RIVER": You realize you're in for a different night of theater the second you step into Keller Auditorium. The lobby is filled with deaf people engaged in American Sign Language -- not something you see at your average Broadway musical.

But they're here because this "Big River" is anything but average. Created by Los Angeles' Deaf West Theatre, it's a production that uses both hearing and nonhearing actors, with hearing actors voicing the parts of the nonhearing actors, and all of them signing their performance. It works seamlessly, adding a new dimension to Roger Miller's retelling of Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."

Young Huck is played by deaf actor Tyrone Giordano, who has such a commanding stage presence that he's mesmerizing to watch. His role is voiced by Michael Flanigan, who plays a dual role as the show's narrator, and the timing between the two is flawless, creating a Huck who's fully realized.

Many of Giordano's scenes are played against hearing actor David Aron Damane, who plays the runaway slave Jim. There's obvious chemistry between the two actors, so their growing friendship feels completely believable.

Members of the rest of the ensemble portray multiple roles, with character actors Troy Kotsur and Erick Devine standing out in their shared portrayal of Huck's dad, Pap. Also notable are two gospel-inspired numbers, sung with vocal heft by Gwen Stewart and signed dramatically by Christina Ellison Dunams.

There's a moment in the second act when a bit of magic happens. In a reprise of the tender ballad "Waiting for the Light to Shine," the band and singers go silent just as the song reaches its climax, completing it solely in sign language. For hearing members of the audience, there's this startling sensation of experiencing music through the eyes instead of the ears.

And in those few seconds of shiver-inducing excitement, it's clear why this "Big River" is such a landmark achievement. On stage, Huck Finn has realized that he and Jim have a lot in common, despite the difference in their skin color. In Deaf West's "Big River," the audience has crossed a similar bridge of realizing sameness, whether they can hear or not.

Continues 7:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Saturday, and 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday, Keller Auditorium, 222 S.W. Clay St.; $24-$66, Ticketmaster, 503-790-2787 or 503-224-4400. -- Grant Butler

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Deaf West Theater's "Big River" is a musical that's a sign of the times
INARA VERZEMNIEKS
Friday, May 20, 2005

As it has wound its way across the country during the past year, "Big River," a revival of the 1985 Broadway musical based on Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," has generated considerable acclaim -- not so much for what is said, as for what is left unsaid.

That's because in this particular adaptation of "Big River," which begins an eight performance run Tuesday at the Keller Auditorium, every number, every line is performed simultaneously in American Sign Language and spoken English by a cast that's a mix of hearing and deaf actors.

The result is such a seamless choreography of two languages -- one spoken, one signed -- that you cannot "make a conscious distinction between the two styles of performance," theater critic Ben Brantley wrote in a glowing review in The New York Times of the production's Broadway run.

This is not someone standing at the edge of a stage offering an ASL translation of actors' spoken words; in "Big River," a production of Deaf West Theater, signing is completely integrated into the performance, along with singing, speaking and dancing. Hearing actors sign and speak. Deaf actors sign songs, while hearing actors sing and sign. In one case, two actors -- one signing, one speaking -- simultaneously play the same character. The lines become so blurred "you can't tell anymore who's deaf and who's hearing," says director and choreographer Jeff Calhoun.

While deaf theater has been around for years -- the National Theatre of the Deaf has been going since 1967, and the country's deaf schools and colleges have long staged their own drama productions -- the sight of actors signing onstage is still unusual for hearing audiences. "Children of a Lesser God," was Broadway's last big sign-language production . . . back in 1980.

The story of this particular adaptation of "Big River" and how it came about highlights what has been an ongoing movement to expose hearing audiences to the "visual expressiveness" of deaf culture, as Ed Waterstreet, artistic director and CEO of Deaf West Theater, puts it, and to give deaf audiences the opportunity to see "actors using their language onstage."

In this case, it all began at Deaf West, a small equity-waiver theater in North Hollywood, Calif. In Deaf West's early days, only deaf actors performed onstage, Waterstreet recalled through an ASL translator during a recent visit to Portland, where he discussed the making of "Big River." Hearing audience members could use headsets to hear a spoken English translation of the ASL dialogue. When he began to look at his box-office numbers, Waterstreet was surprised to discover that the vast majority of Deaf West's audience were hearing.

He began to experiment with using performers who both spoke and signed onstage. He combined deaf and hearing actors in such plays as "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "Romeo and Juliet," and "A Streetcar Named Desire." The response was great, he says.

Emboldened, Waterstreet began to dream of doing a deaf musical. "I knew maybe that would puzzle people," he says.

Growing up among a hearing family, he had been dragged to numerous musicals through the years, he recalled. "For me, it was kind of boring -- I was just watching a bunch of mouths moving onstage." But he saw how riveted his family members were, and wondered if there was a way to create the same kind of experience for deaf audiences, if there was a way to capture that same feeling of song in sign.

He decided to call on Calhoun, who had an extensive background in choreography on Broadway, and who had worked with the likes of Tommy Tune. Given Calhoun's expertise in dance and movement, even though he was hearing and did not know ASL, Waterstreet guessed he would think visually and could grasp just how sign could play an integral part in a musical's storytelling.

His instinct was right. "Big River" was an immediate success. Hearing people said "they could see the music," as Waterstreet puts it; deaf audiences were overwhelmed to be able to see a signed musical. Just a year after opening at Deaf West's tiny theater in North Hollywood, "Big River" had moved to the much larger Mark Taper Forum in downtown Los Angeles. A year after that, it had moved to Broadway. Now, it's touring the country, with two companies. "A Cinderella story," as Calhoun puts it.

While reviewers have commented on how effortless the production's blending of signing and speaking and singing appears on stage, it is the result of endless hours of work, and no small amount of "happy accident," Calhoun says.

Stage directions had to be modified. Actors couldn't hold props in their hands when they needed to be signing. A knock at a door would be pointless if a character couldn't hear it. A system of nudges and winks and other gestures were incorporated into the action of a scene to cue deaf actors when the music had started, or they needed to deliver a line.

Hearing actors had to learn ASL, a distinct language with its own grammatical rules. Then they had to learn how to sign and sing at the same time -- a feat not unlike "trying to pat your head and rub your tummy at the same time," Waterstreet says. "It can drive you crazy."

ASL master translators -- "the unsung heroes of this production," Calhoun calls them -- helped ensure actors delivering simultaneous lines in ASL and spoken English stayed synched. They also made sure that the ASL used in the musical reflected the colloquialisms and dialects of Twain's day. And while that might be something that only those fluent in ASL would pick up on, Calhoun for one says it adds a layer of meaning and affects the character in a way that hearing audiences can sense, even if they can't articulate it.

"A lot of the impact of this show happens subliminally," he says.

Take the premise of "Big River," which draws from Twain's famous and controversial tale of a wayward white boy who floats down the Mississippi on a raft with a runaway slave, growing up along the way.

In this particular version of "Big River," Huck Finn is played by a deaf actor. Jim is played by a hearing actor. With this casting, "Huck's increasing empathy with Jim, a man he once regarded as only a white man's property, takes on new resonance," writes Brantley of The New York Times.

This parallel is never directly addressed in the musical. Deafness is never mentioned. Which, as Calhoun notes, "speaks louder than anything we could have done."

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"River's" twain message transcendent

By John Moore Denver Post Theater Critic
May 13, 2005

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Deaf performers take center stage in 'Big River'

By Lisa Bornstein, Rocky Mountain News
May 10, 2005

Ty Giordano made a mighty noise on Broadway, without saying a word.

The 2003 revival of Big River, Roger Miller's Huckleberry Finn musical, wowed audiences and won two Tony Awards with an approach to musical theater that, while novel to most hearing audiences, was almost obvious to the deaf.

Onstage, Giordano and the rest of the cast performed their roles in American Sign Language, as the songs were sung and words were spoken by performers on the side. It put the deaf performance front and center, rather than the halfway measures most deaf audiences spend their lives watching.

Giordano plays Huck Finn, the breakthrough role in an acting career he had never planned. A deaf actor, he spoke to the News via e-mail.

"I got involved in acting completely by accident, wishing my friend good luck at her audition when the director came out and asked me if I wanted to try out. Turns out, he needed more men for his group, and my schedule for the next few hours was blank," he writes.

At the time, Giordano, a recent graduate of Gallaudet University, was trying to break into a job with non-governmental organizations in Washington.

"I was very political-minded, leaning in the way of environmentalism, progressive policies, and basically, trying to save the world from itself," he writes. "Who knew I'd be doing this?"

Soon, though, he'd been cast in the prestigious Arena Stage's production of The Miracle Worker. He applied to the summer training program at Deaf West Theatre, the Los Angeles group that initially staged Big River in 2001.

"And my appreciation for the art form just went through the roof," he writes. "I'm grateful for Deaf West providing actors like me this opportunity."

At the end of the summer training program, Giordano auditioned for Big River - and won the lead.

In the musical, the actor playing Mark Twain lends his voice to Huck, "which is clever in so many ways," Giordano writes.

"I use sign in the same way that a stage actor would use voice - you must elevate, project, and express the language clearly," he writes. "It doesn't matter what language you're using, the rules are all the same - most importantly, to get your message across clearly."

While Giordano may not open his voice and sing, the performance is musical for both deaf and hearing actors.

"I've always been musical since I was a kid - playing 'guitar' on tennis rackets, making rackets with pots and pans, and signing out loud, much to the chagrin of my hearing neighbors," he writes.

"Rhythm expresses itself in everyone differently. Most people think of rhythm as something on the outside that you take in, which is true. But what is also true is that you find that it's a matter of who's the master. Is music your master, or are you the master of music? . . . Anyway, in the case of a musical like this, because the music is set, every performer, regardless of whether they're deaf or hearing, has to follow it, and if they can, they play within those bounds."

Not only are there few professional opportunities for deaf actors, but there aren't too many artistically satisfying opportunities for deaf audiences. Signed and shadowed performances don't quite equal a full theatrical experience, Giordano says.

"I never really went to the theater as a kid," he writes. "My first true theatrical experience was when I took a college course in Shakespearean Lit, and watched The Tempest at the Washington Shakespeare Company. I was blown away when I connected the text with what was happening onstage."

But when the text is unfamiliar, Giordano has to undertake extra work as an audience member.

"Nowadays, when I go to the theater, I usually have to request and read a script before (sometimes during) I see the show, otherwise, I'm limited to commenting on the scenery or movement. And interpreted shows are nice, but the interpreters are often placed to the side, and you miss the action onstage watching the interpreters (which is not a bad thing when the show is bad).

"While these are fairly effective adaptive strategies, they are not the best ways to go about watching theater, I think, so it makes me more appreciative of shows like Big River where sign language takes center stage instead of playing on the sidelines."

Giordano's burgeoning acting career has taken him not only to Broadway but now to the big screen, playing Ashton Kutcher's brother in the current film A Lot Like Love.

"I'm excited about embarking down the path of film, and have learned so much, and want to do more," he writes.

"However, you never get rid of that love for the stage - almost every actor who has started on the stage has wanted to return there. There's just something about giving a live performance that moves the spirit in you."

See the music

A new technology for hearing-impaired audiences is being introduced during performances of Big River. The I-Caption system features a hand-held card that displays text and lyrics during a show, coordinated with sound and lighting cues so that it flows with the movement of an individual performance.

Patrons can pick up the units free from a booth in the Buell lobby during performances of Big River.

Lisa Bornstein is the theater critic. bornsteinl@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5101

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Deaf but not silent
A new theatrical language fords "Big River" revival

By John Moore
Denver Post Theater Critic

Tell Ed Waterstreet there is something he can't do, and he'll hear nothing of it. If he could, he would shout his denial from center stage.

Waterstreet, who has been deaf since birth, is a man who gets things done.

He started the DeafWest Theatre in 1990 with one chair, one desk, one typewriter and a donated office space. The theater? That would come later. His goal was to enrich the cultural lives of the 1.2 million deaf people in the greater Los Angeles area.

But he underestimated his potential audience.

Deaf West has mounted 35 plays that bring mainstream culture to the deaf community while giving hearing audiences a window into the world of the deaf. In doing so, he unexpectedly created a new theatrical language, one in which deaf and hearing actors collaborate to play single roles together. Sign language and the spoken word are interwoven into the storytelling as naturally as music and dance work together to create choreography.

When Deaf West's revival of "Big River" landed on Broadway in 2003, the Tony Awards had to create a category to adequately honor the achievement. Next month, Deaf West will be among the finalists for the Tonys' prestigious best regional theater award.

So how does this work?
"Big River" is a musical adaptation of Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." It employs deaf, hard-of-hearing and hearing actors performing roles together in a synchronized ballet of speaking, signing, gesture, song and dance. For example, one hearing actor plays Jim, speaking the part and using American Sign Language. But two actors simultaneously bring Huckleberry Finn to life. Broadway star Tyrone Giordano, a deaf actor, plays Huck using sign language, while Daniel Jenkins plays both the narrator (Twain) and the voice of Huck. Spoken English and sign language are interwoven with music, dance and storytelling techniques from both hearing and deaf cultures to form a "third language," creating a groundbreaking theater experience.

Deaf-audience services
Deaf audiences can follow the onstage story with I-Caption, a hand-held wireless unit that displays dialogue and lyrics in text in real time, from any seat in the house. The text is automated and synchronized with sound and lighting cues to accommodate pacing variations from performance to performance. A polarized screen keeps nearby patrons from being distracted by light or moving text. The unit is about the size of an index card. The service, developed by Sound Associates Inc., is free and available in the theater lobby. the finalists for the Tonys' prestigious best regional theater award.

"Big River," which launches the Denver Center Attractions' 2005 season Tuesday at the Buell Theatre, now has two simultaneous companies, one based in Washington, D.C., and the touring company, which in 2004 performed for a month in Japan.

"It's all beyond my wildest expectations," Waterstreet, the first deaf person ever to become an artistic director of a major regional theater, said through a sign-language interpreter on a video phone call from Washington, D.C. "I never would have dreamed I would be considered for a Tony. Never. Now that it's happening, I'm on cloud nine. I have white hair, but you should see it now. It's even whiter!"

"Big River" is Roger Miller's 1985 musical based on Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." The Denver cast includes Broadway "Big River" stars Daniel Jenkins and Tyrone Giordano. The director is Jeff Calhoun, whose Denver-born "Brooklyn The Musical" is now in its seventh month on Broadway.

As soon as people hear this is "the deaf show," a common presumption is that someone simply performs sign language from the side of the stage, or perhaps follows actors around on the stage.

"Big River" casts a much longer fishing line.

"I understand the confusion, but it's completely different," said Waterstreet, who has been married to actor Linda Bove, best known as "Sesame Street's" Linda the Librarian, for 34 years.

"The challenge for us was to see if sign language and speech could become one," he said. "The actor playing Mark Twain is a wonderful example. Twain is our narrator, but he also plays the voice of Huck. So what you see is Huck doing his own sign language, while another actor playing Huck's voice sings aloud.

"When you think about how Mark Twain truly is the voice of Huck - that Huck is a character (created through) Twain's own perception - I think the combination of those two together on a stage just works beautifully."

DeafWest began as an opportunity for deaf actors to perform in a tiny, 60-seat space. Los Angeles had nothing like it, but after two years, Waterstreet was stunned to find that 95 percent of his audiences were hearing. When he moved into a 99-seat space in North Hollywood, complete with an infrared system that piped dialogue to hearing audiences through a headset, hearing attendance further boomed. But Waterstreet wondered how he might better connect with his target audience - the deaf.

"I thought, 'Well I'm going to have to change my thinking on this,"' he said. "I decided we were going to have to take more of a bicultural approach, with hearing and deaf actors coming together."

With his production of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," Waterstreet put hearing actors onstage alongside deaf actors for the first time. His silent plays became, at least in part, talkies. That allowed him to play with the theatrical form, eventually leading to gigantic successes such as "Oliver," which was transferred to L.A.'s most prestigious theater, the Mark Taper Forum, and the Broadway-bound "Big River."

But Waterstreet is most proud that he has built up his deaf audience base to about 25 percent.

"The audience members are more balanced now, deaf and hearing, and they laugh and enjoy the performance together, which is really what I hoped would happen all along," said Waterstreet, who does not intentionally choose plays involving deaf issues. Rather, he said he chooses plays that expose conflicts between the deaf and hearing worlds.

"Part of the reason I picked 'Big River' is that the central theme in the performance is about the world being apart," Waterstreet said. "It's about black versus white. It's about cultural differences. That fits with the bicultural goals of DeafWest beautifully: it's about hearing and deaf coming together. It's about sign language coming together with the rest of the culture.

"Mostly it's about all of us coming together and sharing the experience 'Big River' embodies."

Waterstreet wants DeafWest to be considered mainstream. With the financial and critical success of "Big River," he has found less and less of a platitudinous (if well-meaning) response to his work.

"Twenty years ago, if someone from the hearing community said to me, 'Oh, what a good little performance,' I would have taken it in that tone," Waterstreet said. "The stereotyping that happens in the deaf community historically is that a deaf person is to be looked down upon and sort of pitied, not part of the mainstream.

"But I don't see it that much anymore," he said. "Now what we are doing has been elevated to more of an artistic form for a lot of people. Once the curtain opens, the audience no longer thinks of it as a deaf thing. They just see the language. Deaf or hearing is really unimportant at that point. It's not about deafness, it's about making a statement and finding the common ground for everyone."

Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-820-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.

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KDHX Theatre Review - Big River

Sheila Schultz

I fell in love with theatre all over again. Like a first kiss, great theatre arouses our passions. It teases and tantalizes. It grabs hold of our heart, mind and soul. The experience is so powerful, we wonder if we can survive it and at the same time, pray it will never end. That is how I felt watching the Deaf West Theatre's production of Big River, a musical adaptation of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

After many decades, I was able to recapture the heady experience of viewing my first musical as a child. The theatre seemed magical then. Director and choreographer Jeff Calhoun conjures the same kind of magic in Big River.

The book by William Hauptman is adapted from Twain's classic, drawing heavily from the original text. The story follows Huck's adventures on a raft floating down the Mississippi with a runaway slave named Jim.

Prior to that journey, Huck had fallen under the care of Widow Douglas and her spinster sister, Miss Watson, who, in his words, "took me for their son and allowed they would civilize me." But, Huck rebels against the religiosity of Miss Watson and the fetters of civilized society.

He runs off to Jackson's Island where he finds Jim fleeing from slavery. Their plan is to float down the Mississippi together to Cairo and journey from there to the one of the free states. For Jim, the stakes are considerable and at a time when slavery is still legal, Huck assumes personal risk by assisting in the escape. Facing numerous challenges and ethical dilemmas, Huck and Jim each discovers that in order to gain independence, they must become interdependent.

The award-winning score by songwriter, Roger Miller, includes gospel, blue grass, and country/western music with lyrics that easily blend into the dialogue. The music is perfect for this story. The various songs possess the requisite simplicity and twang. Especially stirring is the rich baritone voice of David Aron Damane as Jim, the runaway slave.

This is an ideal show for children, though it's not a simplistic story. Significant issues and questions are raised, but there is a great deal of humor as well, especially surrounding Huck, brilliantly portrayed by Garrett Matthew Zuercher.

In addition to spoken English, American Sign Language is incorporated into the characters' gestures with artistry. It's a pleasure to behold. The cast includes an assortment of gifted actors, some of whom are deaf or partially deaf and others with normal hearing. The synergy of their stylized interaction electrifies the performance and enthralled this viewer.

Big River runs through April 24th [2005] at the Fox Theatre located at 527 North Grand Blvd. For more information call 314-534-1111.