Captions for Buzzfeed’s video on DeafWest
*music starts* “Its the Bitch of Living, it’s the bitch of living, living in your head”
[Actor] Moritz Stiefel I need hardly remind you that of all our pupils you are in no position to be taking liberties I will not warn you again.
*music* God I dreamed there was an angel who could hear me through the walls (the song “Bitch of Living continues in the background”)
Daniel/Moritz I depend on a lot of cues because I cannot hear a single thing not the tiniest little sound, no beats, no music, nothing.
Spencer Liff (to the actors) nothing but your hand, just the bitch of living as someone you can’t stand. (to the camera) We have several different kinds of cues that we use in the show. The main one and the one I prefer are actor driven cues and those are derived from normal looking pedestrian movements that a person would make and that don’t draw your eye like, folding your arms, leaning forward, simply looking over at an actor, simply body shift. It’s, I think the most complicated piece and the part the audience doesn’t notice at all.
Alex Boniello/Voice of Moritz I’ve been doing this like (breath) right before I sing the lyrics so there this kind of one second delay. So I lift my head, they know one second after that to start their sign.
Spencer Liff A tiny little thing like nodding your head at the right time could really screw up a whole number
Daniel/Moritz I have someone who’s sitting with his hand on the bed and when his right hand opens and I see that, then I crumble the paper now when another person stands up. that is my cue to start signing, and I guess it sort of goes on like that.
Spencer Liff And each time Daniel takes the letter that’s a cue that he’s about to get ready. and then we have an actor take the letter the letter from him at the beginning of every one of his musical phrases.
Alex Boniello It creates a lot of really interesting moments where on one side of the stage you’ll see me singing the song with Daniel while hes singing the thing and we just create this kind of really unique experience that I’ve personally never seen on a stage before.
Dj Kurs Music is not an art form that’s typically available to a deaf community so in this production we’re not just bringing sing language to hearing people we’re bringing musicals into the deaf community as well. So to do that we have to make music accessible to a deaf audience. So one thing that we work really hard to do is bring the emotion that is in the fabric of the musical and the story into the language that we use to perform the music.
Linda Bove In the translation process you’ve got to match the rhythm the composer wrote a certain rhythm into these lines say four beats to a line how are we going to find a sign translation that matches that rhythm smoothly. Is it a strong piece of music or is it soft. That’s an important part of the translation. As a deaf person I’ve never heard music before, so I depend on the hearing members on our team. Once we understand from them how the music goes we try to find an equivalent.
Daniel/Moritz I’ve learned a lot through the process its an incredible challenge, it probably the most challenging roll I’ve ever had but it’s been fantastic if another musical was offered to me I’d take it immediately. I love music, It’s really been wonderful.
*The song And Then There Were None finishes*
[Sorry if some of you are seeing this huge post on your dash again but I want it to get into the tags, my other blog is Kitschlyn so I didn’t steal this post from myself]
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