Pictures in the Air

The dramatic program--ranging from Kabuki plays to slapstick to poetry reading--is broad enough to challenge the resources of any normal theatrical troupe. Yet none of the principal actors of the National Theater of the Deaf utters a word, and only one of them can hear. No matter; the pacing and performance are unmistakably professional, and the critical notices are in the rave category. Currently on a six-week tour of 18 Northeastern cities, the company opened at Manhattan's Hunter College Playhouse last week to tumultuous applause.

The theatrical language of the National Theater is the familiar signing of the deaf, abetted by skilled pantomime. To help audiences follow the action, two members of the company with normal hearing speak the lines--sometimes from the sidelines, sometimes onstage--synchronizing their words with the actors' gestures.

Visual Haiku. Signing can be awkward and slow-paced in plays that depend heavily on dialogue, such as Saroyan's The Man with the Heart in the Highlands, which leads off the current show. But the medium is perfectly suited to such stylized theatrical forms as the Kabuki play The Tale of Kasane, which the group performs with the flow and precision of fine ballet. The company's most striking performances are its "recitations" of poetry. Through such simple gestures as twisting her fingers over her heart to show grief, stunning Audree Norton manages to evoke all the romantic passion contained in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's How Do I Love Thee? In a short Chinese poem, Bernard Bragg, who studied under Marcel Marceau, creates visual haiku with the line "a wave carries the moon away and the tidal water comes with its freight of stars," by forming a crescent with his upraised hand, then slowly lowering it over an undulating outstretched palm. The signing of Joe Velez makes more hilarious sense out of Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky than the words ever do when spoken.

Living Proof. Now six months old, the Theater of the Deaf was founded by David Hays of the Eugene O'Neill Memorial Theater Foundation, Psychologist Edna Levine and Administrator Mary Switzer of the Rehabilitation Services Administration, backed by a $331,000 grant from the Federal Government. Although only one of the 14 actors has had any conventional theatrical experience, the company has had directorial help from such top Broadway professionals as Arthur Penn and Joe Layton. Justifiably proud of their mimetic skills, the actors are living proof, on stage at least, that a word in the hand may sometimes be worth two in the mouth. Says Managing Director Hays: "They paint pictures in the air, and it is language."

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