“Big River”

At the time when I purchased the tickets for the Broadway production of “Big River”, a production of The Deaf West Theatre, I did not know what to expect. I questioned how they were going to express the sign language as well as singing and voice all in one. I wondered if there was going to be interpreters or was the whole story going to be told in sign language.

When I first arrived and walked up to the crowd of people in line I realized that only a few people out of at least a hundred people were communicating in sign language. I found that a little surprising due to the fact that the performance was put on by a lot of deaf performers; therefore, I assumed that the majority of the people in attendance would be from within the deaf community. But, to surprise my assumption had been wrong…completely wrong.

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After getting seated and comfortable I began looking around at the different people in attendance for this performance.  From where I was sitting I could only see about five different groups of people signing. The majority of the people I could see were the deaf volunteers working for the theatre. The people all around us were all communicating with speech, I doubted that any of them were deaf. I found it funny because once the show started most of the people that were communicating in voice had changed there communication form to sign language. I had figured out that ...

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