CHRISTOPHER CORRIGAN (right) and Michael McCelroy perform as Huck Finn and Jim in Deaf West Theatre's "Big River." (Photo Courtesy Ford's Theatre)

For centuries theatre has been defined by its spoken words, seminal speeches and soliloquies like Hamlet's musing, “To be or not to be,” or Willy Loman's declaring, “A man is not an orange. You can’t eat the fruit and throw the peel away.”

Such words have moved people, invoked anger, smiles, tears, and a new recognition of the human condition. But for Ed Waterstreet, these words were never heard, lost on ears that were deaf since birth.

Growing up in a family that frequented the theater often, and the only deaf person in his family, he saw how much his family enjoyed the performances, especially musicals, but was never able to appreciate them in the same way.

This sense of missing something stayed with Waterstreet as he attended Gallaudet University , the Washington , D.C. school for the deaf, where he took part in the theater program, acting in plays, signing his lines as other hearing students would read the lines from the side of the stage.

Still, he felt that the experience didn’t match up with that available to a hearing audience.

After graduating from Gallaudet, Waterstreet worked with the National Theatre of the Deaf, before moving to Los Angeles in 1991. There he discovered a large, vibrant deaf community without access to theater tailored to its specific needs.

Even when working with the National Theatre of the Deaf, Waterstreet felt a barrier existed between the deaf and hearing audience members. When he started his own theater company with his wife Linda Bove, reducing the separation between the deaf and the hearing was a top priority.

The company he founded in 1991, Deaf West Theatre, has worked hard to overcome that gap and to create innovative ways of presenting theater for the deaf.

After working for years on dramas, developing the technique to blend American Sign Language (ASL) with the spoken word, the company took on a new challenge, producing a musical.

Talking through an interpreter by phone to the News-Press, Bove said that many people's initial reaction to the idea of doing a musical was one of disbelief. She said that many couldn’t imagine how actors that couldn’t hear would be able to put on a production that revolved around music. Still, with the help of director Jeff Calhoun the company put on an original adaptation of Oliver, following with a production of Big River, the story of Huckleberry Finn, now part of a national tour and presently being staged at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C.

Instead of being a hindrance to the performance, bringing together ASL and the spoken word creates new opportunities along with some unique challenges.

Bill O’Brien, the managing director and the actor portraying Mark Twain, told the News-Press that the performance gains from performing to both hearing and deaf audiences. “Something happens that can’t happen without a full participation of both cultures,” he said.

As Mark Twain, O’Brien serves as the speaking voice for the character of Huckleberry Finn, who is portrayed in person by deaf actor Christopher Corrigan. While Corrigan acts the part of Huckleberry Finn, O’Brien speaks the words as the character of Mark Twain, standing on the outside of the scene.

While the format has the potential to be problematic, through intense coordination and synchronization, O’Brien and Corrigan are able to make it seem like the words originate with Finn, adding the unique chance to create a single character with two actors. “The acting is happening somewhere in between them,” O’Brien said.

But that also means that the two actors have to work constantly to remain unified throughout the run of the play. “He grows from one moment to the next, and I have to be completely in step,” he said.

The format works particularly well in Big River because the play features Mark Twain as the narrator in the beginning, so the use of him as Finn’s voice seems a natural outgrowth of the story.

“It’s part ventriloquism, part hanging one’s hat on a very carefully constructed translation,” he said.

Creating that translation is one of the most difficult aspects of creating the performance, and Bove’s favorite part of the process.

She said that most people don’t realize that ASL is a language of its own, with unique vocabulary and syntax, not just a verbatim translation of spoken English. Therefore, when translating any play into ASL, one isn’t simply replicating words, but actually fitting a hand-signed text into the same rhythms and styles found in the original work.

With Twain’s words the challenge becomes even harder as the translation has to capture the same insightful and yet uniquely innocent wit that Twain captured like no one else.

Bove said that, like English, ASL has different levels of formality, ranging from the colloquial to the literary. In creating the language for Huckleberry Finn it was necessary to capture the lower class, streetwise characteristics of the words.

But the challenge doesn’t end there. In creating a genuinely similar experience for both the hearing and the deaf, Bove said it is just as important that the audience responds in similar ways at the same time, despite the language difference. As is the case with many foreign language movies, when the subtitles don’t follow the same rhythm of the spoken dialogue, a poorly constructed ASL translation causes deaf and hearing audience members to react at different times, ASL often placing the punch-line in the middle of a sentence different than spoken English, which usually places the punch at the end.

The final component of putting together the performance was creating the same feeling of music for those unable to hear.

Coy Middlebrook, associate director and choreographer for the show said that working with director Jeff Calhoun, the group focused on creating a musical rhythm to the blocking and choreography.

Even in silence, Middlebrook said that music can be created in movement as well as sound. He used the example of waves in the ocean or trees moving in the wind, as having a deeply musical sound even in silence.

By adding a certain rhythm and coordination to the movements and signing of the actors Calhoun and Middlebrook attempt to capture that same kind of music.

During the final scene as the play reaches its conclusion, the entire company performs a reprise of the song “Waiting for the Light to Shine.” In the final phrase of the song, as the singers sing and sign the words, the sound suddenly ceases. In silence, the signing continues, completing the piece. In that moment of silence, of mute performance, the hearing and deaf alike experience the visual music, and in that moment there is equity.