Messages and Take Two. Australian Theatre of the Deaf, directed by Tony Strachan, at Canberra Grammar School August 21-23 7pm
AToD has been a professional company for 25 years, performing for the general public as well as the deaf community, providing teaching workshops for children and adults, and taking theatre-in-education into schools.
Messages is a series of humorous vignettes about communication designed for primary schools, while Take Two, for secondary schools, is the story of a Chinese young man backpacking around Australia and a practical young Australian country woman who meet at university. Despite the differences in their cultures and personalities, a bond is formed and romance blossoms, not because they are both deaf but because they learn to appreciate difference.
I found good fun in the Messages cameos of situations like communicating on the Titanic just before the iceberg, body language between a girl (Romy Bartz) and two boys (Michael Ng and Mathew Glenday) on the beach in Victorian England, and how the first astronaut on the moon meets a friendly bug-eyed monster and tries to tell his story back home.
The message in Take Two was plain enough but I thought the storyline was too simplistic for the theme to have much effect on modern young people. When I think back to mime artists like Marcel Marceau and the erstwhile Canadian Mime Theatre, Take Two seems rather naive and old-fashioned in concept compared to work I saw maybe 20 years ago. The characters were modern enough - the country girl likes building engines and is studying Vet Science, while the Chinese boy sees an opportunity in going abroad to study Architecture, but the situations (especially the stereotyped Chinese restaurant owner, a character I found offensive rather than funny) showed too little subtlety.
Other shows in the offing include Interpretation (at the Performance Space in Sydney in November), an adult study of the layers of meaning for deaf and hearing people, where hearing actors play interpreters, deaf actors interpret, and professional interpreters sign and interpret in speech for the audience. Comedy and ironic misunderstandings result in what should be a fascinating entertainment.
Next year there will be a cabaret which will tour nationally, titled Dislabelled (not disabled), and a deaf musical Friction.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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