Deaf and hearing performers team up for 'Spring Awakening,' new Skylight musical

Deaf and hearing actors and creators are collaborating to stage a truly bilingual production of the musical "Spring Awakening" at Skylight Music Theatre March 1-17.

Skylight promises that all performances "will be interpreted and accessible for both deaf and hearing audiences."

Deaf actor, dancer and director Alexandria Wailes is co-directing the production with Skylight artistic director Michael Unger. Cast members include deaf actors Erin Rosenfeld and Joseph Saraceni in leading roles; Emma Knott and Edie Flores will serve as their singing voices.

While the Skylight show is partly inspired by Deaf West Theatre's 2015 Broadway production, Unger said that Skylight is creating its own version. Wailes performed in the Deaf West Theatre show and was associate choreographer of its Broadway run.

Composer Duncan Sheik and writer-lyricist Steven Sater adapted "Spring Awakening" from an 1891 play by German writer Frank Wedekind. While set in that late 19th-century time period, the story's themes of adolescent sexuality, parental oppression and miscommunication are timeless.

Wedekind had a knack for provocative stories. He also wrote the plays about a half-wild young woman that were adapted into the Louise Brooks film "Pandora's Box" (1929), the Alban Berg opera "Lulu" (1937) and the Lou Reed and Metallica concept album "Lulu" (2011).

Without changing the "Spring Awakening" script, the Skylight creative team is finding ways to reflect the texture of deaf experience, including moments of "language deprivation" for some of the characters, Wailes said through interpreter Jo Welch.

As she and Unger work with the cast, Wailes also looks hard at making sure the deaf audience can follow each moment on stage. While some hearing cast members are proficient in American Sign Language, Unger said he has learned from working with Wailes that having a hearing actor speak and sign simultaneously is not necessarily the best way for a deaf person to receive information. Spoken English and ASL have different grammatical structures and syntaxes, he pointed out.

"Signing is so expressive," Wailes said, adding that information is communicated by the face and body. Speaking and signing simultaneously tends to compromise one side — usually, the signing if it is a hearing person doing both, she noted.

So the directors are looking at each moment of communication. As an example, Unger brought up a scene between young lovers Melchoir (played by hearing actor Caden Marshall) and Wendla (deaf actor Erin Rosenfeld). Marshall is a fluent signer and professional interpreter. Initially, Marshall was both speaking and signing his words to Wendla. But, Unger said, there would be no reason for Melchoir to speak to Wendla as he signed to her. So he assigned Melchoir's spoken words in that scene to another actor, who speaks them so the hearing audience can hear them.

This production has two directors of artistic sign language, Michelle Mary Schaefer and cast member Mayra Castrejon. In a poetic musical like this, Wailes said, the "signs also inform the choreography." The artistic sign language directors function in part as dramaturgs, considering what is happening at the time of the play, the age of the characters and other factors that affect them. Recognizing that "Spring Awakening" is set in Germany, this production also has a light sprinkling of German Sign Language, Wailes said.

Like English, American Sign Language changes over time and generations develop their own vocabulary. Wailes said she recently spotted some Gen Z cast members signing a word unknown to her, which she then asked about.

That small experience fits with Wailes' conception of the whole production.

"Life is messy. Right?," she said. "How do we connect? How do we engage? There's no one way to do it.

"What we're doing is reminding people and reminding ourselves, and of course, the audience that there is a way of engagement. When we look at communication, at the end of the day, we just crave connection … how do we connect, even if we're coming together with different languages."

If you go

Skylight Music Theatre performs "Spring Awakening" March 1-17 at the Broadway Theatre Center, 158 N. Broadway. For tickets, visit skylightmusictheatre.org or call (414) 291-7800. Skylight recommends this production for people 14 and older; it has adult themes and language, sexual content and brief nudity.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Deaf, hearing actors team up for Skylight's 'Spring Awakening'