Joshua Jackson and Lauren Ridloff Are Showing Broadway How to Really Talk—and Sign
Hilary Weaver
Updated
1 / 13
Joshua Jackson and Lauren Ridloff Are Showing Broadway How to Really Talk—and Sign
The stars of Children of a Lesser God talk about reviving the play in an era when everyone needs to listen a little more.
“We didn’t think, when we started this idea, that the world was going to lose its mind,” said Joshua Jackson. Starring in the Broadway revival of Children of a Lesser God, which opened at Studio 54 Wednesday night, Jackson pointed out that the play’s themes—of communication and understanding—are “universal, [they] exist in all time. And then, you know, America just lost its mind in the in-between time.”
Jackson, who became a star “an ocean of time” ago (a.k.a. the late 90s) on Dawson’s Creek, makes his Broadway debut in the role of James, a teacher at a school for the deaf who begins a relationship with a deaf woman (played by Lauren Ridloff). He began learning American Sign Language in preparation for the role last summer, a process he said was like being stripped down to childhood and having to relearn basic skills.
“It’s just reminded me of the importance of humility . . . it’s been very humbling for me to come inside a world that I had no access to and wasn’t aware of, I didn’t try to become aware of,” he said. “The grace has been working with somebody, a lot of somebodies, who have made this opportunity possible for me, who have opened the door.”
Ridloff—who had been hired as an A.S.L. consultant to director Kenny Leon before she was cast in the role that won a best-actress Oscar for Marlee Matlin in the 1986 film adaptation—said Jackson was nearly impossible to understand when read-throughs began. He had just started learning how to sign and made a video for Ridloff to say hello and see if she understood him. She didn’t know how to tell him that she had no idea what he was saying.
But, she said, he got better. Ridloff, who has a speaking scene in the play, also leaned on Jackson to confront her fears.
“He is truly interested in acquiring the language and using it,” she said. “He puts a lot of trust in me. I mean, we both had challenges in this play: Josh learning sign language, and me using my voice again. It had been a long time since I’d done that. I was terrified and was worried that people were going to judge me and that I would be so embarrassed. He put trust in me, and I was able to match and trust him back.”
Ridloff said that, as a deaf person, she is often confronted with fear on people’s faces when they don’t know how to speak to her. Onstage that barrier is not a problem with Jackson, who communicates everything Ridloff signs to the audience by repeating it back or, at times, showing his reaction through sheer body language.
Even during a photo shoot at Studio 54, the two never lost eye contact. Jackson attributed this connection to Ridloff’s “intent eyes,” and said he feels like there is a rope between the two of them at all times. Onstage it’s easy to see that rope pulling back and forth between them; Jackson’s body language even telegraphs audience response, from snores to laughs to—God forbid—a cell phone going off.
“For me, there’s a black void, and it’s fine because I get all of that information through Josh,” Ridloff said. “I can see some days he might be pausing a little bit longer and I think, ‘Oh, well there’s an audience response happening.’ Or there are other times when he might pick up the pace a little bit. It’s like we have this dance that we share, and he’s a great leading man.”
Celebrities-Turned-Activists Throughout the Years
Audrey Hepburn
In 1989, Hepburn—who survived World War II in the Netherlands as a child—was appointed as an ambassador to UNICEF, and, as the organization mentions on its Web site, she made up to 15 speeches a day for the group on behalf of children in need around the world. In a 1988 Global News interview, Hepburn, who lived in Switzerland and out of the public eye, said that she didn’t have to think hard to take on this role to be an advocate for children. “I’m moving around the world once again, but I’m happy to do it, because for children, I’d go to the moon.”
By Peter Charlesworth/LightRocket/Getty Images.
Jane Fonda
Fonda was a vocal anti-war activist during the Vietnam War, sparking controversy with her infamous “Hanoi Jane” photograph. Since then, Fonda has been known for supporting and championing dozens of causes, including the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Power & Potential, for which she raised money at her big 80th birthday bash this past December. “If it didn’t make a difference for famous people to speak out, the right wing wouldn’t object. We are like repeaters,” she told Vanity Fair then. “Repeaters are the towers that you see at the top of mountains that pick up signals from the valley and carry them over the mountains to a broader audience. And that’s what celebrities do, if we’re doing our job right. We’re picking up the voices of people who can’t be heard and broadcasting their story.”
From Bettmann/Getty Images.
Harry Belafonte
The actor and singer, and friend of both Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, has spoken up for civil rights and social causes for over 50 years. He helped organize the march at Selma in 1965, and even advised the organizers of the 2017 Women’s March. Now at the age of 91, he is encouraging Americans to keep their chins up in the Trump era. “I guess the thing that I most want to get to is that the best of us is still in front of us; the worst of us we’re experiencing,” he said at the Robert F. Kennedy Ripple of Hope Awards last December.
From Bettmann/Getty Images.
Elizabeth Taylor
When the Reagan administration did its best to ignore the AIDS crisis of the early 1980s, Taylor faced it. As Vanity Fair wrote in 2015, she reportedly ran an underground pharmaceuticals ring for AIDS medication out of her Bel Air mansion. “She was saving lives,” her friend Kathy Ireland said of the efforts. In 1991, she founded the Elizabeth Taylor Aids Foundation (E.T.A.F.) to provide grants to organizations that help those living with and affected by HIV and AIDS. Taylor was also a leading voice behind AmfAR, the foundation for AIDS research, and is still remembered as an advocate for the cause.
By Jeffrey Markowitz/Sygma/Getty Images.
Bono
In 2016, Bono made Fortune’s list of “World’s Greatest Leaders”—and it wasn’t the first time. He founded the (RED) project with Bobby Shriver in 2006, which was a continuation of his work on DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa), to help raise awareness of AIDS and AIDS relief in Africa.
By Don Arnold/Getty Images.
Angelina Jolie
Since 2001, Jolie has worked with people in need in more than 30 countries, going on missions on behalf of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and even combining her advocacy with her filmmaking, as with her 2017 film, First They Killed My Father. Last year, she spoke in Geneva at the Sergio Vieira de Mello Foundation, where she left audience members with the message to “keep working determinedly and patiently” for change.
By Tom Stoddart/Getty Images.
Leonardo DiCaprio
DiCaprio has long been one of the famous environmentalists in Hollywood. He has the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, which he founded in 1998 and which focuses on a variety of climate and indigenous-rights issues. The Academy Award winner has even brought his Titanic pals into the environmental-activist mix. Both Kate Winslet and Billy Zane attended the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation’s annual auction in St. Tropez, France, in 2017. “Gang’s back together. Now we’re saving icebergs. Go figure . . .” Zane wrote.
From Getty Images.
Ashley Judd
Judd has been an ambassador for Population Services International (P.S.I.), which works on encouraging healthy behavior and the affordability of health products across the globe. Over the years, she has visited several areas that P.S.I. targets, including Thailand, Cambodia, and South Africa. Judd has elevated her voice as a political activist in recent years, both at the 2017 Women’s March and as part of the #MeToo movement, having spoken up about her alleged abuse at the hands of Harvey Weinstein. She also considered challengingMitch McConnell for his Senate seat in Kentucky in 2013, which really opens up a whole world of “what if?”
By SAJJAD HUSSAIN/AFP/Getty Images.
America Ferrera
When she helped open the Women’s March last January, Ferrera spoke about the importance of the resistance to the Trump administration. “We are gathered here and across the country and around the world today to say, ‘Mr. Trump, we refuse. We reject the demonization of our Muslim brothers and sisters,’” she said. Her organization, Harness, which she helped start after the 2016 election, helps bring together grassroots leaders in various communities to continue to make change and have important conversations about social issues in this political era.
By Theo Wargo/Getty Images.
Mark Ruffalo
In 2011, Ruffalo founded Water Defense, an organization that works to ban hydraulic fracturing in the state of New York. “Fracking is an extreme form of oil and gas extraction that leads to water contamination, air pollution, earthquakes, illness, exacerbates climate change, and turns communities upside down,” he wrote on the blog EcoWatch in 2016.
By D Dipasupil/Getty Images.
Ellen Page
After Page came out as gay in 2014, she became an active and vocal advocate for the L.G.B.T.Q. community, through Vice’s Gaycation series, as well as a loud voice for immigrants. At LAX last year, she posted videos during a protest of President Trump’s travel ban and was right up in the thick of things. “I am young, yes, but what I have learned is that love, the beauty of it, the joy of it, and yes, even the pain of it, is the most incredible gift to give and to receive as a human being,” she said during her coming-out speech. “And we deserve to experience love fully, equally, without shame and without compromise.”
By Kristina Bumphrey/StarPix/REX/Shutterstock.
George and Amal Clooney
The Clooney Foundation for Justice has supported a variety of causes in the past year, including bestowing a grant to the Southern Poverty Law Center following violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, last summer. The Clooneys most recently joined the March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C., and donated half a million dollars to the cause.
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