No abstract
This article is drawn from field observations of deaf-led Deafinitely Theatre as they produced The DREAM for Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London. Focusing on a goal of the company to ‘put BSL [British Sign Language] centre stage’, I examine the ways that different languages and modes (including signs, speech, gestures, text, music) co-existed in the same space in spontaneous, unexpected, and hybridised ways. I suggest that the carefully chosen arrangements of the languages employed in the production exerted particular messages that went beyond BSL translations of Shakespeare, establishing clear articulations of the artists’ understandings of the positions that signed and spoken languages hold in day-to-day British life. The aim of this article is to disentangle the translingual, multimodal imperatives born within ‘deaf-led’ theatre, where deaf people and sign language are maintained as key grounding forces. Of interest is both language choices utilised in praxis, as well as how these decisions prompted debates between signers and non-signers, triggering reconsideration of preconceived notions of what ‘being deaf’ means. In re-presenting for an audience different people’s translingual and multimodal resources and experiences, I argue that these artists intentionally harnessed a form of conscious translanguaging to advance both practical and political outcomes.
English speech and hearing are perceived by many in the UK population as the key ways that people listen, learn, and know. This often‐invisible assumption quietly colors almost every element of social interaction—within schooling, health, governance, social care, or in art and entertainment. This article unpacks the ways that a particular kind of sensorial bias can become embedded in knowledge‐making practices to the exclusion of other possibilities. Through ethnographic appraisal of signed versions of songs—“song‐signing”—one can witness how language and listening rigidities are built into the architecture of British social behaviors and public systems. I argue that attending to rigid perceptions concerning ways of listening as regards expectations of song experiences, and more broadly, presents a means for exposing invisible epistemic bias and injustice against deaf people. Throughout this text, readers are asked to alter expectations concerning sensory perception and definitions of listening. What this article ultimately explains is why what may seem to nonsigners to be an anodyne creative act of “song interpretation” in fact feeds into a political landscape that is divisive along sensorial and therefore epistemic and ontological lines.
The German cinematographer Theodor Sparkuhl worked at Elstree from 1929 to 1930. Accounts of this period in Britain have often emphasised the detrimental effects of the arrival of the sound film in 1928, how it sounded the death knell of film as an international medium and how the film industry struggled to adapt (economically, technically, aesthetically). However, this article shows that the international dimension of the film industry did not disappear with the coming of sound and British International Pictures (BIP) was an exception to what Robert Murphy has called the ‘catalogue of failure’ during this turbulent period in British film history. Sparkuhl indisputably contributed to this achievement, working as he did on eight feature films in just two years from around July 1928 to April 1930, as well as directing several BIP shorts. Sparkuhl's career embodies the international nature of the film industry in the 1920s and 1930s. In Germany he moved within very different production contexts, from newsreels to Ufa and the Großfilme; in Britain from big-budget films aimed at the international market to low-scale inexpensive films at BIP. As what Thomas Elsaesser has called an ‘international adventurer’, Sparkuhl cannot be contained within any single national cinema history. The ease with which he slipped in and out of different production contexts demonstrates not just his ability to adapt but also the fluidity between the different national industries during this period. In this transitional phase in Britain, Sparkuhl worked on silent, part sound and wholly sound films, on films aimed at both the international and the indigenous market, and in genres such as the musical, the war film and comedy. The example of Sparkuhl shows that German cameramen were employed not only for their aesthetic prowess but also for their efficiency and adaptability.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.