Review by Kitty Drexel, New England Theatre Geek: The Taste of Sunrise

Inclusive and Intersectional: THE TASTE OF SUNRISE

photo by Craig Bailey/Perspective Photo

 (Boston, MA) In Susan Zeder’s The Taste of Sunrise, Tuc (Elbert Joseph) grows up poor, black and deaf in an ASL-ignorant hearing community in Ware, IL.  At the behest of the well-intentioned Dr. Graham (Donna Sorbello), Jonas Tucker (Cliff Odle) sends Tuc to a school for the deaf to learn how to speak. After years of social solitude, he finally meets kids just like him. They teach him sign; Tuc learns to communicate and to express himself. With help from friends Maizie (Amanda Collins) and Nell Hicks (Brittany Rolfs), discovers what it means to self-discover, to lose and then rebuild one’s identity.

Wheelock Theatre is no stranger to inclusivity. They routinely host performances for the hearing and visually impaired. Taste of Sunrise is told through spoken dialogue, ASL interpreters, and supertitles. Traditional actors are joined by ASL actors who sign the dialogue as the traditional actors speak. When appropriate, the supertitles are projected onto the stage above all of the action.  A delicate balance is struck as both types of actors share the stage to interpret Zeder’s play. Director’s Johnson and Lement have done an excellent job to gently conveying the great strides this production takes towards equality. This is an inclusive, intersectional production that encourages the hearing audience to learn from the performance. It warmly welcomes the members of the disabled community into the audience, whoever and however they are.

Elbert Joseph delivers a strikingly beautiful and sincere performance as Tuck. With simple movement and gesture, he was able to convey opposite ends of the emotional spectrum. He tells a spirited story with such warmth that it’s specific message instantly reaches across the divide to be universally appealing and inspiring. While the performances of the rest of the cast are excellent, this production would not be as great as it is without Joseph. It is his performance as Tuc that blends all of the separate elements into one successful production. He was a wonder to watch.

It is deeply satisfying to watch a performance that normalizes the experiences of the disabled. In a beautiful contrast, it outs the abled community’s behavior as strange and awkward when the two communities commune. In this production, when Tuc experiences hardships or trauma, it’s regularly because the hearing aren’t paying attention to Tuc’s needs. For example, Tuc is calmly hunting honey in Act 2 when a pair of hearing men see him covered in bees. They assume the worst, try to save him, but their involvement leads to Tuc’s serious injury. This episode is a brilliant metaphor for the abled community’s influence on the disabled community. Had they regarded Tuc’s behavior first or, heaven forbid, trusted Tuc’s experience, the bees wouldn’t have stung anyone.

There are dramatic moments in this production that some might find disturbing. In one scene, Tuc is bound to his hospital bed. Johnson and Lement make it abundantly clear to the audience that Joseph could break character and walk away at any moment. Rather, these scenes carry weight because of the emotional trauma Tuc experiences. Just as Tuc is casually stripped of his humanity in earlier scenes that depict him engaging the people of Ware, he is similarly but more traumatically stripped when he is bound by his hands to a bed by doctors. Tuc isn’t just restrained, his voice is silenced. The hearing community has denied Tuc agency and expression. It’s disturbing because it should be.

All of humanity shares an innate need to connect, to understand and to be understood. While The Taste of Sunrise is specifically about a deaf child learning to live in the world around him, it is also about Man’s need to self express in order to understand and be understood. It is a complicated production but Wheelock has divided its heavy material into bite sized, manageable chunks for viewers young and old to enjoy

 

Review by Jeremy Goodwin; Boston Globe: The Taste of Sunrise

An inclusive message from ‘The Taste of Sunrise’

Toward the very end of “The Taste of Sunrise,” there’s an emotionally eloquent argument between Amanda Collins’s Maizie, a teenage girl with a hard-luck life and Hollywood-inspired dreams, and Tuc, a deaf boy who has befriended her, played by Elbert Joseph, an actor who indeed happens to be deaf.

Maizie can hear just fine but was born to deaf parents, she explains, and she doesn’t want her children to be stuck between worlds like she was. With the aid of American Sign Language (ASL) and plenty of nonverbal communication, Tuc insists that she has a home in his hilltop shack.

Between these two actors and others onstage who unobtrusively interpret for them, the characters’ words are rendered in spoken English as well as ASL. In the swirl of emotion and the swift rat-a-tat-tat of their exchange, it’s almost hard to tell where one language ends and the other begins. They’re all just different voices, different parts of the same story.

It’s in moments like these that this production of Suzan Zeder’s play at Wheelock Family Theatre finds its energetic stride, depicting people in trying circumstances looking for some sort of connection in a world that seems bent on keeping them isolated. If parts of this earnest play, intended for young audiences as well as adults, feel a bit like a nutritious serving of theatrical vegetables rather than a compelling drama, it’s a modest price to pay.

Joseph didn’t start acting until he felt inspired, as a 12-year old, by a production of “Peter Pan” at the Wheelock. His performance as the centerpiece of “The Taste of Sunrise” is sandwiched between turns as the same character in “Mother Hicks” (at the Paramount last month) and “The Edge of Peace,” which opens at Central Square Theater on April 3.

Zeder’s trilogy deals with the evolving state of the deaf experience in America, as seen through the doings in and around Ware, Ill., before, during, and after the Great Depression. This trio of productions is billed as the first time the plays have been mounted in consecutive fashion in (more or less) the same city.

Joseph plays Tuc as a large-hearted simpleton prone to big emotions and forceful mood swings — here he’s terrified, there he’s bursting with anticipation. For all its lack of verbal speech, it’s a very loud performance, suggesting the sublimated frustration of a young man who is frequently silenced. Sure, I would have preferred more nuance, but the many children in the audience at a Saturday matinee seemed to follow everything just fine, and that seems closer to the point.

Co-directors Kristin Johnson and Wendy Lement weave some wonderful moments of understated poetry into a story that otherwise works in broad strokes. The depiction of children being struck by scarlet fever, and, later, of one character’s death, go far with simple props and graceful movement. When Tuc physically leans on the memory of a departed family member in the second act, the visual metaphor is easy for all to grasp, yet quietly pretty.

Costumed onstage interpreters perform much more than a purely functional purpose. They are parallel manifestations of each character’s inner life, and move within the action with grace and wit. (Line by line, the play’s text is also projected at the rear of the stage.) Long gone, Johnson and Lement seem to say, is the sole ASL interpreter relegated to a little oval in the corner of a television screen — or wearing street clothes, bathed in a footlight, at the front of the stage. (In a post-show audience talkback, Zeder said this is the most “inclusive” production of the play she has seen.)

Janie E. Howland’s set and Lisa Simpson’s costumes evoke the Depression, though there’s a notable shortage of the dirt and grime we might expect on a farm or among rural townsfolk who still mistake midwifery for witchcraft.

Though a group of young students from the Horace Mann School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Allston prove a quite welcome addition to the ensemble, the play gathers momentum when it focuses on only a few characters’ stories in the second half. Brittany Rolfs brings a bemused swagger to Nell, the midwife whose fondness for singing to the gravely ill is mistaken as malevolent spell-casting; her efforts to lay aside her own grief do much to aid the show’s climax. As a very likable Maizie, Collins is both street-wise and naive. Cliff Odle projects warm-hearted gravitas as Tuc’s father. Ethan Hermanson is a steady anchor for the audience, as the narrating voice of Tuc.

The heavy-handed nature of this play is hinted at in its title. But with this production Wheelock offers a tasteful model for mixing together the deaf and the hearing — onstage, backstage, and in the audience — to create an entertainment that is coherent to each and panders to neither.

 

Review by Al Chase: The Taste of Sunrise

Some Things Are So Beautiful They Do Not Need Sound

photo by Craig Bailey/Perspective Photo

My heart is full and my head is spinning as I sit down to capture my thoughts and emotions after having attended the opening performance of "The Taste of Sunrise - Part Two of The Ware Trilogy" by Suzan Zeder.  This play serves as a prequel to "Mother Hicks," which was presented recently by Emerson Stage.  You may want to take a moment to read my review of that play using the link below.

In this play, the playwright fills in the back story of Tuc.  We learn how he became deaf after a bout with scarlet fever that almost took his life.  We learn of his struggles to communicate with his father, the mixed blessing of his years at the deaf school in Carbondale, and his return home to be with his dying father.  Wheelock Family Theatre is hosting the second segment of this World Premiere event - the first time that all three plays in the Ware Trilogy have been produced in the same city.  All three of the plays are performed bilingually in English and American Sign Language (ASL).

If this is Tuc's play, then it is also certainly Elbert Joseph's play.  He is the deaf actor who portrays Tuc. We see his words projected on the upstage wall, we hear his words being spoken by Ethan Hermanson and Cliff Odle, who also plays Tuc's father.  And Mr. Joseph conveys his words with ASL.  As effective as these triple means of communication may be, they are almost redundant.  For the actor's expressions and movement and stage presence are so compelling and so clear that there is never any doubt what thoughts and feelings and intentions he is radiating.  This is one of the finest performances by an actor I have seen on a Boston stage.

 Suzan Zeder has created something special in this trilogy.  At one level she is recounting the history of a particular community - Ware, Illinois.  At a more significant level, she is addressing the common human hunger for a sense of belonging to a community.  Tuc is the central figure desperately striving to connect and to fit in and to communicate, but there are many other characters in the trilogy whose longing is similar.  At another level, the plays recount the bumpy history of the efforts by the deaf community to define itself despite the well-meaning machinations of educators who "know what we are doing" who forbid the use of gestures or signs because they believed it would stand in the way of learning to read lips and express ideas orally.  At the end of the day, Tuc manages to create his own community - his own family, not bound by genetic ties or geographic propinquity, but forged by a mutual desire for meaningful connection and communication across formidable barriers.

At a crucial juncture near the end of the play, Tuc and Nell Hicks are thrown together and needing to depend upon one another.  But he is deaf and communicates in signs - what Nell calls "air pictures."  And Nell is hearing and does not understand Tuc's signs.  They reach out to one another and plead "Teach me - Teach me - Teach me!"  Nell screams the message in words; Tuc screams in gestures and signs.  And they begin to teach one another. As the level of their connection and communication deepens, Tuc asks Nell, "What does the sunrise sound like?"  Nell ruminates for a moment, and then responds with the answer: "Some things are so beautiful they do not need sound."

The same things must be said of Mr. Joseph's performance.  It was so beautiful that it did not need sound.

 In leaving my seat following the standing ovation and the deaf community's enthusiastic waving of hands to indicate applause, I found myself part of an instant community.  It was the community of those of us - dozens of men and women - who needed to pause, remove our glasses and wipe the tears from our eyes so that we could see to find our way out of the theater.

Go see this show and be moved as we were.

Review by Sheila Barth: The Taste of Sunrise

Emerson Stage, Central Square Theater and Wheelock Family Theatre have joined together to present author Suzan Zeder’s The Ware Trilogy. Although I missed Emerson Stage’s production of the first play, “Mother Hicks,” in February, I can’t imagine it could  surpass Wheelock’s sensitive, exquisite, poetic performance of “The Taste of Sunrise,” part II of Zeder’s dramatic triptych. The final play, “The Edge of Peace,” will be performed at Central Square Theater in April. They’re interconnected, but each play can stand on its own merit.

For the first time, Zeder’s trilogy is being produced sequentially in one area, enabling theatergoers to progress with the tale of Tuc, a deaf man, outcast Nell Hicks, and a foundling child, Girl.

Nell Hicks (Brittany Rolfs), a mysterious woman, cures with singing spells, herbs and potions. The Ware villagers think she’s a witch, because whomever she cures ends up afflicted or dead, they say.

In “The Taste of Sunrise,” directed by Wendy Lement and also Kristin Johnson, we progress with Tuc, from 1917 to 1928, from his infancy, becoming motherless, and being stricken deaf after a bout with scarlet fever, to his becoming an outcast; his experiences at a prestigious deaf school; loss of his father; and his return home.

Although you can’t tell, several ensemble actors, (along with a co-director, a co-assistant director, and the lighting designer) are Deaf. They blend beautifully with their hearing counterparts in this large cast, including popular Boston stars Cliff Odle, as Tuc’s loving father; Sirena Abalian, and Lewis D. Wheeler, portraying various roles and voices.

Amidst award-winning designer Janie E. Howland’s sun-drenched rustic background and set, the cast ensures every word is captured, with actor-narrators, sign interpreters, and the dialogue and stage direction beamed on the backdrop.

Roger J. Moore’s realistic sound effects and Annie Wiegand’s sensitive lighting capture changes in time, place and mood. Patricia Manalo Bocknak”s stunning choreography enhances dramatic scenes.

In the opening scene, we are engulfed in silence. Actors flutter their hands like birds, ripple them like running water, and wave like the wind. A lone narrator (Ethan Hermanson) speaks from the background, while upstage, Elbert Joseph, a superlative, deaf, Caribbean-American young actor, owns the spotlight, delivering a gut-wrenching, mesmerizing performance as the main character, “Tuc”.

Tuc’s frustration at people’s intolerance, misjudgment, and inability to understand him during his various stages, are disturbing, frightening, evoking our sympathy.

Dr. Alexis Graham, (Donna Sorbello), a well-intended teacher at the School for the Deaf, convinces Tuc’s loving father to let the boy leave his peaceful, verdant surroundings, where he communes with the wind, river, birds, bees, and all forms of nature, to attend the faraway residential school.

Watching Tuc’s fear, isolation and gloom dissipate when he meets Maizie, (Amanda Collins) a teen-age cleaning girl at the school, is heartwarming. Maizie can hear, but her parents are deaf, so she says she is, too, “inside”. She and her parents work menial jobs at the school, but starstruck Maizie loves movies, mentally mingling them with reality, and her hopes for the future.

Tuc’s joy reverberates while playacting with Maizie, fellow student Roscoe (superb Deaf actor Matthew J. Schwartz), and his Deaf classmates, until Superintendent Dr. Grindly Mann (Daniel Bolton) shatters their fun by admonishing then for using sign language instead of their words. He raps them on the hands with a ruler and imposes stricter discipline on a defiant Roscoe and the followers.

Nevertheless, Tuc flourishes at the school, learning to communicate with his peers. He eagerly returns home for the summer to demonstrate his new skills, but his enthusiasm dissipates- his father can’t understand him. Throughout Tuc and his father’s life changes, Cliff Odle as Jonas Tucker is deeply moving.

Tuc, Nell Hicks, Maizie, and Jonas Tucker’s disappointments and losses in their imperfect world are depressing, yet their journey promises hope, a touch- and taste- of sunrise at the end.

A YOUNG CODA ACTOR SHARES HER PERSPECTIVE

by Ingrid Jensen O’Dell

Ingrid Jensen O’Dell is an 8th grade student at Harborlight-Stoneridge Montessori School.  In The Taste of Sunrise Ingrid plays a student at the school Tuc attends. She is the daughter of WFT Inclusion Coordinator Kristin Johnson

Being in a unique show like The Taste of Sunrise is certainly an honor. As a Child of Deaf Adults, a CODA, I can relate to this play and some of its characters. One hearing character in the play, Maizie, is a CODA. In one scene she says that she can hear and speak, but she is Deaf inside. Being Deaf inside to me is having Deaf memories, having Deaf characteristics, or placing myself into the category of Deaf people. That is something that I can relate to very much.

My time is not spent entirely with Deaf people, or with hearing; half of my time I am with hearing people, and the other half I am with Deaf people. I am comfortable with that, because I can fit into hearing and Deaf culture as a whole. Maizie does not like being part of two worlds. She would rather be in one world, the hearing world. To me, it is not a scenario of two worlds; it is simply one world, with Deaf and hearing together. I feel that I am not part Deaf and part hearing, but a swirl of both. I cannot say that I would rather be Deaf or be hearing, because I am already both, and I will forever be both. In the past, when I have told someone that my parents are Deaf, that person would usually act surprised, but in a nice way. There have been a few people that have felt sorry for me, and would apologize for my having Deaf parents. When I heard what those few people said, I felt, in a way, insulted. Deaf parents are not inadequate, not in the slightest. If you discredit Deaf culture, you are doing so to me, and other CODAs.

Deaf and hearing people are basically the same, but there are some differences. Deaf people notice more things visually, because they cannot hear what is going on around them. Their loss of hearing enhances their other senses, like sight. Hearing people can see and hear, so these senses are about equal. I have characteristics of a Deaf person, for instance, the one I just described. When I am watching a movie in a theatre, I often feel lost and confused, because there are no captions. To get people’s attention, I tend to tap them on the shoulder or try to get their attention without speaking. I read quickly because I am used to reading the captions on television or movies, which shift very quickly.

There are a lot of bonuses with having Deaf parents. I can play loud music; they won’t complain. I can sing as loudly and as obnoxiously as I want; they won’t complain. I can pretend to be Deaf. I can convince people that I am. I can talk on the phone endlessly; they won’t get annoyed. I can listen to music on the radio in the car, and they won’t be bothered. Occasionally, my mother will put on her hearing aid and listen to the music as well. When I’m not sure if my mother has her hearing aid on, I shout or talk loudly to see if she will react. It often surprises me when she does react, because I’m not used to it.

There are some things that aren’t great, like when the batteries in the smoke alarm are low and I have to hunt all over the house to stop the beeping. When I’m in the car and the turn signal is on and beeping when it shouldn’t be, I tell my parent that it is on. When my dog is barking, or the microwave is making weird sounds, I tell my parents. I am not told to tell them when these things happen, but I tell them because it bothers me, or I feel that I need to inform them.

All in all, Deaf people and hearing people are the same, but different. I am a CODA, and I am proud to be one. There is nothing wrong with being Deaf, having Deaf parents, or even just knowing Deaf people. If I ever have children, I will keep them, unlike Maizie, and I will teach them sign language. I will never be able to ignore my Deaf self, not that I will ever want to. I am Deaf and hearing, and very proud to be both.

Can YOU taste the sunrise?

Wheelock Family Theatre (WFT) creates intergenerational and multicultural productions that provide a shared experience for the whole family.  We are devoted to the ideal of complete access. Our play selection, casting policy, affordable ticket prices, education programs, and access provisions for people with disabilities reflect an unwavering commitment to inclusive, community-based theatre. We believe theatre is a crucial element of human experience.  It is both a means of self-revelation and a basis for empathy with others; it inspires both individualism and responsibility through the giving and the receiving of human experience.  

WFT is one of the only theatres in America where you’ll find—in the same audience—toddlers, teen-agers, parents, and grandparents of different races, faiths, orientations, and cultures from both inner-city and suburban neighborhoods; people in wheelchairs; blind people with guide dogs; patrons who are Deaf; people who are both blind and deaf; families from homeless shelters; children and adults living with HIV/AIDS .  Many members of a typical WFT audience are attending theatre for the first time in their lives.  Over half a million people have enjoyed professional theatre at WFT since we opened in 1981.  No one has ever been turned away for lack of money.

Since our inception, WFT has interpreted every production in American Sign Language. WFT was the first theatre in New England to audio-describe productions and the first in Boston to open caption all performances.  WFT was instrumental in introducing these services and new technologies to other professional theatres in Boston. Our access efforts have been hailed by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Bay State Council of the Blind, and the Massachusetts State Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. Access is not limited to our audiences—actors who are blind, deaf, and physically disabled have been given unprecedented performance opportunities on our stage.

WFT was one of the few theatres in America to offer a theatre education program for deaf teen-agers, receiving the Coming Up Taller Award from the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities.  From 1992 to1998, PAH! Deaf Youth Theatre provided creative and social learning opportunities for deaf teens.  In 2001 WFT produced “My Hands Remember”, an award-winning production about a Deaf holocaust survivor.  In 2003, WFT worked with The Learning Center for Deaf Children and the Horace Mann School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing on The Island Project, a multi-disciplinary program involving students, teachers, artists and theater professionals and developed the play, “A Nice Place to Live”, by Adrian Blue and Catherine Rush, about the history of Martha’s Vineyard and the manual language used by the population that was instrumental in the creation of ASL.  In 2004 WFT produced “Hey Sista, Welcome Home” by Aisha Knight Shaw, a deaf theatre artist.  In 2006 WFT produced Lisa Thorson’s “JazzArtSigns”, a production promoting universal access through music and painting.

And now in 2015, Wheelock Family Theatre is producing The Taste of Sunrise.