Deaf People Speak Out Against Hearing Actor Portraying Deaf Role
The New York Times reports on a controversy surrounding the New York Theater Workshop production of Carson McCuller's The Heart is a Lonely Hunter whose central character John Singer is a deaf and mute man in the novel. Playwright Rebecca Gilman adapted the fictional work to the stage and included a spoken opening and closing monologue for Singer. Now deaf actors and activists are protesting the decision made by the director to cast a hearing man to play the part. Says Linda Bove, the deaf actress who is familiar to many from Sesame Street, "A hearing actor playing a deaf character is tantamount to putting a white actor in blackface." The director Doug Hughes feels that because the monologues are spoken, only a hearing actor would work for the part.
There are several issues raised by this incident. The first is the very limited roles available to the talented deaf actors in this country. We are familiar with Marlee Matlin, who starred in Children of A Lesser God and many episodes of The West Wing and other television shows. But her fame is balanced by the anonymity of the majority of deaf actors. There is an unacknowledged discrimination involved in not using deaf actors to play deaf roles, and this case is no exception.
The other stereotype here is the assumption that deaf actors can't speak. The normal education in the US involves extensive training in speech for deaf people. While not all will end up speaking in ways that might work on stage, so many can. The range of possibilities from hard of hearing to deaf allow for this possibility, but the decision to not allow a deaf person to speak might be seen as not allowing a black person to speak on the stage in the 19th century for fear they wouldn't be speaking standard English.
The director and playwright cite their artistic freedom to make the decisions they have. Fair enough, but artistic freedom when it impinges on the rights and repute of others has some limitations. We might imagine a playwright who decided to make a play in which Jews were all shown to be money-grubbing, stereotyped people with large, hooked noses and cast accordingly. While no one wants to limit even offensive decisions in theater, we also recognize that a vigorous and even rowdy protest against the play including a call to boycott it would be an appropriate response.
The New York Theater Workshop chose to do a play about deaf people. It shouldn't be surprised if deaf people turn out not to be the silent, passive, suffering deaf mute of Carson McCuller's story--itself an audist and ableist cliché and stereotype--but are vocal, angry critics of the production. After all, playwright Gilman chose to let Singer speak.
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By its very nature, acting is pretending.
I propose we dispense with the term "act" and replace it with "is." No more 'acting,' just 'izzing.'
Do you really want to say this?
“But her (Marlee Matlin’s) fame is balanced by the anonymity of the majority of deaf actors.” You also would be correct to say: Hugh Jackman’s fame is balanced by the anonymity of the majority of white male actors. Go to any restaurant in New York and ask your waiter about this.
Or this?
“We might imagine a playwright who decided to make a play in which Jews were all shown to be money-grubbing, stereotyped people..” People have made similar arguments against The Merchant of Venice. You’re on the path to book burning, my friend.
Here’s my piece on this issue:
http://thefastertimes.com/theatertalk/2009/10/14/the-new-york-theater-workshop-vs-the-deaf-a-modest-proposal-for-casting-plays/
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Interested how you are warning me in your letter what to say and what not to say, and you accuse me of being on the path to burning books. So you do believe that there are better and worse ways to exercise one's freedom of speech.
You completely miss my point if you believe that I am saying directors shouldn't have complete freedom to choose what is in their plays. If you've ever read anything I've written you know that I support the right of artists, writers, and anyone to express their opinions. But one's ethical and moral obligations aren't obliterated by freedom of speech. The next level of concern after your right to free speech are the implications of what your free speech advocates. In this case, the director and playwright chose to wade into the area of Deafness. Have they gone into deep water as far as the Deaf community is concerned? Are there decisions accurate and enabling or reductionist and denigrating. I and many Deaf people are arguing the latter. That point has absolutely nothing to do with freedom of speech--what's being discussed is the quality and logic of the use of free speech. That kind of discussion doesn't chill free speech anymore than your warnings to me discourage me from writing my opinion.
I'm not asking you to limit what you say. If you believe there should be limits on artistic freedom, go ahead and say so. I'm questioning whether you really want to advocate limiting artistic freedom--and that's the only issue here. If a director decides the play will be more meaningful or funnier or anything else if he casts a very tall person in a role, he is not likely to get letters saying his casting decision insults small people.
My younger son has cerebral palsy, and I'm very concerned about the limited job opportunities he has. There are genuine instances when people are discriminating against the disabled. There are other instances when he doesn't get a job because he just can't handle the tasks involved.
This is an instance of a director making an artistic choice that says nothing about his feeling about the deaf or whether the deaf are capable of performing; he is in no way obliged to cast a deaf person. His choice says everything about his artistic vision for the play. The playwright, too, made artistic, not social or political, choices. This is not a story about the ability of actors without hearing to play roles, and the writing and casting choices don't take a position one way or the other.
This is another case of political correctness being taken to an absurd level. If the monologues in the play are spoken, how could a deaf actor carry out the role? Or must the role thus be changed to cater to the deaf actor? And does that mean directors and casting must adhere to a approved set of guidelines as proscribed by special interest groups?
Marlie Matlin (movie star) is deaf... and she speaks VERY well...
Heather Whitestone (Miss America 1995) is deaf... and she speaks VERY well...
Being deaf does NOT mean that you cannot SPEAK. It means that you can't HEAR. Only someone who is MUTE doesn't speak and it is SUPREMELY IGNORANT to believe that simply because someone cannot hear they also cannot speak.
I do understand that the deaf can speak. (Marlee Matlin is indeed a very good actress, but let's face it, it is not always easy to understand her.) But he article notes that the director feels that because monologues are spoken, "only a hearing actor would work for the part." Perhaps he auditioned deaf actors and found they were not able to perform the part. Why do you dispute his freedom to make such a choice?
By the way, your name calling is very rude.
I agree on the political correctness but you are wrong thinking that deaf people can't speak. Many of them can speak and some quite well. It depends how they were educated, when they lost their hearing, etc.
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You unfortunately show your ignorance of Deaf culture and Deaf life, which is exactly what my post is about--how easy it is for hearing people to assume they know what Deafness is. Most Deaf people, as I wrote in the article, are trained to speak and can do so. They are Deaf not mute!
I'm a bit ambivalent about this. In the case of the deaf actors in this story, I do think it would probably be preferential to cast deaf actors. On the other hand, some of the discussion in the comments about only allowing people with disabilities to play disabled characters or only having gay actors play gay characters... Is theater supposed to be like reality tv? Should only teachers play teachers? Should only Republicans play Republicans? Should only aliens appear in science fiction films? At some point acting comes down to depicting a life experience that is not your own. So I couldn't make a hard and fast judgment that casting a non-disabled actor, for example, is by definition the wrong choice. When it comes to casting, the person who can best convey the emotion the story teller is trying to get across is the best choice. In many cases the person with the same life experience may be that person, and it would be a shame to overlook that. But if an actor who has never been a soldier can bring a war film to life, then they can probably convey other life experiences as well.
Thoughtful response. Let me be your first fan!
Life experiences??
Do you know what it is like to be taught how to speak with no real concept of understanding what sounds are?? Do you know what it's like to be linguistically delayed because the focus is entirely on how to speak words correctly rather than understanding how the language is structured?
Do you know what it is like to be dependent on someone else to talk, to understand those around you?? I mean, come on, even when you are on your deathbed, you are afforded the right to speak to those who you love around you without aid.
Do you know what it is like when your family rejects you from the dinner table because you cannot chew without making so much noise and not know about it? Do you understand what it's like to be delayed in school because your peers had the privilege of being able to hear the teachers while you have to toil and work in reading all the materials, hoping that the teacher didn't say something outside of it? Do you understand what it's like to be told that the language you're signing isn't a real language and makes you look like an idiot??
No hearing person can EVER understand what it is like to be Deaf. There is NO life experience that a hearing person can go through that is remotely similar to the Deaf.
Sheesh.
What's next, P.C. police? Can only a blind actress play the heroine in the play Wait Until Dark? Can only an actor with AIDS play Prior Walter in Angels in America? And who would be permitted to play the Elephant Man? This is the ridiculous extreme to which we would travel should we follow this author's logic.
No one is saying that deaf actors, or any actors with a disability, should be denied a chance to play certain roles because of their disability, but is it fair to not consider actors for certain parts because they don't have a certain disability?
In this instance, it is the playwright, the director and the producers who have final say. If you don't like it, don't go see the play. But don't condemn them as bigots. It's their play and they can do what they want to.
I guess you would have absolutely NO objection then to Richard Prior or Bette Middler playing the part of George Washington crossing the Deleware... Or to Tom Cruise playing the part of Harriet Beecher Stowe...
Cate Blanchett played Bob Dylan...
You're right, it is their play and they can do what they want to, at the risk of losing potential good paying customers. But, some of us who enjoy the theater and movies like to see real accurate portrayals of real people. Art is supposed to be a mirror on reality, and in some cases, that mirror reflection unintentionally comes out looking like a distorted Hall of Mirrors reflection, when the director was trying to approach an accurate mirror reflection.
Now if this play is a satire or an Absurdist or Surrealist piece, then perhaps a hall of mirrors reflection is appropriate, but I do not believe that to be the case in this instance
I loved the movie of "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" with Alan Arkin. But I don't think there were as many really wonderful deaf actors to play the part. But in this day and age, it just seems odd to cast a hearing person in the part. I wouidn't want to see it.
Well said, Renton2000.
How about a Gay actor being selected to play a Gay character?
How about an Asian for an Asian part?
Better to stop the discrimination rampant in the performing arts casting.
The whole world is going to hell in a handbasket. Does anybody with half a brain really care whether actors who play deaf people can hear? Ridiculous!
As the parent of a deaf child I play H*ll finding examples of DEAF people who have done well in their lives that I can hold up as role models for my child. Sure, there's Helen Keller and Marlie Matlin but the reality is that those are the ONLY two deaf people that the "average" person can name off the top of their head.
Don't you think that MAYBE deaf/handicapped children are AS DESERVING of role models as "normal" children are?
Someone has to be famous and deaf to be a role model for your child? I think some research on your part would show a whole host of deaf people who have become successful in their own right.
I defend the producers' right cast whomever they want but your comment shows an ignorance of the history of the deaf community. Until very recently deaf children and people were treated as second class citizens. Deaf children were often mis-diagnosed as retarded and stuck in psych hospitals. Deaf people had a very difficult time getting educated or considered for anything but the most trivial jobs. Its understandable that they would be angered by this. It sounds to me as if the worst part wasn't just the decision of who to cast but the way it was handled.
It is beyond "contemptible" that a hearing person is chosen to play a deaf role. There are any number of very talented, very ABLE, actors who are either deaf or hard of hearing who COULD play the role in question FAR better than a hearing person EVER will be able to.
It is very likely that the playwright and the director felt that they would have an easier time getting their "ideas" across to a hearing actor than they would a deaf actor and so they chose a hearing actor simply because it was easier. It is stupid... but it is easier.
Of course the whole situation could be avoided if Sign Language were taught in elementary school right along with English. Oh wait... English is no longer taught...
You can't be serious. It's called acting for a reason. I won't bother but, without trying too hard, one could easily take this to the extreme.
It is no different and no less insulting than using white people to portray characters who are black, Native American, Chinese, etc...
Sadly, this happens ALL the freaking time with portrayals of disability. As far back as Peter Sellers as Dr Strangelove, to Patrick Stewart in the X-men series, to John Voight in Coming Home, to Tom Cruise in Born on the 4th of July, and Eric Stoltz in The Water Dance. And to make things worse, these portrayals do not reflect reality, as in the case of the Eric Stoltz character who ends up with Helen Hunt's character. Not many of the "pretty" people are going to give the disabled much of a chance at romance, even today.
Unfortunately, it seems perfectly acceptable to most people for an able bodied actor to play a disabled character, just as it seems okay for a straight actor to play a gay character, because they are "just acting". But, to many of us, they are not acting in ways that we would act, or behaving in ways we would behave, they are only interpreting how they would act and react based on their experience as an able bodied actor, and, quite frankly, that gives a false and shallow disingenuous performance, and THAT is insulting to the audience who expects to come to see a mirror reflection, not a hall of mirrors distortion of reality
The ONLY actor that I have EVER seen who was able to come close to accurately portraying someone in a wheelchair was Raymond Burr when he was portraying the character "Ironside". Even then... when the scene ended he could do something that NO person in a wheelchair can... get up and walk away.
But people don't "come to see a mirror reflection." That's plain silly. And again, if you go down this road, you would deny us Marlon Brando as Vito Corleone (not Italian or old), the cast of Lord of the Rings as hobbits (seriously, "little people" actually did complain about that one), or Al Pacino as the guy in Scent of A Woman (okay, that one was pretty bad). When they were making the Godfather, they actually tested some old Italian actors, and they realized that any old Italian actor who hadn't been a star by that point wasn't commanding enough to play Vito Corleone. I'm sorry, but I can't imagine anyone else as Patrick Stewart as Professor X. I suppose bald men should have complained about Gene Hackman shaving his head to play Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey either, who is balding but not nearly that bald.)
Maybe the point is, people shouldnt "go down that road". We should deal with the realities of life as they are. There was a time when playing black face was acceptable. But it no longer is. Now, there may be times when it is necessary for someone to play a role they are not suited for, such as an able bodied person playing a disabled person, but that should ONLY come after all other options have been exhausted. I know half a dozen actors, all disabled, who would have KILLED for the Tom Cruise Born on the 4th of July part, or one like it. But, because society feels it acceptable for able bodied people to play disabled characters, we get Tom Cruise playing a role he could never identify with. So, now, someone who has never dealt with a disabled person in real life will see that movie and the others I mentioned, and assume that all disabled people are like that, and I have to disappoint them when I tell them that I am nothing like that. Sorry, reality is, I am neither Patrick Stewart in X-men, or Peter Sellers in Strangelove, or Tom Cruise in BOT4J, but people are always going to assume I am and be disappointed when I dont live up to (or down to) their expectations
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