Signed Shakespeare Play on View at Yale

Visitors can watch rehearsals of the American Sign Language (ASL) translation of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night”-a collaboration of mime, dance, body movement and facial expression, all without sound.

Rehearsals are taking place Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. through August 10 in the Berkeley College performance space at 105 Elm Street on the Yale campus. Interpretation, background information and photo opportunities are available to visitors.

This version of Shakespeare is more than a literal translation of words into sign language. Shakespeare’s idioms, puns and poetry yield a whole new visual language as actors adapt meaning and nuance to a medium without sound.

Peter Novak, the dean of Trumbull College and a lecturer in theater arts at Yale, is the mastermind of this ambitious production by The Amaryllis Theater Company. Under Novak’s direction, a group of translators, which includes members of the cast, has used digital video cameras to capture and document their translation in progress. The process of transposing the written text to this choreographed visual medium has taken more than 16 months. Now completed-and made into a CD-ROM-the video recording serves as the “script” for the play.

The actors watch and memorize their lines from a cluster of computers in the rehearsal hall. The cast, composed of deaf and hearing actors, will present the play in ASL and spoken English. Rhyme, verse and even songs have been translated into purely visual images in ASL’s complicated and spatial linguistic form.

The cast is led by veteran actors Adrian Blue as Malvolio, nationally celebrated poet Peter Cook as Feste the Clown, Jackie Roth as Olivia, Dennis Webster as Sir Toby Belch, Catherine Rush as Viola and Paul Savas as Orsino. Actors in smaller roles speak the lines for those who perform in sign language. The play opens in Philadelphia’s newly renovated Prince Music Theater on September 21 and runs through October 1.

Please call 203-432-0722 or 203-432-8801 to schedule a time to watch rehearsals.