Interview with Linda Bove on WNYC

Recently, a publicist from WNYC (the largest radio station in the nation) contacted me regarding an interview held with Sesame Street alumni Linda Bove (voice-interpreted by Alan Champion). While I find it ironic that a Deaf person was interviewed for the radio - but the material that came out of the interview was valuable as it covers the controversial casting of two productions - The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and The Miracle Worker. The interview was broadcast yesterday on the Morning Edition news.

"Last week "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" started previews at the New York Theater Workshop. The play's central character, a deaf man named John Singer, is being portrayed by a hearing actor – much to the chagrin of the deaf acting community, who believe a deaf actor could play the role with more accuracy and depth. The right roles for deaf actors are fewer and far between… is it fair for these opportunities to be given to an actor who is not deaf?"

The corresponding article can be found here: http://blogs.wnyc.org/culture/2009/11/16/deaf-actors-demand-equal-stage-time/

Many thanks to Emily Haynes for listening to the radio clip and transcribing the interview for all to read:

"The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" started previews last week at the New York Theater Workshop. The action takes places in a small town in Georgia in the 1930’s and revolves around a central character, John Singer, who’s Deaf. The choice to cast a hearing actor in the role has angered some members of the Deaf acting community. They say a Deaf actor could have played the role with more accuracy and depth. WNYC’s Janaya Williams reports:
In the 1968 film version of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, John Singer was played by a young Alan Arkin. In the movie, the character reads lips and signs, but never speaks. The action revolves around his silent communication with the characters he meets and befriends.
(Clip from movie)
“….I think about you Singer, I could talk to you, yet you listen. You old dummy, you really listen….”
Linda Bove is an actress who’s Deaf and speaks American Sign Language. She says that in retrospect, there was a lot lacking in the movie depiction of John Singer. The voice you’ll hear is her interpreter.
LINDA: Imagine someone who doesn’t speak Spanish going to take a Spanish 101 course before they prepared for a role that required fluent speaking in Spanish. I don’t think anybody would buy that.
JW: She says that in 1968, when Alan Arkin played John Singer, the first generation of Deaf actors was still being trained, and most were not ready to provide such a professional level of performance in that role. But these days, she says, Deaf actors can compete for roles that portray their experience, even if those roles are few and far between. Bove is probably best known as Linda the Librarian on Sesame Street. She says that when a hearing actor plays a Deaf character, audiences are denied a more authentic experience.
LINDA: When a hearing actor plays a deaf character, audiences are denied a more authentic experience. Even an audience that may not know any better, they are just going to swallow the portrayal they are given and not know that it may or may not be accurate. I think you're perpetuating cultural misunderstandings and linguistic misunderstandings.
In the production of THLH that’s in previews now, the character John Singer breaks his silence with two speaking parts. He’s played by the actor Henry Strand, who is not deaf, and learned sign language for the role. That casting decision has angered many people in the Deaf acting community. They say that with so few roles, this feels like a lost opportunity.

LINDA: Hearing actors, of course which is most actors, they take what they learn from their life experience as well. We want that opportunity. I don’t think that we should be denied that opportunity.
JW (Theatre noise in background): At the NYTW days before the opening, the cast and crew are running through a tech rehearsal. The director, Doug Hughes, won a Tony award for directing the play Doubt. He and the actor Henry Strand have been with the production since it premiered in Atlanta four years ago. He says he’s not surprised by the outcry over casting a hearing actor as John Singer.
DH (weirdly pretentious voice): There is a woeful shortage of opportunities for Deaf actors. The immediate addendum to that is there is a woeful shortage of opportunity for any actor. It’s a perilous profession.
JW: Last week, Hughes and the producers met with four Deaf actors who were opposed to the decision to cast a hearing actor as John Singer. The actors made suggestions for making the speaking role more accessible to a Deaf actor, like having the actor sign his lines along with a voice-over. But in the end, nothing was changed. For Doug Hughes, the issue boils down to artistic freedom.
DH: With all respect for what I consider the valid concerns of those who are objecting to what we are doing, I think..uhh… the minute [said like meaanute] you begin to clamp down on the potential for somebody to express themselves, I think you’re starting to head into some very dangerous territory.
AS: Because of the nature of theatre, it’s often an arena for these battles. [JW: Alyssa Solomon is a theatre critique and professor at Columbia University.] Because it’s precisely about pretend and it’s precisely about representation. A character is being represented, and then you also have representation kind of in the democratic sense. Our voices need to be represented, that our experience as individuals and also as members of particular communities have a right to be represented.
JW: In the history of film and theatre the question of who has license to inhabit a character ha come up again and again. In 1990, a Broadway production of Miss Saigon angered many Asian-Americans actors when a white Brit was cast in the lead role of a mixed race Asian man. More than 100 protesters showed up on opening night, and the incident was the inspiration for playwright David Henry Wang’s play, Yellow Face. Two years ago when Angelina Jolie was cast as Marianna Pearl, the mixed race wife of journalist Daniel Pearl, in the movie A Mighty Heart, some complained that Marianne Pearl’s race was being “whitewashed.” But director Doug Hughes says it’s the nature of acting to inhabit characters that may have lives different from our own.
DH: The fact that our experience in life is not directly analogous to the experience of the character is in a way one of the great joys of performance. It means that our imaginations are capable at making a valid stab at understanding others. That’s the essence of the drama.
JW: The issue isn’t going away. The play The Miracle Worker opens at circle in the square theater in March. The young Helen Keller, who was blind and deaf, will be played by another hearing actor, the Oscar-nominated Abigail Breslin. Linda Bove says that the producers of TMW met with a group of Deaf actors, and they agreed to hire a Deaf understudy for the role. Bove smiles with excitement and says it’s a step in the right direction.
LB: We’re really hopeful that we find the right Deaf girl to be the understudy in this production of Miracle Worker. And it seems like a small step, it might be a small step for you. It’s a small step for us, but I think it’s a very significant small step because it made them realize that they needed to include the community in this decision.
JW: Director Doug Hughes says that he does hope to work collaboratively with talented Deaf actors and Deaf theatre groups on future projects. Linda Bove says that the organized opposition to these casting choices has turned into a learning opportunity for the Deaf acting community. She says it’s highlighted the need to be more proactive in reaching out to producers and arts organizations where Deaf roles are concerned.
For WNYC, I’m Janaya Williams.
/end of transcript