Oppression and oralism

THROUGH three powerful comingof-age stories, Extraordinary Wall of Silence traces the oppression and ignorance faced by the Deaf community to one pivotal point in history.

With stories drawn from real-life testimonies collected through 40 hours of interviews with deaf people from all over the UK, Extraordinary Wall of Silence, performed by three deaf actors and one hearing actor, directed by George Mann and devised by the company, sheds light on the relatively undocumented history of oppression experienced by Deaf people.

Helen, Alan, and Graham are told they are impaired and need fixing.

As they begin to question the world around them, their stories unfold, uniting them in a struggle against violence, ignorance and oppression.

Connected through a shared past, they are transported to a crucial moment in 1880 that would impair the way the world viewed D/deaf people for over a century.

In 1880, the Milan Conference passed eight resolutions on deaf education, and banned the use of sign language in schools all over the world.

The conference declared that an oral education (oralism) was superior to manual (signed) education and put deaf children through an abusive regime of speech therapy to make them speak, ‘hear’, and lip-read.

The decision prevailed for over a century, despite decades of poor results, including the statistic that over 70 per cent of

UK Deaf children left school with a reading age of seven to eight.

The stories of these people have largely gone undocumented as sign languages do not exist in written form, and access to video was, until recently, not widespread.

Extraordinary Wall of Silence shares these stories in a bilingual performance in British Sign Language and English, using them as a starting point to explore in-depth a culture under threat from fear, prejudice and ignorance.

“The Milan Conference had a huge impact on D/ deaf people’s lives and communities,” says Deaf actor Matthew Gurney, who appeared in Ad Infinitum’s show Light.

“Deaf adults leaving school were left without power, authority and little ability to communicate in either English or sign language.

“Since the Milan Conference a slow but steady rebellion has been rising, which has gone unnoticed in worldwide and national media.

“We want to battle the ‘silent voices’ who continue to push for the oralist method, and refuse to listen to us, and to fight for our D/deaf human rights in all areas of life.”