Deaf couple wrestles with starting a family
Ultrasound (out of 4) Written by Adam Pottle, directed by Marjorie Chan. Until May 15 at Theatre Passe Muraille Mainspace, 16 Ryerson Ave. Passemuraille.ca or 416-504-7529.
This world-premiere play offers fascinating insight into deaf culture, provided not just through Adam Pottle’s text but through Marjorie Chan’s staging (in a Cahoots Theatre and Theatre Passe Muraille co-production) of its multi-linguistic richness.
Despite some clunky plotting, Pottle confronts complicated, troubling issues in this story of a couple — he deaf, she losing her hearing — whose loving bond is challenged when she decides she wants to start a family.
From the beginning, the play’s premise feels a bit simplistic. Miranda (Elizabeth Morris) is an actor who, on her 29th birthday, becomes gripped with the overwhelming desire to reproduce; this feels more like a convenient way to ramp up tensions than a credible reflection of current sensibilities — would a woman as engaged with contemporary culture as heavy-metal fan Miranda really believe that she is imminently “barren” at this young age?
Her husband, Alphonse (Chris Dodd), is not as keen on having kids, and in the series of conversations that make up the heart of the play, we discover why: he’s worried that he’d not be able to relate well to a hearing child and, under the sway of his deaf friend and co-worker Nick, becomes increasingly insistent that he and Miranda take control of their reproductive future to assure that their children are deaf.
Yes, we’re in the world of eugenics here and it’s upsetting but enlightening to consider this from the perspective of those attempting to preserve and build up a minority culture. Dodd is perfectly cast as the mild-mannered Alphonse. Because he’s so initially likable and empathetic, we’re invited into his point of view, and his stories of having been bullied by his uncle invite even more compassion.
But at what point does protecting one’s culture turn into playing God; and is there an inevitable divide between those who are born into deaf culture and those who, like Miranda, enter into it? In its gripping final scenes, the play brings these difficult questions to life and seems sure to provoke many impassioned conversations (such as those among audi- ence members, speaking and signing, who seemed reluctant to leave the theatre on opening night).
The play works on multiple linguistic registers, which interact in pleasingly complex ways and help advance the production’s themes of communication and miscommunication. Morris speaks her lines while signing, while Dodd signs exclusively. English-language surtitles are projected onto Trevor Schwellnus’s set of multiple latticework panels, in ways that sometimes reflect cleverly the emotional tenor of the scene (moving further up in height, for example, as an argument escalates).
Another level of meaning and humour that’s clear in the script, but really only available in the moment of performance to ASL-reading spectators, is that Miranda’s ASL is still not fluent, so there’s frequent slippage between what she says and what she signs.
Morris’s performance seems stuck in a note of plaintive girlishness; ongoing references to Shakespeare feel rather heavy-handed; and there’s the lingering sense that the most provocative character — the deaf activist Nick, who’s increasingly pulling Alphonse’s strings — remains offstage.
This is nonetheless a very stimulating evening that works to increase understanding between deaf and hearing populations. Alongside the production, Cahoots has launched an online Deaf Artists and Theatres Toolkit to encourage further theatrical collaboration between communities, and there are several performances of Ultrasound that include ASL/English deaf interpretation.