When actions speak louder than words
IN a short space of time Willfredd Theatre have become one of the country’s most admired companies. Their recent hit Farm built on the acclaim that greeted their debut production, Follow. Follow was devised to be accessible to both a deaf and a hearing audience, and was an award-winner at the Dublin Fringe Festival in 2011. It’s now being revived for a national tour that takes in Galway, Cork, Roscommon, Longford, Navan, Derry, and Strabane. The tour kicks off next week with a run at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin.
Actor Shane O’Reilly reprises his solo role in the show, one close to his heart. The Dubliner is the son of deaf parents and many of the stories in Follow stem from his own family.
“Follow was about exploring something entirely new, which was this idea of being able to communicate and tell stories to a deaf and a hearing audience at the same time,” says O’Reilly. “Initially, that was born from my desire to invite my parents to see my work, for them to have immediate access to it.”
O’Reilly and the show’s director, Sophie Motley, discovered a mutual fascination with the subject and, with the wider Willfredd team, they began to develop the project with members of the deaf community.
“We first had a session with my father in my parents’ house,” says O’Reilly. “And then we had another session in the school that he went to — St Joseph’s School for the deaf — where we met with a lot of his old schoolmates and different generations of pupils there. So Follow is based on their story.”
The show makes creative use of light and sound, physical performance, speech and ISL (Irish Sign Language) to present a series of provocative vignettes. “Regardless of whether they are hearing or deaf, we wanted people to leave talking about it,” says O’Reilly. “We’re not telling stories that are completely clear either to the deaf or the hearing audience — we’re not being patronising with our method of storytelling.”
One of the key elements of the show is its engagement with ISL. “ISL belongs to the people of this island, both hearing and deaf, and it’s a unique sign language,” says O’Reilly. “I think it’s unhelpful to look at ISL as the language of a disabled minority. It’s more exciting to think of it as a physical language that belongs to this country. We all have access to it and it is very, very theatrical.
“Sign language is essentially based on images and how you would physically represent a word or situation,” he says. “So there is an awful lot of play and acting in sign language. You have to animate yourself. You have to breathe life into the words in order to communicate.”
As a result of ISL’s native theatricality, hearing people are fascinated by the performance. “There is something mesmeric and something exciting in it for the hearing audience,” says O’Reilly.
The show explores the ways in which the worlds of the hearing and the deaf can collide and miscommunication occur, he says, but also celebrates the fact we are all creatures of communication.
“We wanted to ask where sign language is universal but what we discovered, actually, is that it’s emotion which is universal,” says O’Reilly. “That face that you wear when you’re in a heightened state is universal and it transcends language and culture. When somebody is heartbroken or overjoyed you can see that emotion.”
One of the show’s big successes is that for deaf audiences it removes the intermediary stage of translation. “Arts productions for the deaf are usually either signed or captioned, so generally you’re going through an interpreter or a visual unit, and you end up saying ‘oh, wasn’t that interpreter very good’ or whatever,” says O’Reilly. “The relationship with the art is almost secondary. But after Follow all my mother talked about was the stories and the work we had made together. It was a hugely unique moment.”
*The national tour of Follow begins at Project Arts Centre, Jan 22-26. For tour and dates see www.willfredd.com
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
