Meet the hearing comic who performs in BSL and spoken English

Ray Bradshaw may be the first comic to perform his gigs in oral English and British Sign Language at the same time, but to him it doesn’t feel at all strange or different.

After all, the 30-year-old born-and-bred Glaswegian, the middle of three children, all of whom can hear, grew up with two deaf parents, so signing and talking simultaneously comes perfectly naturally to him.

Bradshaw’s father Dave was born profoundly deaf, while his mother Jill lost her hearing at just 14 months after contracting measles.

The comedian of some 10 years’ standing says: “It was great growing up with deaf parents. It taught me a lot of good skills, including empathy, confidence and how to speak to people properly. My brother, sister and I really enjoyed our upbringing.

“My parents are friendly, lovely people, which made everything a lot easier. It really was fun growing up in both the hearing and deaf worlds. So it annoys me when anyone thinks that I had a worse childhood just because my parents happened to be deaf.”

Bradshaw can’t remember learning either sign language or oral English, although he says much of the latter was picked up from his mother and grandparents, as well as from watching TV.

Indeed, signing was so much second nature to Bradshaw growing up that he told one journalist that when he was five or six in his school playground, he thought all kids did it, and so he found it odd when other children didn’t sign back to him.

Now an established, full-time stand-up, Bradshaw started out aged 19, having “gone into a comedy club when I was drunk, thinking I could do better than the guys on stage.”

Previously, he worked with Glasgow’s Solar Bear company and its deaf youth theatre programme. He has also been an employment adviser at Action on Hearing Loss, helping deaf young people into work.

The idea for simultaneous BSL and spoken English came about because he wanted his shows to be accessible to all audience members at all times, not just on the occasions when an interpreter happened to be booked for an assisted performance.

Interestingly, given that BSL is of course differently structured to spoken English, and with a different word order, deaf and hearing members will laugh at different times during Bradshaw’s set.

The simultaneous gigs, which he has performed since March of last year, have opened up comedy to some deaf people who hadn’t previously attended a stand-up set.

It also means that, for example, families or groups of friends including both deaf and hearing members can enjoy attending the gig together and follow every word.

Because an hour-long set of signing and speaking would, understandably, be exhausting, Bradshaw uses audio and video help during his gigs. So there are three sections, one with a voice-over, one with a video and a third segment in which Bradshaw does the signing and talking together.

The show starts with signing without voice-over or subtitles, giving hearing audience members a feel for what deafness is like.

Critics and ordinary comedy fans alike have loved the quirky, nostalgic tales of ‘natural storyteller’ Bradshaw, including his anecdotes of using deafness to lie as a child at parents’ evening, and to try and get out of a speeding fine, or what graduation was like for his deaf dad.

“I’ve made it fully accessible so that no one feels left out or has to wait for the interpreter to deliver the punchline. And with so many people telling me I was their first-ever show, I must be doing something right!

“Audience members often want to chat to me afterwards and share their own experiences, so the show must have resonated with them in some way.”

Funny stories, rather than gags, form the basis of Bradshaw’s comedy. After all, as he points out, short jokes don’t always work in sign language anyway. And, indeed, interpreting a stand-up set would surely be a challenge at the best of times. So an alternative like this is bound to be more effective – and funnier.

Not that he is just about getting the laughs in. Part of Bradshaw’s mission is to educate about sign language and deafness.

“There are so many misconceptions about sign language and deafness in general, and I just wanted to try and alleviate some of that, although I’d never claim to be an expert. But when someone from the audience tells me a gig was the best form of deaf of awareness they’ve seen, to me that’s the greatest compliment.”

And as reviewer Sophia Charalambous put it: “Bradshaw’s show is a winning combination of substance and humour, without sacrificing one for the other. I went away having belly-laughed and learned — from the fact BSL was only made a recognised language in 2003 to the four signs his girlfriend learned on her first day of a BSL course… definitely not what you’re expecting.”

Having sold out his two runs this year and last at the Edinburgh Festival, which is where his show really took off after its Glasgow debut, Bradshaw, twice a finalist in the Scottish Comedian of the Year awards, is on tour until late November, and takes his show to Australia in 2019.

By Juliet England. Read more of Juliet’s articles for us here.

Juliet England does freelance social media and PR work for cSeeker.