Soonchild: a BSL integrated show that brings music to life begins its tour!

Review and interview by Rebecca-Anne Withey.

Red Earth Theatre have embarked on a new tour with their BSL integrated production of Soonchild.

Soonchild is a magical family show set in the Arctic Circle which tells the story of John, a Shaman who has lost his touch with the spirit world. When his wife’s baby refuses to be born because she “cant hear the world songs,” he sets off on a snowy mission to reconnect with nature and bring those songs back.

John is played by Craig Painting and his wife is played by Brandon Plummer. Both actors are superb in their delivery of speech and sign, switching effortlessly from one medium to the other.

Their knowledge of BSL comes from – in Brandon’s case – having a deaf sibling, and Craig is currently training to be a BSL intepreter. In both cases Soonchild is their first experience working with BSL despite being very accomplished actors.

Supporting John on his quest is his Grandma, played by the delightful Matilda Bott. Matilda’s depiction of John’s cranky, wobbly Grandma is visually hilarious yet what is most impressive is the fact that prior to joining Soonchild Matilda had no experience of BSL.

Despite this, her adeptness as a physical actor meant that she naturally absorbed BSL and delivered signsongs and verses of sign like she had been doing so for several years.

Throughout the show we are treated to a feast of beautiful music by folk band, Threaded. It would be easy to assume that Threaded are also experienced actors and fellow users of BSL, but Soonchild is their debut theatrical performance and also the first time the group have encountered BSL and faced the prospect of making their music accessible for a deaf audience.

I was most intrigued by this. How would a mainstream folk band react to this proposition? What steps would they take, who would they learn from? I caught up with Rosie Bott, one third of Threaded, to find out more.

Hi Rosie, so first of all who are Threaded?!

There’s three of us in the group. Jamie Rutherford, who plays guitar and lead vocals, Ning-ning Li who plays violin and sings support vocals and then I play the clarinet and sing backing vocals too. We write and compose all of the music together. We met at music college, Birmingham Conservatoire where we played together and then started to ‘jam’ together as friends. We’ve released two albums so far and we are about to release a third!

Excellent. Although, admittedly I don’t know much about folk music, what is ‘folk’?

Folk music is an oral tradition where stories are passed down from generations. The tonality of our music is folk and as such its quite gentle, there’s no heavy drums or loud thrashing guitars. I think our music is more of a folk fusion as you have the guitar, violin and clarinet.

Ah yes, I can see how the folk style seems to fit Soonchild, with its storytelling and natural-like sound! But how did you meet Red Earth Theatre?

Amanda (co-founder of Red Earth and director of Soonchild) actually comes to me for clarinet lessons. She came to a few of our live gigs and really liked our sound. She told us about Soonchild and asked if we would write and compose the music for the show. Of course we jumped at the chance! We were thrilled.

How did you feel when you learnt that the show would be BSL integrated and that the production would have to be inclusive for deaf and hard of hearing people? Had you ever worked with deaf people before?

No, never! To be honest, we were just wondering ‘how can we make this work?’ It was also the first time we had composed to a brief. So we did our research and we made contact with Danny Lane from Music and the Deaf who is also a deaf musician.

What did you learn from your research and preparation with Danny?

We previously had the assumption that deaf people would only hear music that was loud, with heavy bass. This worried us because we aren’t loud and there’s no bass! We then discovered that not all deaf people can hear low frequencies, that everyone’s different and therefore it wasn’t up to us to change our composition but to actually just communicate our music better.

That’s when we started looking at sign singing, having a deaf person perform our work. We also looked at how we can visually indicate a change in pitch by moving our bodies low or high and simple things like swaying or tapping to the beat can really show a rhythm visually.

You worked with deaf performer Caroline Parker to produce sign song videos for your songs. How did you find that?

We loved it. We actually felt it enhanced our music. It brought out a level of the music that we didn’t know was there. So it actually made us ‘hear’ our music even better! Going forward we would love to have a sign performer at all of our gigs as we feel it really connects to the song and if you watch something so visual it actually makes you listen better. There’s so much more to listening to music than just using your ears.

That’s wonderful to know, and I agree! Do you think that other musicians would benefit from learning what you have?

Definitely. Most of our musical friends have met the news of what we’re doing with lots of intrigue. They’re interested in how this actually works. We know that what we do isn’t perfect but we are taking steps and we’ve learnt so much.

We actually went to a school with a deaf unit (Reigate in Derby) and we loved working with the deaf children there. There was a little girl who absolutely loved my clarinet and she was delighted at the sound, but she was always assumed to never be able to enjoy music.

I think the music scene in general is very behind in terms of accessibility when you compare it to other genres like the theatre world. There’s so much more we can all do to make our work interactive and inclusive for everyone.

Thank you Rosie!

Red Earth Theatre truly have found a gem in Threaded and the casting of Craig, Brandon and Matilda ensures the end result is a show that really is worth watching. I caught the show at Wolverhampton Arena Theatre and was keen to see how Threaded would communicate their songs with me.

I was particularly impressed with Jamie whose expressive signing seemed native, and I loved how Rosie and Ning-ning skipped and swayed to haunting melodies, clearly depicting the rhythms of their music.

Craig’s moving rendition of Threaded’s ‘Hold back the tide’ stayed with me for days after. Brandon and Matilda also performed a gorgeous signed song with Craig, the end result reminiscent of a Visual Vernacular performance. Each of them sang a different line, yet as I watched the lines being sung and signed simultaneously it felt as though all of the layers of the music had been brought to life and appeared before my very eyes.

On the whole I can conclude that it is actually the musical setting for Soonchild and its clear integration with BSL that produces stunning, memorable scenes. Be sure to catch it before the tour ends!

Find tour dates and news of Soonchild on www.redearththeatre.com

You can also follow Threaded on their social media sites and view their website which has the signsong videos by Caroline Parker.
https://www.threadedmusic.com/