Lixi Chivas: Putting signing centre stage at The Watermill Theatre, Newbury

Working in a small but mighty regional producing theatre can be an exhilarating experience.

In 2016 The Watermill Theatre was offering sign interpreted performances, with an excellent interpreter working side-of-stage in their own spotlight, like many theatres do.

Out of the blue, a deaf school contacted me. ‘We see you have a signed performance of your Christmas show scheduled for a Saturday. I don’t suppose there’s any chance the interpreter could also do a weekday so we could bring our students?’

As a local theatre firmly rooted in our community, we’re nothing if not obliging and this sounded do-able. But instead, I went to our artistic director, Paul Hart, with an opportunity.

Let’s test out the ideas I’d been brewing about bringing signing onstage, offering sign integrated performances with a sign performer costumed and rehearsed into the action.

Paul’s only reluctance was that he’d wanted our first sign integrated performance to be a few months later on his production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night! A couple of blurry weeks later I was on stage, the company signing the final song with me, and we’ve never gone back.

We did indeed create sign integrated performances of Twelfth Night, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Macbeth among others, with two sign performers to carry the weight of Shakepeare’s delicious but dense text.

Having two sign performers gives us room to breathe and room to play. The sign performers bounce signs back and forth and create shared images (four hands are better than two) of Shakespeare’s poetry made visual.

Translations of Shakespeare’s puns ping to and fro, word play turned into riffs on a handshape or movement, sometimes giving the non-signing audience an extra laugh, too.

We’re scrupulously rehearsed, our signing running parallel and in step with the speech, aiming for the jokes and the plot points to land at the same time for everyone in the audience.

It’s the best compliment when someone says how much they loved the show, barely mentioning how brilliant the sign performers were, because that tells me they were watching the whole show, enjoying every artistic decision the full creative team made. They experienced the whole production.

Our vision is that when you’re signing for a character, the sign performer is another version of that character, as if the character is one person in two bodies, one half that speaks and one that signs.

The sign performers are actors in their own right, mirroring the tone and mannerisms of each character they twin with. We think of ourselves as the voice in your head made visible.

When Macbeth is agonising over killing the king, talking to himself, he has a self to talk to. When Scrooge is pursing his lips at Bob Cratchit’s unreasonable request to have Christmas off, he has another pair of lips pursed back in agreement.

This extra layer of storytelling and relationship, especially revealing the inner world of a character, is why we think of these shows as sign enhanced.

And now the time is right for us to take the next step and expand the sign integration team.

We work with Deaf sign integration consultants in rehearsal, giving us a Deaf outside eye, and now we’re looking for Deaf, deaf or hard of hearing performers to join the delivery team, on stage as a sign performer.

While we’re at it, we’re hoping to meet more hearing sign performers, too. We recently held an audition workshop day on Saturday 25 September and hope to showcase our new format this Christmas.

The classic truism is that you can’t be what you can’t see. We work closely with a local deaf school, running a sign integrated youth theatre for Deaf, deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing young people that meets on their campus.

It’s essential those young people have performances they can watch and lose themselves in. How could someone who’s never been to the theatre know that they want to become a director, playwright, designer, actor, lighting designer? Inspiration can strike at any age but future theatre-makers can only develop a passion and taste for theatre sitting in the auditorium.

Even during the pandemic when a lot of theatres haven’t been able to operate at all, we’ve managed to keep up with our commitment to offer at least two sign integrated productions.

Our socially-distanced Christmas BSL sign integrated show was moved a day early because the planned performance day was suddenly announced as the first day of Tier 4 closures, another example of how agile a small theatre can be.

This summer we’ve held an outdoor season in our beautiful gardens and our deaf audience sat in the blazing sunshine to watch The Hound of the Baskervilles, also socially-distanced with a good smattering of gags about hand sanitiser, screens and masks.

Partnering with The DH Ensemble we created an online showcase of BSL monologues reflecting on lockdown called Signs of the Times, written and performed by four incredible Deaf actors.

Since March, we’ve been nurturing an online discussion space called Deaf Theatre Lovers, inviting BSL users from around the country to come together once a month to get stuck into a topic related to theatre. We want it to become a space for networking, for campaigning, for sharing best practice, for promoting opportunities, for inspiring.

In a small, busy team, quietly knuckling down and getting on with changing someone’s world one day at a time, it’s tricky to find the time to shout about everything we’re doing.

I haven’t even told you yet about the videos we post online ahead of the sign integrated shows, to introduce the character sign names, or about the backstage tours led by a Deaf tour guide, or how we have a team of BSL ushers available at every sign integrated performance to smooth communication between audience and non-signing theatre staff. Oh well, another time.

We know there’s plenty more to do, some of it we know, a lot of it we don’t. We’re always ready to hear new ideas, try a new direction. When you next notice how something could be better, maybe think about that school in 2016 and marvel at what’s possible when you just ask…

Join us online once a month for Deaf Theatre Lovers, book here: www.watermill.org.uk/the_watermill_theatre_deaf_theatre_lovers

Watch a video in BSL about our approach to sign integration: www.watermill.org.uk/deaf

If you live in or near Berkshire, come to see a BSL sign integrated show: www.watermill.org.uk/access_performance_diary, or get involved with our sign integrated youth theatre: www.watermill.org.uk/duologue

Tell your dramatic friends about applying to join our sign integration team: www.watermill.org.uk/work_for_us

Our work for Deaf, deaf and hard of hearing audiences is generously supported by Greenham Trust. Photography by Phillip Tull.

By Lixi Chivas. Lixi, sign name PIXIE, works at The Watermill Theatre in Newbury as the Community Associate, creating and delivering all sorts of projects and events to welcome people to the theatre. She’s been on her BSL journey since she was 15 and is working towards qualifying as an interpreter in summer 2022, finally.