Colly Metcalfe: How embracing my deafness inspired my creative practice

Is it odd to realise you’re deaf? It’s a bit strange – I mean, you can either ‘hear’ or you can’t. But being deaf isn’t as simple as that. There are degrees of deafness, different language to describe it, and then there’s self perception.

When I was a kid, I thought I was stupid, because my teachers told me I was. I didn’t know that I couldn’t hear; I thought everyone was the same as me. Nobody asked me if I could hear; they told me I was in ‘la-la-land’ and ‘not paying attention.

I always felt different from friends. Like I was not quite connected, looking at things through a window where I didn’t fit in, but I didn’t know why. I never knew people’s names at school and I thought everyone else had some superpower! If I could tell my younger self anything, I’d tell her to be forward about not hearing. Looking back, I missed so much by not knowing I was deaf, that I could cry.

I went to secretarial college because it’s what girls did back then. My Ma told me to ‘get something to fall back on’. To be fair, I was good at it and it’s been my constant ‘fall back’ trade for over 40 years now. I can touch type at 90+ words a minute and have kept abreast of all the computer programmes! Ma, if she was still alive, would be proud!

Actually, when Ma was alive, she was proud of me. Not so much for my ‘fall back typing’ lark, but for my performance escapades as part of a hearing am-dram company. We weren’t paid for our work but I loved it! I was a ‘leading light’ in the local theatre world.

But my increasing deafness was becoming an issue. I was losing confidence on stage; mis-hearing dialogue, not hearing cues at all. It was during those years that I was something of a tweenie. Between two identities. Not hearing, but not quite able to describe myself as ‘deaf’. I felt lost. I was nobody. Nowhere.

Dark days followed. I left my beloved theatre company. I had no confidence. I had no identity and didn’t know how to be me. Who even was I? I was neither one thing nor another.

I took a job delivering sandwiches. One of my customers was deaf, and we used to chat. I asked him to teach me some signs for food, which he did. Our chats turned to laughter and conversation and something in me ignited. Not with him; we were never attracted to one another; but I was very much drawn into this beautiful language.

Deep in my soul, something stirred.. something was blossoming.

A few years later, I was invited to work on an R & D week developing a script for a 2-hander. I acted in the play with another deaf actor, and we delivered it in both spoken English and BSL. This was the first time I was aware that I could perform in BSL!

It was my return to the stage and an awakening of my soul. Something had changed and I felt a quiver of excitement. Could I possibly…..?

The performance went better than I could have ever imagined and I was tingling.

I began writing words. I had seen poets performing their work, and although I couldn’t hear them, I watched them.

I found many of them lacking in any sort of movement or visual interest. They were wordy and I couldn’t understand them. I thought, I can do that, but I can add something. So wrote a poem and added some ‘performance BSL’. It was well received and I grew in confidence, so I wrote and performed some more!

Then I took part in a workshop with the incredible deaf performer Chisato Minamimura. This proved pivotal in my ‘deaf journey’, and my genre was born. Mixing English and BSL, sometimes adding music; sometimes using only BSL without speech.

I still work in admin, but I’m also a freelance performer, writer and poet when the creativity hits me. I perform signed singing with extra oomph and choreography; my work is described as ‘sign dancing’.

I’m described as ‘bold and fearless’. And I am!

And I’m deaf.

It took me a long time to be able to use ‘deaf’ to describe myself. Now it empowers me.

I accepted that I’m deaf. Once I did that, I realised that I hold my own power over myself. I write my own narrative – and that story begins with me. Owning my deafness gave me back my life and my creativity flows from it.