Rebecca A Withey: Can a BSL led musical actually work? (BSL)

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I adore musicals. I grew up watching them and I even studied them in detail for my professional dance degree.

For my own examinations in musical theatre at University, I was told to lip sync lyrics while I danced and the option of signing along in BSL didn’t even occur to me.

Back then I saw lyrical English and BSL as two entirely separate things. I thought that you couldn’t fuse the two together without the meaning getting lost or at least blurred for one of the languages.

Fast forward almost twenty years and translating songs from musicals into BSL is one of the most common requests I receive as a signed song tutor and consultant. This isn’t just something I see with hearing clients but an area that deaf people and even deaf artists are excited by too.

Profoundly deaf BSL users tell me how they travel the country to watch their favourite musicals, viewing classic shows such as Wicked, Les Misérables and Grease and even enjoying newer productions like Matilda, Six and Dear Evan Hansen.

However what was surprising for me was the general consensus from these people seems to be that they prefer to see these shows captioned instead of BSL interpreted.

This baffled me at first – surely they’d like to see a show in their first / preferred language?

But as a client explained to me, “when I watch a musical, I want to see the actual singers passion and the movement on stage. I don’t want to watch the interpreters performance only – I miss so much in this way.”

And so I can understand where they’re coming from here. As someone who memorises all of the song lyrics to a show that I’m going to see, I want to see the lead character perform this song. I want to see the blood, sweat and tears come straight from them!

So I started wondering. Would a BSL led musical work? Can you fuse the music and signing in a way that doesn’t subtract from the actual performance? Could a BSL performer really embody the passion of a song with all of its rhythm and syncopation?

Earlier this year I went to see a staged performance that attempted to do just that.

Scenes from Rent, directed by Lilac Yosiphon, was a BSL led show featuring a cast of deaf actors and hearing actors/singers.

Each deaf performer had a hearing person singing as their “voice” with the exception being Adam Jay Price and Alim Jadavji who are both CODA’s (children of deaf adults) and therefore were able to sing and sign at the same time.

The performance showcased a variety of songs and dramatic scenes, with various performance styles throughout from all of the deaf actors.

We saw strong BSL descriptions from Mia Ward and Cherie Gordon, Visual Vernacular styles from Nadeem Islam and even physical theatre/dance from Chris Fonseca.

We also saw scenes where all of the actors came together signing and singing simultaneously, as they did for the heartbreaker of a song Seasons of Love.

I even recall one incredibly funky scene where all cast members signed and moved along together to La Vie Bohème, the rhythm pulsing across the stage as they stamped their feet.

I loved both of the above. Yet for me the stand out moment where the magic really happened and I thought “YES, this is a BSL musical!” was in Adam Jay Price’s performance as he signed/sang the title song Rent.

Adam’s whole demeanour on stage was mesmerising as he sang with conviction and signed with such power. I believed in his character wholeheartedly and through his performance I could see, hear, feel, know the song.

He was the song.

And that’s what separates a musical from anything else – it’s the music. So learning and getting to enjoy songs as you watch a musical is a really important part of the whole experience.

Although the deaf actors were all talented and offered strong, worthy performances, I felt that none of them had that spotlight moment where it was just them and the song.

Instead we had mostly hearing actors singing with voice from one end of the stage, and deaf actors at the opposite end signing.

I don’t mean that we need to teach deaf people to sing or hearing singers to sign – but I genuinely feel that even more can be done if we can explore how a deaf actor can take the lead in a musical based show.

Do we need to explore deaf actors relationships with music more? Do we need to offer additional support?

What if the deaf actor was able to direct the timing of a song with their signs?

How about the deaf actor being the only one on stage when they sign a solo?

We need to keep asking questions like these and pushing past barriers.

I  was thrilled to see the work and beautiful creations that the team have made with Scenes from Rent but I do feel that this is just the beginning.

I would love to see Lilac Yosiphon and similar creatives be granted the funding, space and time required in order to push this creative work even further and to devise/produce BSL led musical productions that can be enjoyed by all.

The staged performance of Rent is evidence that a BSL musical is absolutely possible yet we have only just begun to scratch the surface.

What do you think? Would you love to see a BSL led musical?

Rebecca A Withey is a writer and creative artist based in the Midlands. She fronts the all deaf sign performance group Unify and is the Assistant Editor for The Limping Chicken. Rebecca is a Deaf, bilingual BSL user passionate about music and telling stories. Find out more at www.rawithey.com