With the Canadian premiere of Nina Raine’s award-winning 2010 play Tribes, now on at the Berkeley Street Theatre, you get more than a fantastic performance of an intelligent, emotionally charged script; you get a sweeping look into the world of an invisible minority. Deaf and hearing people live side by side but in separate worlds, like poorly integrated tribes. This play’s themes of belonging and identity speak to all who live in a pluralistic society.
Daryl Cloran, founding artistic director of Theatrefront, was inspired to direct Tribes after having done some work with the Swedish National Theatre of the deaf. British playwright Raine’s idea for her play originated from a documentary about a deaf couple who were hoping their soon-to-be-born baby would be deaf. Having learned a few things about deaf culture while studying American Sign Language (ASL), I know there is more to be said about Tribes than can be covered in a theatre review.
While the play tackles more issues and concepts than can be easily taken in at one viewing, this 135-minute show will broaden your perspective and will not leave you indifferent.
Tribes is about Billy, deaf from birth but raised by hearing parents to be part of the hearing world only, meeting Sylvia, a hearing woman raised by deaf parents and who is becoming deaf herself. Billy is a skilled lip reader but hasn’t learned ASL, in which Sylvia is fluent. (Although set in England, this Theatrefront production uses ASL rather than British Sign Language, which is as different from ASL as French is from Spanish.)
The script addresses deafness not as a disability to be overcome, as Billy’s family considers it to be, but as an issue of inclusion, exclusion, and identity. The family gives Billy only fragmentary recaps of their conversations. Rather than telling his son what they are yelling about, the intellectual patriarch Christopher, played with hair-raising rancor by Joseph Ziegler, quips, “Join in, Billy; have an argument!” When the parents and sister (Patricia Fagan) storm off in different directions, Billy asks his brother Daniel, “What happened?” Daniel says only, “Dad was being annoying again.”
In contrast to his dysfunctional malcontent family, Billy is a likeable character, someone you would want to have a conversation with, but he also has complexity and makes some dubious moral choices. Stephen Drabicki, a hard-of-hearing New York actor, brings out all the flavours of Billy, from laid back and amiable to enraged, and no doubt brings a great deal of personal experience to this engaging and moving performance.
When Billy introduces Sylvia to his family, Christopher fiercely questions Sylvia, determined to discover weaknesses of sign language. And he continually scorns the deaf community, saying, “Like any cult, it’s based on exclusion.” Sylvia endures the first encounter and is admitted into the family’s “abusive” love, but as Billy learns ASL and starts to find acceptance in the deaf community, he begins to expect more consideration from his family than they are willing to give him. He wants them to learn to speak to him in sign language. “I’m tired of asking, ‘What? What? What?’ all the time!” The family is outraged. His mother (Nancy Palk) says, “Billy, put yourself in our position.” “No!” he says, “You put yourself in mine!” At the same time as Billy is finding himself, Sylvia tells him, “I don’t know who I am anymore. I’m going deaf.”
You don’t need to know sign language to appreciate Tribes. Most dialogue is in English, and dialogue that is in ASL (ASL coach, Elizabeth Morris) is captioned on stage. Apart from dialogue, the sur-titles are not always adding to the clarity of the production. Projections (Lorenzo Savoini, set, lighting and projection designer) during scene transitions might have been minimized or omitted to give the audience a moment of downtime to let the finished scene settle in the mind.
Live entertainment accessible to deaf audiences is exceedingly rare, so it is regrettable that ASL interpretation (ASL interpreter, Penny Shincariol) was provided for only two performances, now past. Tribes is a captivating drama and can be enjoyed on its own, but for those interested in learning more about the issues approached in the play, Canadian Stage is partnering with the Deaf Cultural Centre in the Distillery to offer Wednesday night workshops this month on the experience of deaf people in Canada.