Go Erika!
Today in the LA Times Calendar Section:
Poetry in the hands, wating to be shared. Deaf West Theater Mounts its first original production "Sleeping Beauty Wakes."
"Put your hands down. Thumbs up, don't curve your fingers. And do 'happy' from your elbows, not your wrists .... "
At the Kirk Douglas Theatre, American Sign Language expert Elizabeth Greene is coaching hearing actors Kevin Earley and Erika Amato through the intricacies of a sing-and-sign song during a rehearsal of "Sleeping Beauty Wakes," the new musical being mounted by Deaf West Theatre.
A little later, running through another song, Earley flubs it. Deaf actor Troy Kotsur signs good-humored sarcasm. Earley breaks up. Then Kotsur, who relies on visual cues and counting to match the music he can't hear, is out of sync.
Deaf West's audacious "deaf musical" approach has been seasoned through revivals of "Oliver!" and the Tony-honored "Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." The latter went from its beginnings in 2001 at the company's sub-99-seat theater in North Hollywood to the Mark Taper Forum to Broadway and beyond.
But "Sleeping Beauty Wakes" — a modern twist on the fairy tale by songwriters Brendan Milburn and Valerie Vigoda of the indie rock band GrooveLily and librettist Rachel Sheinkin ("The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee") — is Deaf West's first original musical.
Sleeping Beauty Wakes