Deaf Awareness workshop

Deaf awareness workshop

As part of our training for this show we had a deaf awareness workshop delivered from two old students who were in our strand a year before us. This workshop was very important to our rehearsals as we got a better understanding on what to do, how to do and what not to do in the signing world.

The start of the workshop we warmed up in complete silence so we were asking to do a number of simple task like getting in height order and birthday order, so we had to lip read as well as use gestures. I find that I did more hand gestures for example with doing the birthday task I find I use my hand to show when my birthday as I know that it was the easiest way to do it. I really enjoyed this warm up as I felt I could completely focus on what I was doing as well as keep my eyes open on what was going on around me. I like the feeling of complete silence as it meant everyone was focused.

There are 3 main types of signing, signed supported English (SSE), vision vernacular (VV), British sign language (BLS), these were the three main signing we have learnt in this workshop so the British sign language is the most common one as it has a sign for mostly every word in the English language which will be the one we will use most in our signing in our show. The other is vision vernacular known as well as VV which it doing more gestured movements to communication in a more visional way. The last one is sign supported English is using the BLS word but following spoken English more than BLS.

Working in pairs

This part of the workshop we looked at how to make signing with a pair, so I work with someone I get on well with, so I felt I could really push and have fun with making the signs we had in a sentence (I can’t remember what the actual sentence was, but I know it was about the world and peace) and had to create a small section on sign with this sentence. I find that both of us had a good idea of what would look good as we have both done “Chickenshed” which work with signing so we had a good base to start from. I enjoy working with her as she as the same work energy as me so it meant we could really work on it. We came up with doing the sign for earth together then peace as one but then we did the last signs together on our own. When we showed it to the class I found it was very similar to everyone else which meant we should have thought more of what we could have done with those signs and not picking the easier sign to do together.

The main part of this workshop was becoming aware of being around deaf people and on how to get their attention. This is very important as there is a number of ways to get their attention for example using the lights in the room by switching them on and off gently, taping them on their shoulder gently, waving your arms if they are in eye sight and last but not least using vibration in the ground by stamping your feet or hitting you on a table if they are on you table. I found this part of the work shop really interesting as it give me a better understanding to perform scenes in our play which I am not able to sign; for example if I walk on stage using talking I could make my moments bigger and more open to help get the attention of the deaf people.