Was that because of the tendency to cast able-bodied actors in disabled parts? (A recent study found that 95% of disabled parts go to able-bodied actors.) Was it that the character didn’t fit their perceptions of deaf people? (Silent? Sign-language user? Lost and confused?) Or was it because I’ve worked so hard to improve the clarity of my voice that I now sound more hearing than deaf?
This is where I am stuck between a rock and a hard place.
There is no escaping that I am deaf. I can lip-read and hear with the use of hearing aids. Not as clearly as you, mind, but unlike you, I can crank up the volume. If my back is turned and you’re talking to me, I am probably not deliberately ignoring you. If you call out “house lights going dark” and forget to tell me, I may fall off the stage. Working with me doesn’t sound so terrible, does it? I do sound a little funny though. You’re going to shake your ears for a while as if they’ve got water in them, and then get on with it. It’s not you, it’s me.
It’s a fact I’m comfortable with – I have a disability. There should be no shame in having a disability, only pride in the ownership of the fact. I am proud of who I am. I am proud of being deaf.
But in the same way that being deaf doesn’t define all that I am as a person, I don’t want it to define the roles I play. It’s an incredibly limiting way to live and to work. And because I have a disability that I cannot hide (or fully disguise), that means I stay firmly in the bracket of “deaf actor”, rather than “actor”. In the rigidity of the casting process, that can mean fewer than 10 auditions per year.
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