A troupe of Lynchburg theater students, their teachers and two American Sign Language interpreters have been hard at work rehearsing “Silent Sky” for weeks. When they take the stage Friday evening, audience members will be treated to an experience that very few theaters ever offer: a shadow interpreted performance.
In shadow interpretation, costumed ASL interpreters are on stage with the actors. E.C. Glass is one of a few theaters that use this form of ASL interpretation, which allows audience members who are deaf and hard-of-hearing to more easily understand what is happening on stage.
That’s a big deal — with traditional, placed interpretation, audience members who are deaf and hard-of-hearing might miss what’s happening because the interpreter is standing off-stage.
“The kind of analogy we like to think of is if you’re watching a television show, and you add the captioning to the show, but you put the captioning on the opposite wall. So you either look and see what’s being said or you look and see what’s happening,” Lynchburg City Schools interpreter Amber Dempsey said.
“A hearing spouse and a deaf spouse can look in the same place and have all the same feelings at the same time,” said LCS lead educational interpreter Katherine McMullen. She recalled an audience member’s feedback from a show last year: “[A man] said, ‘It’s the first time I’ve ever been to a theater performance. And I laughed at the same time my wife laughed.’”
The show’s two interpreters will move right alongside its five actors, mimicking every step and every word. They have to stay close by, nearly elbow to elbow, so that the audience can better decipher which character is being represented at what time and by whom.
It is an intricate dance, one that McMullen and Dempsey have been practicing for nine years. They’ve known ASL since long before then.
McMullen has been an interpreter for 28 years. Dempsey learned ASL from her interpreter mother 35 years ago.
“I kind of learned it as I was learning English at the same time,” she said, explaining that she learned ASL as a young child.
Together, they learned shadow interpreting in 2015. That was the year E.C. Glass’ former theater director, Tom Harris, cast a student who was deaf in the school’s production of “Children of a Lesser God.”
That first show was a story about the deaf experience and hearing oppression, according to McMullen.
“[Harris] came to us and said, ‘If we’re doing this, we’re doing it right. And so we need to shadow the whole thing,’” McMullen said.
E.C. Glass was awarded a grant from the Lynchburg Education Foundation for the project.
The school hired Detroit-based nonprofit Terp Theater to travel to Lynchburg to train McMullen, Dempsey and a third interpreter over the course of a single weekend. Terp Theatre has promoted shadow interpretation in theater since 1990.
“It was a whirlwind. It was a weekend to be a sponge and pick up everything you can because they were going to leave on Monday,” Dempsey said.
“It was incredibly immersive. It was extremely challenging. It was much harder than I thought it would be,” McMullen said.
The Terp Theater instructors taught more than just shadow interpreting techniques, McMullen said. They also taught the theory that would be necessary for interpreting many more shows in the future.
“It combines the features of ASL with having to work on the stage and the features of the theater,” McMullen said.
“It’s different in that it’s not just translating English into ASL off of written word, but it’s adding costuming, it’s adding movement, it’s adding blocking. We’re no longer just standing by on the floor. We’re with the actors on stage moving as they move, moving how they move, and conveying the mood and the tone of what they’re saying,” she added.
While many actors might perform in a play, typically only two to three interpreters will be involved in the production. Each one will interpret multiple actors at a time, moving between characters as necessary.
The interpreters place themselves close to the characters they are representing and work to mimic their body language as closely as possible.
Each show takes at least 30 hours of additional work per interpreter, and can take up to 80 hours of work for more extensive productions like the high school’s spring musical. That’s on top of their regular responsibilities within the school system, McMullen said.
“The level of preparation is so intense because we are in costume onstage, moving, learning choreography, really becoming a part of the cast and the whole production,” McMullen said.
This is opposed to placed interpretation, which takes a lot less preparation, she said.
E.C. Glass offers one to two shadow interpreted performances a year, one shadow per production.
“We don’t wait for people to come to ask us, ‘Hey, will you interpret this show?’ We make it their theater and someone comes and then the next time three people come, and the next time 15 people come,” McMullen said.
“We have built a following in an audience in the deaf community,” she added.
Audience members who are deaf and hard-of-hearing have driven from as far away as South Carolina to see these productions, McMullen said.
Zone interpretation is a third ASL option. Glass Theatre uses it for most of its shows throughout the year because it offers an immersive experience with less preparation and cost.
“A zone show is a compromise between a placed show — interpreters over in a corner — and a shadow show, where we are fully integrated with interpreters on stage,” McMullen said.
In a zone interpreted show, Dempsey and McMullen will dress in full costume and sit or stand somewhere in the set. They will blend in with the scene and will be staged closer to the actors, but they will not move with the actors.
“We’re put as people that belong there and the cast can still interact with us,” Dempsey said.
They dressed in long skirts and boots and stood next to bales of hay for “Oklahoma!”, for instance, she said.
In “45 Seconds from Broadway,” McMullen and another interpreter were seated in the diner and served pie and drinks while they interpreted the show, McMullen said.
“For Glass, a placed show over in the corner, in black, is not an option. So it’ll either be a zone show or a fully shadow show,” she said.
Interpreters for a placed show make a minimum of $500 for about 15 hours of work, she said. For a shadow interpreted show, she would expect that each interpreter should make roughly $1,000 to $1,500 per performance.
Zone interpreting for last fall’s production of “Play On!” cost approximately $700, according to Lynchburg City Schools spokesperson Austin Journey.
Prior to 2022, funding for ASL interpreting services was provided by the school division’s special education department, McMullen said. Since then, money for ASL interpreting at theater performances has been delegated to each of the district’s two high schools. Those funds have come from the schools’ personnel budgets, according to Journey.
In the last six weeks, McMullen and E.C. Glass technical director Erin Foreman have each appealed to the school board for designated funding. In an official statement for this story, the school division responded that it is “committed to ensuring that theatrical productions remain accessible to everyone in our community” and that those services will be funded by each of the two high schools.
The E.C. Glass theater department plans to approach local businesses for additional sponsorships to supplement that funding. The theater department currently receives some sponsorships, according to its Facebook page.
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In the meantime, McMullen, Dempsey and the five student actors are preparing to take the stage. “Silent Sky” is based on the true story of 19th century astronomer Henrietta Leavitt. She and her female coworkers at Harvard Observatory faced a lot of restrictions due to their gender, according to director Allison Daugherty.
“It is about the stars and physics and it’s also a romance. … It is poetic and beautiful. It is everything you’d ever want in a play,” she said.
Students started rehearsing “Silent Sky” six weeks ago; McMullen and Dempsey needed about two weeks’ worth of rehearsals.
To prepare, McMullen and Dempsey first watched the students rehearse the play in its entirety. Daugherty called it a “stumble-through.”
There were a lot of starts and stops. McMullen and Dempsey recorded the entire session, watching every movement. Their eyes never left the cast.
After the first act, the interpreters and actors ran through a scene in which actors playing Henrietta Leavitt and Peter Shaw looked through a clear glass plate.
McMullen and Dempsey fought to stay right alongside Sophia Haupt and Morgan Cook as they played Leavitt and Shaw, signing the actors’ words as they went. This was their first time working this scene together.
The actors get used to working with the interpreters pretty quickly, according to Daugherty.
“Our [interpreters] will find little moments and work out little moments to interact and agree or be in sync with [the actors]. And that’s something that the actors relish. It’s almost like being a twin. And that’s delightful,” Daugherty said.
Both Dempsey and McMullen have prior experience in theater.
Dempsey finds satisfaction in being a part of a team that provides accessible experiences to a population that might otherwise not be able to experience theater in this way.
“”Being a part of a team that is the bridge for them is extremely fulfilling,” she said.
“It’s crazy that I get to do two things that I love so much and put them together. And when I do, other people who haven’t been able to experience the magic [of] theater are able to, and many of them [do so for] the first time,” McMullen said.
Oftentimes, the deaf and hard-of-hearing audience members will gather outside the theater after a performance. They talk about the performance by signing to one another, McMullen said.
Daugherty remembers a time that, through interpretation, one audience member told one of her actors that he had never experienced a live musical before. The man and her student both began to cry.
“If that’s what that’s what gives our students empathy, if that’s what builds a sense of other people’s experiences, I think that’s priceless,” Daugherty said.
E.C. Glass High School will offer a shadow interpretation of “Silent Sky” at 7 p.m. Friday in the Glass theater. “Silent Sky” is playing through Saturday. Tickets are $12 per adult or $8 per student or senior and may be purchased at this link.