 I think I'm going to talk about how I finally arrived at this product and what my world, to get it to this point, was like. I think I have to start and go back to 1986. And if you come along with me, where we're going to go to, is Texas. I think you're familiar with Big Spring, Texas. There's the Southwest Technical School there. Southwest Collegiate Institute for the Deaf. And I began to work with students. And when I did, I worked with students who traditionally had been criticized for the use of English. It had problems with working in English. And the relationship with their students were estranged because of all of this. When a teacher looked at the student's product, it would say, Yesterday, me, yesterday, had a lot of fun. I was in a car, very, very fast. Went to the mall, met a beautiful girl, very, very beautiful. And we danced the night long. I looked at their stories. I'd say, you know what you told me and what you write is a little bit different. Now the students themselves created this particular story. And I looked at their written work and I said, where's the story you just told me? It's not even close to what you've written for me. Now it's the same old problem, isn't it? There's been a long age problem and frustration with the English language. More often, students have been continually and through years criticized about how they need to work in English. And later in life, they're turned down for job opportunities again because of their lack of command with English. And they would be turned down from Gallaudet or NTID based on their written applications as well. But when you look at their skills in their own native language, they've got exquisite language command. And based on their natural native language, they should be successful in any venture they take. Problem is, is because their frustration with English language, they've lost their confidence in expressing themselves. That their relationships with their English teachers is undermine their performance and resulting in a great lack of confidence. And I guess I have to look back to my own life and find out where I gained my level of confidence as a deaf person. You know what happened right in this very spot? Right on a stage. I came to college here. I'm an alumni of NTID. I came here and they knew I didn't know much sign language, but I communicated in any way that I could. I don't know the wing of the theater department. And the first thing I had to tackle was a Shakespearean play. It was The Tempest. On knowing what was going to happen, I said, Sure, I'd take it. I was given the role of Caliban. Which was right for me. There was barely any language. It was a dirty old kind of character. And I didn't mind. I knew very little about the traditional characterization of Caliban. Of course, then there's the problem of looking at the English printed word of Shakespearean language and trying to figure out what to do it into translation. Well, I was lucky. Patrick Grable was involved in this particular production and played the leading role in The Tempest. The character he played was Prospero. I learned more from him and more from the other collaborators in the production and that's what actually gave my level of confidence. I found my own identity. And I resulted in the B.A.D. of Born Again Deaf. Absolutely. I'm as bad as they come. Born Again Deaf. I have to understand. I'm a little late. Got a bit of a late start in terms of learning sign language and knowing my identity. And you know, many of us, good 90% of us have hearing parents, no language role models. But for those who are left in the mainstream schools and the hearing schools, we really don't have the role models that others do at schools for the deaf. And typically, a lot of us who are deaf and don't have to have parents get a pretty late start. And they may come to the place where I am, being all bad. Now you know, the development of our confidence really should start in the earlier years in school. We certainly should have attained a level of confidence by the time we got to high school. But remember what else we're dealing with, puberty, raging emotions, trying to get through those years of adolescence. I mean, we're dealing with enough. I mean, you have to remember those years, don't you? It's a time of turmoil for all of us. Certainly a lot to deal with. And then I'm top of it to look for your own identity as quite a deal to take on. Now to teach, had I been taught American Sign Language Literature at that time, it would have been a very different story. In Chicago, a lot of us are a product of our culture, aren't we? In Chicago, if you look at any culture, any culture has products from the culture. For Africans, for example, what are the products of their culture? Their dance, certainly their clothing and dress. What else is a product of African culture? The drumming, the music, the articles and artifacts that they trade. Certainly the tradition of storytelling. Yes, ethnic foods and the religion too. You know, those are identifiable cultural products. And certainly characteristics. But you know, we don't have the same thing. Do we have something called deaf food? Do we have something called deaf dance? I suspect maybe what I do right here could be. Is there a deaf God? An earlier presenter this weekend. Charles Katz certainly believes the deaf God we saw his presentation of it. But I do think the one product of our culture clearly is American Sign Language. And it's rich. We've spent nothing for the last two days talking about how much there is in that particular part of our culture in American Sign Language. And the sharing we've done in the last couple of days and with each other is only having that, the volume of our literature grow. How many of you in this audience here just love to cook? We can exchange recipes a little later maybe? And what we'll make today is soup. Are you ready to make my soup? Here it is. Let me present for you a great big pot. And anytime you start with a soup, you start with the base. And any recipe for soup has a good base. And in that base will be all of our non-manual behaviors. Certainly very important part of the soup. Our body language gestures. And that sign specifically, I'm really talking about gestures. The result of all of this thing is a more visual product in the end. Resulting in a clarity in the work. But each one of these ingredients in our soup. Particularly in our base. The way we produce our signs is also a part of this soup. I mean you couldn't make the sign the wrong way. So the production is equally important ingredient. And the classifiers. We have more classifiers in our language that can give color, sound, and add in every kind of flavor to our soup. So we have a pool of classifiers. We've got tons of them. We add all of these things into our soup. And we stir it and let it boil and simmer. But you know you do have to wait. You can't do this too fast. And you know it takes a little patience and some practice. But it's not the easiest work. And now we're ready for the vegetables in our soup. And the vegetables. Before our pasta I'm ready to have them varied. But the vegetables to this particular soup are all the ideas, the themes. And we'll put that into our soup. Now occasionally we have to taste it and make sure it's going the way we want it to. And spice is usually the next thing to add. No more spices. We have many choices for those as well. And those are the techniques that we use to do what we do. For example, hand shapes. The ABC stories. Our number stories. And what you saw in our earlier film, transformation. Let me take a minute to talk about transformation. When a sign has a smooth transition into a uniquely different sign that is a transformation. For example, there's a particular student that's not with our group. The student is Kelly. He's got some imagination and skills. He does this. It's a beautiful transformation. If you look at one sign that goes into a completely uniquely different one. And for example, do you remember yesterday morning? We talked about how we can use just one hand. You saw his characterization where he did all of his story with just one hand. It's the kind of work we should be doing. That's what a transformation is. And in all of the works that we've seen the last couple of days you'll see a lot of transformations. Now speed is another ingredient. And it doesn't always mean fast. It means slow. It gives emphasis to the piece. For example, that's normal speed, right? There's slow speed. See, and that particular use of speed, slow in this case, gives emphasis to the work. And the next vice. It happens anytime that deaf people get together, be it at their schools or at deaf clubs or whatever. There's always one person standing behind another one putting their hands through. That's also an ingredient. We saw a group of students working together. That is also a technique to use. And something that's a little newer. I've been looking into under other art medium, like dance, visual arts, theater, different cultures. We saw a performance from Isaias last night. And he borrowed from African culture and put it into his piece. So African culture, African dance, into a piece are all techniques we can borrow from and use. They're an important ingredient in our soup. And there's many more. And I'm sure there's some we haven't even talked about or discovered yet. And when it's ready, it's delicious. We've had many good examples of this through the last couple of days. We've tasted the soup of Clayton Valley, of Lame Lentz, of Patrick Grable. And we all have a lot more to do in terms of creating our own works. And our youth, our deaf youth are hungry to experiment and play and make their own works come alive. It means all of us, whether we work in schools or in theaters, have a large responsibility to make sure that American Sign Language Literature is part of the curriculum and part of the work that we do. I mean, sure, there's math and science in the regular curriculum items. And people say that there's never enough time to do things like ASL literature or deaf studies. It's important for cognitive skills, for problem solving, for all of the skills that we use in our everyday life to have these tools in order to do interpretation, analysis, to lead discussions, to become the leaders in our community. We need all of these skills. And each of these skills applied to all the other subjects we deal with in our whole lives. Poetry needs to be infused throughout the entire curriculum in our schools. So my words don't need to be said anymore. I'll let my students show you their own works. The film that you saw was done three years ago. What you're going to see soon is more recent work. I was an artist in residence with some of these students at their schools, and we've been working on this for about a year, and if I can ask my students to join Man's Stage at this time. This piece is entitled 1963. Hot Spanish Night, Miss America. The next piece is entitled War, The Boxer, Slaves.