 Welcome. We are so glad you are here. This event is in celebration of the production of Love Person by Adi DiCaprio. He's up there on that live stream right there. In addition to all of you who are here with us in person, we also have an online audience. Hello, online audience. Nice to see you. There's a camera at the back of this room, and it's going to be broadcasting our conversation. Online, and we may also end up having questions that come in from our online audience for our two wonderful panelists, Adi Di and Bonnie, who I will introduce momentarily. What that means is, this center aisle should be kept clear if possible. If you have to leave the room, it's not a problem to walk in front of the camera. Just don't hang out there, because I guess all I would ask. In terms of the logistics of this event, obviously the goal is to make it accessible for everyone. To that end, we have a couple of interpreters on staff with us today. So, obviously, who will be signing for us for any questions that come from the audience? We'll be signed up here. And any conversation that happens between Adi Di and myself and Bonnie, Bonnie will sign for herself, obviously. But Adi Di and I will be interpreted. The other half is that we have another fabulous interpreter up here in the chair. Actually, you can stand for a moment and say hi. And she will be voicing any questions that come from the audience. And she will also voice for Bonnie. Is that correct? Great. So, I guess what I would ask for our online audience who can only see the people up here at the front, just know that there may be a lag for a moment or two while the interpreting is happening. And that's just part of what it means to have a completely accessible event. And we're excited to be here with all of you in the room and online. So, I'm going to start with very brief introductions of both Adi Di and of Bonnie. And I'll probably ask them to throw in a couple other words if they think I've missed anything really important, which is probable. So, I'm going to start with Adi Di. Adi Di is a playwright who is based in Minneapolis. She is multinational in descent and in writing interests. The majority of her work tends to take as, if not the major theme, then at least a partial theme. Questions of communication, of understanding, of language in particular. As a bilingual or, correct me, trilingual? How many linguals are you? Try, I'll think, okay, I'll think three. As a trilingual artist, most of her work tends to play with language quite a bit. This play obviously doesn't. And so, Adi Di has also been represented on stages around the country, and she's been the recipient of several major awards, including a New Play Development Award granted by the NEA and the New Play Institute when it was housed at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. So that's Adi Di in a nutshell. Completely, sort of, not adequate to describe the complexity of her work, but it's a start. To my right is Bonnie Kaplan, who is the Director of Cultural Affairs for BSA Massachusetts, which is the state organization for disability and the arts. And because Bonnie has about a million major accomplishments, I'm going to cheat for a second and read. So in addition to her other work at the BSA, she also is in charge of the Open Door Gallery, Boston Art Reach, Inclusive by Design, and in the past, the National Cultural Access Institute. She provides technical assistance to program participants on universal program design and development of inclusive audiences, especially serving people who are deaf or hard of hearing. One of the things that makes Bonnie a perfect co-participant in this event today with Adi Di about the world of display and about what it means to intersect with display is that not only does Bonnie have all of these amazing other qualifications, but she's no stranger to theater. Having co-produced several things including the show of hands deaf theater festival. So today we're here and we're going to have a conversation for a little while between Bonnie and Adi Di and myself. And then we're going to take questions from the audience. So if you think of something, hold on to it. We will come back to you in about 20 minutes. In the meantime, I should probably tell you who I am. My name is Ilana Brownstein, and I am the director of new work here at Hukena. I also serve as the dramaturg on this show, which means that one of my jobs was to discover and present pathways into the world of the play for all of the various constituencies. Whether that's the actors, the designers, the company, the community, or you in this room right now. So this kind of event that we're doing here is part of our larger goal in terms of finding new ways to communicate with a wider group of people who live and work and make Boston their home and potentially are willing to have a conversation with us. So we're really glad all of you are here. And to our online audiences, we're really glad you're here today. And we look forward to whatever questions you might have. You can use the Twitter hashtag number sign new play in order to communicate with us during this event. This event will be about 45, 50 minutes, give or take. And afterwards, there'll be time to chat with any of us. We'll remain around and you can ask us any further questions you might have. So with that, let's get started. Hi Aditi. Hi. I will add, I guess, that we will just have to make some allowances for the weirdness of technology and wifi. Aditi's audio is coming through perfectly. It's a little bit choppy in the video. I'm sure it's the same for her in terms of our video. So we will roll with the punches, I'm sure. So Aditi, I wanted to start by getting you to just talk very briefly about the impetus for writing this play. It is unusual for a hearing playwright to decide to take on deaf culture so intimately as you did. And I think you'd be great if you could share with our audiences what the inspiration for that was. The very first seeds of this play happened when I worked a lot with deaf performers. I've voiced quite a bit with deaf performers. And I have one very good friend, her name is Nick Zacko, who is one of my favorite performers, deaf or hearing or, you know, in general, one of my favorite performers. And I was voicing for her in a show at McSlob Theatre. And at the same time I was researching Sanskrit for a fiction project I was working on. And I was struck by a kind of poetic similarity between the two languages. And I had this idea of what if I wrote something where a deaf woman and a Sanskrit scholar fell in love faced entirely on the affinity between their languages. And the first thing I did was try to write it as a short story and it didn't work at all, it was terrible. And then a few years later, I thought I was a play because ASL is amazing on stage. And I will say this, I didn't set out to write a play about deaf culture so much as to write a play that had both deaf and hearing characters in it, kind of in a naturalistic way, which is I think the difference while I made Nick and her partner Lisa talk to me so much during the time we created this play, that was more so that I could get deeper into their characters than anything else. But it's a play that has both deaf and hearing characters, which is why I think it falls into this interesting and between category, between deaf and hearing theater. And this play has been produced at small and large stages. But one of the things you and I have talked about is the challenges and opportunities that producing this play allows for a company that has not necessarily previously worked intimately with deaf artists or with the deaf community. So being a playwright and having watched this across a couple of different theaters over time, can you talk a little bit about your perception of what some of the challenges are and where some of the common successes are around this? Oh, I think right when theaters embark on the play, consistently they usually don't know quite what they're getting into. If you haven't worked with deaf artists or in collaboration with deaf theaters before, there's no way you can anticipate all the different kind of treasures and challenges that are ahead of you. So I've got to warn people, I don't waste out, like I'm telling people not to do my play, but I'm really just trying to warn them so that they go in with eyes of the very challenging piece of theater. That's it, that's it. What must you work your way through those challenges to make it a really beautiful play and not just this thing where you're worrying about how are you going to queue this actor and how are you going to make sure that this actor who doesn't know ASL understands when they're queuing, you know, like all of that bilingual stuff. Once you get through that, once you figure out what it is to work with an amazing signmaster who encompasses what you're creating, what it is to work with interpreters in the room all the time and all your words are going through the interpreters, be you deaf or hearing, everything is going through these interpreters and you're so dependent on them. Once you get through all of that, I feel like the experience of succeeding with this play is a big part of the awesome thing about doing it because it's going through something huge together. You know, it is challenging and it's fabulous when it actually works. I think that's one point. And then for the audiences, the next step of that is to interface with the audiences and seeing audiences experience something completely unfamiliar in the space is to me, since I usually just see production, I don't always get in there. I bury myself in it in the process that just you're invited by people with panics or anything else. But the audience experiences, to me, is one of the more amazing things because both for hearing and deaf audiences, it's so rich. It's great for a hearing audience to be into experience this multilingual thing where they are occasionally left out in a really poetic, significant way. And it's so great for deaf audiences, I think, to be in a space that is just inclusive. It's just part of the story. The deaf character and the language is just part of the story. They're not looking off to the side for their interpreter. They're experiencing it as an adhesive artistic entity, which is a big part of what I wanted from this play. Access is a wonderful thing. This play is about bilingualness and not about access, if that makes sense. That does make sense. And I think that's a really interesting way for us to continue this conversation because, indeed, I think the important thing that art can do is not necessarily that we provide access to everybody but that the storytelling itself becomes the point of it. Storytelling is inclusive. Hi! This is one of my daughters. She has a beautiful lead. Talking back here is about the way that the bilingual quality of the script and of the process makes it possible for multiple kinds of people. I use the term kinds in all different ways, whether it's language or something else, or identity that all people can have access to a really centralized story. That seems very different from ways that are simply interpreted to be accessible. Maybe I want to turn this over to Bonnie for a second. I'm just going to turn this here so that you can see each other. Bonnie, do you want to talk for a moment? Maybe you can start with... You just saw this play on Friday. You have anything you want to start with from the experience of watching it. That's great. Also, maybe take a moment to talk about this concept of access versus bilingualism. Do you have anything you want to add about that? As we do this, we've got a voicer who's going to turn on her mic. There we are. Before I got to the venue, I really had no idea what to expect from this play. The only thing that I knew was, first of all, that it would be fully inclusive. And secondly, that both hearing and deaf characters were written in. So I was really looking forward to that. At the same time, I had no idea how the story would progress. And really, my mind was blown. I was trying to think, what am I saying to myself? I wish that more theater was like this. That then the theater community would be in a better place. And I really have you to thank for that. And I'm hoping that other theater companies will see this production and realize, you know, Oh, it's not so bad. It's not so complicated. If they can do it, we can do it too. And really honestly, the deaf community is hungry for this kind of thing in mainstream theater. We're tired of having a separate place for ourselves. And also, I want to add, one thing that's cool about this is that I could come to this show anytime. I did not have, it was not pre-picked for me which day I came. Because usually, typically, there is a limited number of dates that there will be an interpreted event. You can only come on Wednesday. Or you can only come on Sunday afternoon. Or Saturday morning. You know, two o'clock in the afternoon. And I'm sorry, we want to have equal access to the theater. So this play was really a perfect example because it was fully accessible. And I was also watching the hearing audiences reaction. There were moments where the stage was completely silent. And people were looking at each other because they didn't know how to respond to that kind of situation. They didn't know what they had missed. And you know, for me, I thought that I had missed something too. And realized that it was on purpose. This is part of the playwriting. You want us to have similar experiences in the audience. So I did it the way that you wrote this, the way that it was expressed, could not be done any better. I'm still amazed at how you were able to share your personal experiences. Your experiences in deaf theater and with deaf community. And working for the hearing community as well. And being able to put that on paper. And really the storytelling allowed us to be a part of this. And I'm hoping to see more things like this in the future. So thank you so much, David. Didi, I wonder if you can spend a moment. Oh, we've got some major props going on. I'm wondering if you can take a moment and talk about, from your point of view, as the playwright, as the person in whose brain this play originally formed itself and had to sort of work itself out on paper and through the development process, I feel like in your conversations with me, you've been talking about how it's important for there to be an audience that has both hearing members and deaf members side by side. Bonnie was just talking about what that meant for her to have that. As a playwright, what does that mean for you? It's, you know, I feel like the degree to which I get political in my work, which I'm not an activist playwright per se, but I do feel like I'd like to see more on our stages that reflects more the society that we are. And it's not because I'm trying to make a point. It's more because it's more interesting that way, you know? And the stories are richer and more complex. And I think for me, the experience of, so theatre for me, it happens somewhere between the performance and the audience. It's not just the production. It's somewhere in the air between the performance and the audience. And the piece of live theatre is so great and actually is different from TV and film, which I very much enjoy TV and film. But live theatre is different because there's something about that energy that you send out when you're sitting in a household of people, you know, but there's humans up there on the stage, and there's like an unspoken communion and connection that's happening between everyone. And I feel, boom, I think, that is, oh my God, you! Oh, look at that, I can see her behind me. I feel like that experience of a multiplicity of experience and the multiplicity of experiences on the stage, having people sitting next to you, such a troublemaker, having people sitting next to you who are experiencing the lap at a different time in the life, who are taking in through a lens that's different from yours, and you can feel their body, you can feel how they're emotionally connecting, and it's making you connect on that level too, that kind of mind, that the mind that happens to the audience is a really beautiful thing for me. I'm not kidding, you're going to end up with no ice cream for dessert. So there's a good effect that I love when you put the play star effects there, there's a lot of noise, there's that whole scene, but then the scene between the two women that's completely sad happens. The deaf audience is cool with it. They're laughing, they're with them like from the first moment of that scene. The hearing audience, usually there's this rough, a little bit of discomfort that happens. Can you repeat that? Where they're like, who is this? Alright. From the audience? Yeah, we have the hearing audience. Well, it's a technical issue. Can you back up to say, the place we lost you was, you were about to say something about, you talked about how the deaf audience receives that moment, but the hearing audience has a different experience of the silent scene. So if you can just pick up what you were saying there. So the deaf audience is obviously very comfortable with the silent ASL scene. If anything, it's pure because no one's going to leave their lips around and try to make all that noise, right? You are seriously, you're going to be in so much trouble. You can't ask. No, they won't talk to me right now. The hearing audience, almost every single production has seen. At the beginning of that scene, there's this rustle of discomfort amongst them because it's so quiet and it's so uncomfortable that it's so quiet. And then it passes. And it passes as they get into the story because there's amazing stories about acting generally going on up there on the stage. And it also passes because they notice and they feel that the deaf audience is so comfortable and that makes them comfortable. And it's okay to just relax and be in a silent space for a while. And that's really, I don't know, I love that. I love the shift in our mind and in our bodies and in our breathing that happens with that. Yeah, a mix of audience and a mix of the characters on stage is just a really special thing for me. She's not an asset to create change, especially if the storytelling is heartfelt or pure or complex enough. As somebody who works day to day with the arts as a means of access, where do you point on that and where that sits with your own personal opinions or with the work you do? I save performers in my work daily and work with hearing interpreters on site. And every time I go to a show, I always tell myself, I wish, I just wish that everything could become deaf world, so to speak. Because I feel that the deaf community has not really given a lot of opportunities to really show or really to see what's going on all over the country. There are fabulous deaf actors just waiting to be discovered. They just need an opportunity. But unfortunately, society and hearing society, we want Marla Mann because she won the award. And it's like, wait a minute, we have other talented actors out there who haven't been given an opportunity to show what they can do and from whom the organization can become even better. So that's one of my frustrations. I don't see that opportunity happening in my job often enough. And that's one of the reasons that the Deaf Theatre Festival back in 2005 was a passion of mine. I wish that I could believe that. People are so hungry for ASL in storytelling and on the stage. So from that event, it was a three-day festival. I received so much feedback, so much positive feedback, people asking when we could have this kind of thing again. I wish that it was easy to do again. We had a lot of support from the hearing community to help make it happen. And maybe someday it will, maybe someday it will happen again. But what hearing theatre companies don't realize is that millions of audience members that they're losing out there. It's only when they can fully open the doors to the Deaf community when it's a two-way street, when Deaf artists can show their work and you've made that possible. So I'm hoping that this production and this play will become a model. And I want to thank Company One for being brazen and bold enough to challenge themselves. And it was a great success. I actually have a question for you. Elana, are you up for a question? Yeah. When you first read this story, what was your first impression? I actually, so I will say that I was lucky enough to lay my hands on a copy of the script when it was still, I think maybe just after its first production or clip, maybe it was still in development. The original dramaturge on the play was a friend of mine. She had been telling me about it and I said, I have to read that play. And so she put me in touch with Aditi. And Aditi and I, for a long time, were nice friends but we never met in person because she sent me the script and I read it and my jaw fell on the floor. I thought, not only does this play have an interesting story about people, so they're interesting people, interesting things happen to them. And that's, for me, my definition of good theater is that a good story well told. So we had that, but on top of that, you had to be intense theatricality of bodies moving through space and time in a way that was unusual for me to see on the stage. It used the elements, as Aditi talked about, the elements of silence for the hearing audience. It used the elements of ASL but in lots of different ways. One of the things that I, and not just me, certainly the entire production team and audiences and company have discovered through the performance of this that I don't think is actually possible to know when you're reading it on the stage but actually comes alive when the actor takes this on is Jackie. Jackie are you in the room? Hi Jackie. Jackie are our actor who serves as the sort of central interpreter in the play between death and hearing worlds, like Maggie. One of the things that Jackie talked about, and forgive me if I speak on your behalf, I can throw in anything if you'd like if I get it wrong, one of the things Jackie talked about was the problem of synchonic, simultaneous communication, trying to speak and sign two different languages essentially at the same time. And the complexities of that are not just difficult sort of intellectually but they're difficult politically. And that was something that I, that has become one of the most interesting things about this play that I didn't even know about until we were in the middle of it. So I think that this is one of those scripts that as you, when you read it, it is one experience which I thought was stunning and beautiful. And as you work on it and discover more and more about what it means to actually put it into practice, that to me has been stunning as we've gone through it. And I mean, I'm trying not to be hyperbolic here or trying not to exaggerate but the complexities for me as a theatre artist working on this script have been equal to any of the best classical literature like Shakespeare or Laure-Moyer any of those things that yield themselves layer after layer after layer as you work on it. I think none of us actually, as Adibi says, none of us knew what we were getting into when we started the project. And that's probably okay, like in fact I know that's okay. And you just kind of have to be willing to do it. So for us, I think that's been an amazing process. And for Bevin, the director who sadly just had to leave but I hope she won't mind me speaking on her behalf, Bevin didn't know sign language before deciding to work on this play and embarked on a course of ASL so that she could effectively communicate in the rehearsal hall and has become pretty good at it, right? She pretty much doesn't need the interpreters when talking to the actors or we also have a deaf lighting designer who worked on this play. So that's been really, it's been great I think for the hearing artists involved in the production it's been really great to sort of have access to a new mode of expression of communication that I think for a lot of hearing people it can be scary because we're afraid of maybe giving offense and doing a play like this makes it easier to not be afraid of them. And we see in the background the perils of being a working mother since we all know. I don't know if I'm going to end up with the interpreters, right? Yeah? That's fantastic, great job, you guys. It was like, ah! Seriously, I can't take it anymore. So one more question on that if I may. After doing this, what kind of advice would you give to another theatre company taking us on? What message, if any, would you give to them? My central piece of advice is to know that there is no way to know what you're getting into before you start it. And that in fact that's the deal with making art in general. That if you try to plan it all out in advance you will clearly fail because whatever that plan was will stop being useful about three days in. Instead of speaking for the company, I'll speak for myself for a moment. I have had one of the most profound artistic experiences of my life working on this play because it has given me lots of opportunity to think and talk about things that are not part of my daily life and to me that's what theatre is for. So if I were to talk to another company to say, you know, why do we play like this? I actually think one of the greatest benefits is that it helps us as a theatre company really be in conversation with a part of our community that beforehand we weren't in conversation with. And if we're invested in making art and if anybody is invested in making art the point should be to create those paths that you mentioned. So my advice to other companies would be to take it on and to know that you don't know what you're doing and the best thing you can do is be transparent about that. You can be transparent and just say, I don't know. That gets you a long way as we have discovered with all of our amazing, amazing help on this production from the deaf community. We could not have done it without their help and without your help, frankly. So that becomes a real value to us as a company who has as its mission and interest in the community. Other companies may not have that interest and that's okay, that's their business. But for us and for other companies like us I think that it makes a big impact. I'm wondering now if maybe this would be a great time to open this up to questions from the audience. So a little word about logistics. Here's how this is going to go. We'll work this out as we go as I'm just mentioning about being transparent. Here's me being transparent. If you have a question, if you can be so kind as to raise your hand and I'll figure out what order we'll call on people. If I call on you, if you could stand up, give the interpreter a moment to find you in the room and if you are going to be speaking, we'll hand you a microphone. So we'll take these questions from the audience. The questions can be from Bonnie or Adi. Yeah, I guess, but they're more interesting so ask them. And every once in a while I'm sure we'll get a couple of questions in from the Twitter audience and I'll sort of get a signal from the back of the room that lets us know that that's happening. We'll take that question. So if you are going to be asking a question, you're going to be signing. It will be voiced for you as you sign. And if you are speaking, it will be interpreted up here. So that's sort of how we'll try to make this work. So who wants to be brave? If you have a question, they want to start with Sabrina. Our free has a question. Since being involved in your story with a hearing partner in the play, once in a while I have wondered if you have seen stories about deaf and hearing couples who went to the play and have felt an effect from it at home. I'm wondering if you've had any gossip or any fan mail about that. If it has caused any domestic disputes or anything in the opposite direction of people really figuring out how they're going to make this work. So I was just curious about that. No, no, no. I, you know, I have a lot of issues with that. My good friend, Nick, is a deaf artist who is in, yeah, completely in control of my work. Lisa, who is a teacher and who acts as her interpreter in life, you know? And so when I started writing this play, I don't think I knew that I was going to try to make it believe but I didn't know. I just knew that that was a huge part of their relationship. The fact that whenever they were in the world, Lisa was mixed access to it. It was a hearing gathering. And if it was a deaf gathering, Lisa is extremely proficient. So then they were both very comfortable. And it's a relationship and it shifts the nature from a relationship. They're also in the world. It's funny when they first read the play. They said, how do you know how we fight? And I said, I don't. That was me and my husband. Fuck me. It's a play. I have nothing about how you fight. I just, you know, people are closer to people fight. And so I write from what I get and what I know. And sorry, I thought you guys never fight. But you know, the inspiration certainly came from the fact that these two women have this tense bond language-wise with what is in this hearing. So there's additional facets to their relationship when they engage in the world. And I think that there's a fact that Lisa, whenever they're, when we go to a bar together, Lisa's hands are always going like this. It's a part of their world, a part of their reality. So a lot of them are inspired by them. But then a lot of the relationships, you know, I've been married for a lot of years. I think every frustration and fight that I've had might have worked its way into some relationship in that play. So that's why I think it's more from a universal play. The part about the deaf and hearing partnership, I took a lot from observations of them. So that's where I'm going to answer the question. Yes. Yes, that's great. Thank you. And then do we have other questions from the audience? I'm going to participate in the show for the first time. Wow. What an impact. But then as it went on, I totally got involved in the play. I identified with the characters and the relationship and the acting. And actually my partner is hearing. So I was like, hey, look at that. So, right? I wanted more. I want more of that story. So thank you so much, Anita. Good job. And I want more. Please, please, please. I just want to thank you, Bonnie. And all of the company who wanted to go ahead with this. What a great production. I really, I love that show. And congratulations, Sabrina. Oh, yes. Thank you. Thank you, Steve. And I don't really have a comment so much as a question, but I'll try to keep it short. First of all, I just wanted to give everyone a hand. Everyone who was involved in this. I know there's a lot of logistics, a lot of deaf culture, a lot of hearing culture, a lot of issues to deal with in the course of this production. So I applaud you. You worked it out really, really well. Now I want to go back to my question. So I did read the script before I came. I was thrilled that, you know, that a hearing playwright came up with this story. Just a very brave thing to do. It really felt real. Really felt truthful. And I'm amazed. I think that this was a successful, a successful endeavor. So props to you and also to Company One. Because you have really opened some doors and broken down some barriers. And I think everyone in this room would agree. So thank you. You are truly pioneers. Braving down barriers for other companies. So thank you, Company One. I'd like to add Steve's comment, if I may. He mentioned that you are brave as a hearing playwright to write this story as a hearing person. The deaf community can be very sensitive and also very political. Very quickly made political. But you made it clear that you are involving the deaf community during the writing process. And also asking for their feedback, their input. And I think that that was invaluable. That that was what led to acceptance for you. I think that if you had gone on on your own and written this play without any of that input, without any of that involvement, it may have been a very different reaction. Yes, I have a question. I have a comment to add. It was obvious that deaf people were involved in this production. I can tell from the first minute. Helping with the language and making sure that the signing was clear. I really want to applaud the cast. They did a fantastic job. I was inspired. I am also in hearing a deaf relationship. And it made me laugh. In the beginning of that relationship, there were a lot of cultural conflicts. And you were showing some of that. Like the sign for poetry. I mean really. It's like the sign for music. And hearing people love music. And everyone's always saying, why don't you deaf like music? So I enjoyed it. Congratulations to all of the cast. Great job to all of you. And of course the author as well. Thank you. And I just, I just, we are in my chair. I'm going to say that at the end of my, I have a question for somebody in the audience. I hope, Alberto, you don't mind. I single you out. Do it. So Alberto was one of our, he's our sign master essentially. And one of our ASL consultants. And I wanted to ask you, Alberto, if you would, if you had anything you wanted to add about what it is, there was a comment about the precision of the sign. The language that the actors were able to use. Can you talk about just, because I think the position of sign master is probably mysterious to people who have not had that experience before. Can you say anything about what that was for you as somebody working on the show? I have to say I'm thrilled to have been part of this team. And one thing that I have to say is that what a wonderful experience to work with this company was being great to work with the cast, with the company. So I had three different roles. I was an ASL consultant to the hearing cast. Also to the deaf cast. Both for the folks who were proficient already and for the folks who weren't. So my job was to help hearing folks on stage, gesture and come up with their own family or intimate level of sign language. And also, one person may be able to sign something fluently, but one may sign the same thing more sloppily. So we had to keep them at that level of fluency. When I read the script, I had to at that point figure out the background of the characters. Okay, so they're from the Midwest. They're from Minneapolis. So that has a certain accent to it in ASL. And how does that affect the characters and their signing and what their language looks like? We have some actors who are really beautiful signers and we have to make them look a little bit less proficient. And that was a huge responsibility. So that's the concept. That's what I was doing here during rehearsal. Thank you, Alberto. Sorry to put you on the spot. Adedia, can you talk for a moment about, for you as a playwright, I know that you also have in the creation process, you had to think a lot about when your words were going to stay your words and when they would be given over to a sign master and to other actors who have their own styles of sign. Playwrights have to do this all the time with actors and their words. But for you, I think it was a little bit different. Do you want to say anything about that? Yeah, I knew that in the end, all of the ASL that I was writing would end up being translated. And differently for every production by whichever sign master and the team and the director and the actors. And one of the really beautiful things to me about the process of deaf actors is that as their characters evolve, as their understanding of their characters evolves, what they're saying also changes. And that's very different from where you have to say those words. I don't care if you're feeling differently today or if you wanted this character to go sound, you have to say these words. That's not the case with deaf theater because, oh, you know what, if we're going to go that way, then maybe this sign choice is better and so it evolves. So I don't have the kind of control over the things that get translated into ASL as I do over the things that will be spoken by an actor in English. That said, I also have to find what the balance I needed to find was, I needed to find the balance between letting the language be direct enough that it wouldn't be difficult to translate. And at the same time making sure that what ended up on the screen as access for the hearing audience was interesting and had tension and energy and poetry to it so that it wouldn't be uninteresting for the hearing. It just doesn't understand the sign. So it was a weird balancing act and I think over the first three productions it evolved. Like we discovered, oh, invariably we discovered that something could not be translated into ASL. It was untranslatable the way I've written it because I've pulled some metaphor into it that just was not possible. So either a simplified or a safe, can you help me come up with a metaphor that does work? And then this amazing group of like sign masters and actors would play with it. They'd play with the idea. They'd say, why do you care about this? Why do you need a symbol? They'd think of something. I'd go, oh, I love that people. And then somewhere between us, we'd come up with the English when the ASL would work. And even so, I know that as it goes into every single future production, as it goes into every single production, it is getting reinvented. And I hope the language I created has enough pliability and enough guilt to it that that is something that can happen in every future production. And at the same time, I hope that the language I created has enough structure that the characters will remain centered and sound the way that I want them to. Like it's very important to me that certain characters be very tough and be very strong and defensive. And I don't want that to morph into a gentleness and a fleeting. So I try really hard in the language to lock that down and at the same time, allow us faith for them to be tough in whatever way this actor does tough with their language. It's a weird balance. It's a very big part. I still haven't figured it out or anything, but I hope the script has space for that kind of creativity with each change. It's an interesting challenge as a writer to have to think on all of those levels at once. We have other questions from the audience. Oh wait, yes, we have a Twitter question. What does Twitter have to say? Hello. Twitter is wondering, where are the Sanskrit audiences? Well, I guess we don't have any Sanskrit audiences in this room right now. Thank you, Twitter. We're going to go. Hats, did you have a question? So many deaf folks seem to have questions and none of them are hearing audios. We have a question over here. Did it take you to write this script? No, to think it up and to write it out. How long did it take? Oh, I remember then, one-year residents, well, the first seat of my idea came about a year and a half before I wrote a single word down. So there was stuff in my head during that time. And then when I started writing it, the first draft, which I have to say was not a good draft, probably took me, I probably wrote it over the course of three months and it wasn't good and I probably would have not gone back to it because it didn't achieve what I wanted to achieve. It sort of fell short of what I imagined except that I got into a playwright's week at the Lark, played a development center in New York. And I thought, oh no, now I have to do something to make this play better because otherwise I'm going to be in playwright's week in New York with a terrible play. And that's when Liz, my dramaturg, got involved. So from there on out, I've been saying it was about a year and a half, maybe a year and a half, about two years first until this premiere production and I'm still changing things through the first production because there were things about the technology and the email aspects that we couldn't know until we did it for real. So I was still writing through that one. I think I did some tweaks before it got published. So I don't know, the first draft three months, but it was bad, it was very, very bad. And then another two and a half, three years of fiddling, probably a year of strong fiddling and then, you know, more. I'll stop now, I'll leave you alone. That work, that length of work, especially on the technological aspects, it shows, because for us as a company, when we went through the process of trying to deal with the technology, which in fact we had to put into the rehearsal room in order for us to be able to do any of it right. We had to have our projection designer making projections very early on. In order for all that to work, we discovered pretty quickly that we can trust the script, right. That you had actually done the majority of the work. Like when things had to be timed, how long a scene was, how long the interaction was, that stuff, which I think before we started working on it, we thought was malleable or that we were going to have to figure that out. There was actually a lot of relief for us as the artists bringing this into the world on this stage, that all of that actually was all in the script. I think I have a lot to deal with the depth of work you did on it before the script got to us. So thank you for that, because that was huge. It really made it so much easier for us. We are hearing the end of the allotted time.