IN THE HOUSE OF SOME DEAF (MAD) MEN

Long ago, in the early days of silent film, when it didn't matter if an actor was deaf and/or mute, the Russian filmmaker Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein explored creating films that could "speak" to everyone, rising above language barriers because that film, theoretically, would have a "universal language". Eisenstein was not the first to dream about a universal language, nor was he the last.

Move back a couple centuries and consider, for example, the "dream" etchings by the Spanish artist, Francisco de Goya (1746-1828). Goya was a highly successful painter who, in his mid-40s, suffered the sudden loss of his hearing (as a direct result of lead poisoning from the paints he used). Goya spent the second half of his life creating drawings of various types that critiqued Spanish society "in images and characters existing in all their life-affirming contradictions, like the characters in a Shakespeare play, or in the novels of Balzac" (Paul Stuart). In one series of etchings, the Los Caprichos, this brilliant artist tried to create a "universal language" that "would encourage men and women to reflect on the world and their roles and actions within it."

Now come forward in time again to NOW, and to the inspirations of two Deaf playwrights, one Russian and the other American, and the resulting play that is perhaps not of universal language, but--as a performance of gestures (visual, audio, even tactile)--this is certainly a play of universal communication. Co-authors Willy Conley and Iosif Schneiderman, explored an adaptation, or even a translation, of Goya's works into the play, Goya en la Quinta del Sordo (in the house of the deafman).

I saw this play, TWICE, and I can't wait to tell you more about it. So the focus of the next several blogs (over the next few days or weeks or whenever-I-find-the-time-to-write) will be a "show and tell" of these two performances, AND of the roughly one hour video interview Conley and Schneiderman allowed me to tape (with the interpretation help of Sarah Blattberg). For now, I'll just end this blog entry with this: Goya: en la Quinta del Sordo (in the house of the deaf man) is currently under consideration for the national festival of the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival!