My Story
In 1975 I was at a woman’s concert. It was summer. It was hotter than hell. I was into jazz and performing at that time. For this show there was a woman on stage signing. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, and I said, “I can do that.” And I did. I’ve been signing for thirty-five years. I’m a full-time sign language interpreter. Anywhere people go, I go. So I do a lot of doctor’s appointments. I do a lot of education. I do a lot of work on theatre. I work the Paper Mill Playhouse three times a year. I’ve done Broadway. I’ve done “Beauty and the Beast.” I’m doing Shakespeare in the Park. I’ve done a million and a half shows. I don’t have to be the star. They place the signers between the stage and the deaf group, so they see me and the stage at the same time.
With signing, I’m trying to capture the meaning and their affect simultaneously. Just by saying the words themselves doesn’t really translate the meaning in sign language. The trick is to get a verb and a noun, and then you build from there. So you get the main concept, and then you build out from it. It’s almost like the center of a flower. You want the core of the flower, and then you start adding the leaves and everything else. I feel that there’s not enough teachers for deaf children that are fluent enough in sign language, not only in New York City but in America. If you move to France tomorrow and sat in a French class without a translator, how much would you learn? Probably not a lot. You’d pick up some, but you wouldn’t pick up everything that the French kid next to you is getting, who is also going home and speaking French. The problem deaf kids face is that a lot of their parents aren’t deaf. They’re hearing; and a lot of these parents don’t learn sign language. Add that to a poor interpreter in a classroom, you need to ask, what do they learn? Then they’re tested like every other student to be promoted to the next level. Something’s wrong. The deaf kids are always playing catch-up. Two negatives make a positive in math, but that doesn’t work here. I think as a school teacher we should either be taught, or we should stop and think about it for a half a second: “Gee, if the kid can’t hear, they might want the paper in advance. They might want it the day before. What a great idea to share it with the interpreter. Gee, you think?” Just an idea. I know a lot of smart deaf adults. And they obviously had family support and they had tutors, and they were in a different socioeconomic class. If you have a socioeconomic class that can’t afford tutors, and parents don’t take the time to teach themselves to sign along with their kid, then the kid’s only getting one third of the tripod. Where’s the other two thirds going to come from? I want to fill this gap one deaf kid at a time. I really want to help.